Friday, March 9, 2012

Sabbatical status after a month at Thirst (3st) weeks 3-5

Above is an example of a product sheet for Hale’s Tidal Shelf (wall shelf), one of 22 product tearsheets that Thirst has developed for industrial designer, Jonathan Nesci. 

Rick Valicenti, design director; Bud Rodecker template design; David Versluis, production designer. Thirst is a design collaborative / 3st.com.

Things are going well and I'm making the most of my time here in Chicago by cultivating connections and taking advantage of educational opportunities. Since I document almost everything, you can always check the status on this blog.

At the moment I'm helping to produce product sheets for high-end furniture designer, Jonathan Nesci. Jonathan’s furniture is produced for Hale, an industrial design company which he founded in 2006, based in Chicago and Scottsburg, Indiana. My role in the process is to retouch, crop, size, and place the product photography in each tearsheet, as well as clean up and size the line drawings for each product in order to achieve a consistent line thickness.

Nesci’s furniture designs for Hale look deceptively simple and chic. Intrinsic in the production process is quality craft in the form of precision machining and fabricating methods, necessary in producing furniture that’s so elegantly minimal.

Last week I was included in a very informative meeting at Thirst with Classic Color company executives to discuss and get feedback on some unique website concepts for Classic. Rick Valicenti and John Pobojewski held the conversation.

I also enjoyed a visit with former student and Dordt College alumnus, Sarah Franken on Monday afternoon, 27 February. Sarah happened to be in town and contacted me, asking if she could stop by and see Thirst’s office; she was graciously received by everyone in the office and seemed to enjoy her time. I have had a few other Dordt alumni inquire about visits as well.

As a very pleasant surprise, veteran Chicago graphic designer Jack Weiss from Evanston came to Thirst one afternoon to meet with Rick about an upcoming book on one of Chicago’s graphic design pioneers, Carl Regehr (1919–1983). The book will feature Regehr’s “Mail Art.” Rick introduced me to Jack and we had a great time conversing about Chicago’s rich graphic design history.

As a follow-up to an earlier blog piece — the article on Team !melk got some national buzz (Thirst is one of the team members). Last Friday Thirst received this e-mail from !melk in New York City:
Subject: good press — our great pier: Hello team !melk, I thought I'd share with you just some of the blogs that our Chicago Navy Pier project has been posted in this week! Great work gets around :)
AECCafe.com, Archdaily, DC AIGA, E-ARCHITECT, PLUS MOOD, ARCHISCENE  
As Rick Valicenti said, “David, you’re in good company!” Good company indeed.

A Valicenti sketch to this author for the Hale project on Rick’s yellow paper.

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