Ken Carbone's Keynote and Workshop

Ken Carbone gave a lively and engaging keynote for our third annual Clarvit Design Week.



He shared a range of work from his career and a range of hair styles. Here he is above with Carbone Smolan Agency partner Leslie Smolan. The two began the design firm more than three decades ago.

Carbone Smolan won an international competition to create a signage system for the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Now that the project is complete, Ken likes to say that he has more pieces of work in the renowned museum than any other artist.

After the keynote, Ken went straight to work meeting with the participants of the workshop he conducted as part of his visit.





After glimpsing his many sketchbooks and hearing more about his sources of inspiration, the students began preparing their response to his workshop assignment.



The students showed sketches to Ken for feedback and then began creating their posters. They had a tight time frame, less than 24 hours, to work on the project with our keynote. They continued to give each other feedback to finish the poster projects.







During the workshop, Ken critiqued the students' works and gave them feedback for changes.





Workshop participants from left are Aurora Colón, Benjamin Seydewitz, Kelsey Marotta, Alex Dinsmore, Ken Carbone, Kristen Young, Deanna Romero, Sabrena Sesay, Michael Cantor and Emily Hein.

Thursday with John Foster

Thursday morning John Foster critiqued the work of Professor Jim Thorpe's ARTT352 class. The students were drafting different imagery options for an annual report. It will be interesting to watch how John's fresh perspective will influence this in-progress work.



After critiquing their work, John proceeded to share his work with the students.





The common adage of genius being one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration rang true for this project. John quickly developed the concept for this cover, but finding just the right book to make the concept come to fruition proved a much more difficult task.



John has used many different aesthetic styles in his work from photorealism to hand lettering to mixed media.

Wednesday with Polygraph

On Wednesday it was Polygraph's turn to share their design experiences with our students. Gavin, Lindsay, and Jason showed the work that they did before they joined design forces to establish Polygraph. We were honored to be their first invited presentation. With all of the great work they are doing, it certainly will not be their last.













Enzian is an original typeface inspired by the beautiful form and complex persona of Blackletter script in Germany. It was awarded a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design by the Type Directors Club.







They even brought "fresh off the press" work that they just completed for the Art Director's Club of Metropolitan Washington.

Tuesday with Lynn Kawaratani

On Tuesday Lynn Kawarantani who shared her philosophy about exhibit design with students. She shared the impression that Charles and Ray Eames' "Mathematica" exhibit had on her both in terms of her personal mathematical understanding and for the potential of an exhibit to be engaging and informative, no matter what the subject.



Lynn stressed the importance of making your information relatable to the various exhibit audience members and to be open to feedback and edits during the design process. Here an illustration of a human is juxtaposed with other animals to show scale.

Monday with Kirsten O'Loughlin

Kirsten followed up the Saturday letterpress workshop with a presentation of her other design work on Monday. Kirsten worked in Portland and then moved to St. Louis, where she lives now.

She offered students a few key words of wisdom about how she transitioned from being a student at the University of Maryland into the interactive design professional she is today.

A Great Start to the Week!

Kirsten O'Loughlin’s letterpress workshop at Pyramid Atlantic made a great start to the third annual Clarvit Design Week. She put the participants to work setting metal type of a favorite quote or tweet. Citations ranged from Nelson Mandela to Nietzsche to Zooey Deschanel to even Prof. Thorpe. Quite a range indeed.



After an initial orientation about setting metal type, everyone began placing the appropriate letters into their compositions.



The students had to arrange backward-reading letters so that the words read correctly when the relief was printed.



New school meets old school.







The individual quotes were then arranged into one collaborative composition.



The morning session participants had a lively discussion about which ink color(s) should be used. Hot pink was an early forerunner, but it lost out to a teal and charcoal gray combination.





Once the quotes were compiled, a few necessary adjustments were made. Students added dingbats and other typographic marks to separate the quotes from one another.



After a final check of the type to make sure the errors had been eliminated and everything was in order, it was time make the prints. Each participant got a turn at running the press.



Lauren Siewertsen was the first to try her had at printing.



ARHU Dean Thorton Dill stopped by the workshop and had the opportunity to make a print as well. We are pleased to report that she handled the press like a pro. Perhaps we have a design convert in our midst?



Ali Clarvit with her print of the morning session’s quotes.



Nancy Clarvit takes her turn at printing.



After the prints were made, Kirsten shared some of her work from Sensura Studio. From left are Carey Ward, Sofia Chung, Nancy Clarvit, Ali Clarvit, and another special guest to the workshop, Mrs. Barbara Loh.



The morning group from left are Sofia Chung, Carey Ward, Lauren Siewertsen, Christa Ursini, April Chaires, Rebecca Welling, Ian McDermott, Kirsten O'Loughlin, Alex Dinsmore, Nancy Clarvit, Emily Hein, Ali Clarvit, Prof. Buck-Coleman, and Prof. Thorpe.



The afternoon group from left are Terry Coleman, Aurora Colón, Eliza Rownaghi, Asha Augustine, Kirsten O'Loughlin, Sabrena Sesay, Christina Bilbrey, and Brian George.