Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Thirst / 3st posters on display at Dordt College


The Dordt College Department of Art and Design is currently featuring poster designs created by the Chicago-based design studio, Thirst.

The exhibit is currently on display in the Dordt College Art Gallery located inside the Campus Center, and it will run through July 15. The public is welcome to enjoy the exhibit free of charge Monday through Saturday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Founder of Thirst and Graphic Designer Rick Valicenti has shared a sampling of posters that span the company’s nearly 25-year history including the 2011 Show Boat poster which is part of the seminal Lyric Opera of Chicago poster series, a decade of Illinois Institute of Design College of Architecture Lecture series posters, and the internationally acclaimed LOEB posters for Harvard’s Graduate Students of Design.

The exhibition was assembled by art (graphic design) professor David Versluis who spent the spring semester on sabbatical in Chicago working at Thirst. “This is the largest collection of Thirst’s posters outside of their studio,” said Versluis. “Viewers seem to be keenly aware that this exhibition is smart and special with exceptional imagination. Each poster has high visual impact while collectively this body of work is stunning.”

Valicenti has been influencing design internationally since 1988. He is a leader in design, taking on roles of practitioner, educator, and mentor.

In John Foster’s book New Masters of Poster Design, Valicenti says, “The best part of designing a poster is the hardest part of designing a poster—deciding what to actually print. Unlike when designing a catalog or book, the designer has but one page to express the program, the event, or the system, not 32 or 332 pages! I thoroughly enjoy the challenge.”

In 2011, Valicenti was awarded the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Award in Communication Design, an honor designated by the White House. The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) honored Valicenti the Medal in 2006, the highest honor of the graphic design profession, for his sustained contribution to design excellence and the development of the profession. He was recognized as an AIGA/Chicago Fellow in 2004 and has been a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) since being invited in 1996.

Valicenti has juried the President’s Design Awards for the National Endowment for the Arts during the George H.W. Bush and William Clinton Administrations. Valicenti also serves on the Board of Directors of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been published in major graphic design publications including Eye.06 (London), Émigré (twice) and Idea (in Tokyo). His book, Emotion as Promotion, was published by Monacelli Press in 2005.

2 comments:

  1. any chance you'll put up an online gallery?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. paul,
      thanks for the question. actually, we have thought about doing that for all of the exhibitions, however, it's a question of having the time. Meanwhile, in the article the “posters” link should help give you an idea.

      dv

      Delete

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