On a recent weekend afternoon Kyle Blue (former Walker Design Fellow) and I had a nice little iChat conversation about Dwell‘s (somewhat) recent redesign. Here are the highlights: Chad: How many people are on the design team, and how did you become design director? Kyle: There are four designers including myself. I worked at Dwell for two years as a senior designer under the founding creative director…

While working at the Walker Art Center as one of the 2006-7 design fellows, I greatly appreciated the Walker’s amazing library resource. A trip to the library was always a welcome break from the heavy workload in the design department, but also an excuse to visit to Rosemary, the Walker’s librarian for 25 years. Rosemary always had wonderful stories to tell, and in particular I enjoyed her…

Recently, after receiving the latest issue of Z/X, designer and Walker alumni Layla Tweedie-Cullen was kind enough to answer a few of my questions regarding the publication: What is Z/X? What is its history and mission? Z/X is a visual arts publication established in 2004 at Manukau School of Visual Arts, a South Auckland art school in New Zealand, with the aim to serve as a vehicle for a wider…

In light of the Typewriter Typefaces post back in March, a co-worker of ours was kind enough to bring in a Royal typewriter to the Walker studio. Everyone had fun punching away at the keys and writing some very profound statements. Inevitably, the fun and experimentation led me to what you see below: typewriter-made spin-offs of the Walker Expanded identity “strips”. They’re a little rough around the…

Take a preview tour of Design for the Other 90%, courtesy of Andrew Blauvelt, the Walker Art Center’s design director. The free outdoor exhibition opens Friday next to the Cowles Conservatory, on the grounds of the opens FridayMinneapolis Sculpture Garden. Take a preview tour of Design for the Other 90%, courtesy of Andrew Blauvelt, the Walker Art Center’s design director. The free outdoor exhibition…

As a teenager who, during the late 1990′s, spent every last dollar on vinyl records and every waking moment on a skateboard, I was extremely excited to learn the Walker was screening Aaron Rose’s film Beautiful Losers on May 2! The event is in conjunction with an artist lecture by Chris Johanson and Jo Jackson at the Walker on Thursday May 1st, and with their exhibition Conclusions on Boundaries at…

I was recently introduced to two distinctive books that share common ground in terms of their use of atypical typewriter typefaces. These typefaces function, at times, as simple typographic flourishes throughout the unwavering pages of these two books. But what I appreciate most about these typefaces is that they are unexpectedly refreshing while also holding stylistic relevance (especially in…

In a world where writers strike for online royalties and internet radio (temporarily) escapes paying crippling copyright fees, UbuWeb is a rare bird. Founded in 1996 by artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmith, it’s an extensive and entirely free online archive for avant-garde poetry, writing, film, and sound compositions. Remarkably, not one of the artists, obscure or famous, gets any financial remuneration for…

Let’s start Monday morning off with a Friday Find (found Friday, Jan. 4): 3 catalogues from the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) designed by Wim Crouwel and Total Design. Take a minute to appreciate Crouwel’s graphic restraint, his enslavement to the grid and his dedication to Univers. Take another minute to read these excerpts describing how prevalent Crouwel’s design was in the Netherlands: “It was actually…