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.