Exhibits

Among the other stops on my trip to Pasadena, which also included a stop at the Pacific Asia Museum, was a drive up the hill to the Art Center College of Design. I think living and working on the East Coast my whole life has left me with a parochial view, naive to the great schools west of the Mississippi. Other than my experience working with a creative director, Lisa Winward, at Kelsh Wilson Design who went to Otis, my contact with designers who have trained anywhere other than the East Coast has been very (unfortunately) limited.

I have been, since college, a dedicated follower of Pentagram's work so when I heard that there was a retrospective of Kit Hinrichs' work on display at Art Center that coincided with a visit to see my brother who lives in California, I got excited.

It was amazing seeing a designers work, who has such a distinct style, collected in one place. The display of annual reports and other books was captivating. The very illustrative work was great to have on display at a school that, when walking around, seemed to be producing very modern, clean work. I know that when I was in school, there were probably many exhibits at the galleries I did not see because of the lack of enthusiasm about the work on display. I think many times, schools see the work in their galleries as something that needs to be there and not something that SHOULD BE SEEN!

I remember attending a lecture by, perhaps my favorite artist, Antony Gormley at Moore College of Art & Design only because I noticed a tiny flyer at my school.

Taking my family along with me, who seemed to appreciate the work almost as much as I, I believe Kit's work connects to everyone that sees it (a sign of very successful design). And it is work that everyone should go see.

The only thing that left me curious at the exhibit was a display of his @issue work, specifically a large display of a spread that depicted single letters of logos as a quiz to see if you can recognize the brand by a single character. Seen below at the left of the standing display (I unfortunately could not take pictures at the gallery to get a closer shot), the quiz has the letters and a small answer key below it. I got a lot of them but was stuck on the blue, elongated "Q". When I looked to the key for the answer I noticed that the answer to "Q" was missing. Was this on purpose or a mistake that was overlooked?