Category: Design

As though seared into our collective consciousness, some images of the American Southwest seem to fully embody its inhospitable terrain, mercurial weather, and intense, challenging beauty. One of these would most certainly be Edward Curtis’ dramatic 1904 photograph of the sacred Canyon de Chelly (pronounced “deh-shay”) in Arizona, featuring a string of Navajo riders on…

Having grown up in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, where Cook County Department of Corrections sprawls across 96 acres, Maria Gaspar has always felt the haunting presence of detention. As a child, she visited that jail as part of a Scared Straight program and, through the years, became more involved in conversations about mass incarceration, abolition,…

Like ancient traditions of weaving papyrus, Ruby Jackson fashions a similarly desiccated substrate from delicate cuts of produce. The Chatham, New York-based artist sliced and dried a range of fare from apples and pears to purple daikon and watermelon, creating thin, translucent pieces to be collaged into various forms. Jackson’s recent solo exhibition, Picker at…

Each day, Yuji Agematsu takes a walk for the explicit purpose of scouring the streets. The dried leaf, lost toy, and even the wad of gum discarded on a park bench are his treasures, which he retrieves and places in the clear cellophane that wraps a pack of cigarettes. Although Agematsu no longer smokes, this…

If you’ve ever wondered what to do with some of your old LEGO lying around, have you thought about wearing them? Based in Berlin, Studio GOGO is a woman-owned jewelry design company that celebrates the everyday joys of playful minimalism and color. Their line of plastic brick-inspired rings is accompanied by a small handful of…

Wedged between two fairly conventional residential buildings in Bucharest is an unexpected gem of a cafe. “The Chapel,” a single-story, contemporary structure with a steep triangle roof line and sleek fixtures, is extremely narrow—a characteristic it celebrates through proportion, materials, and a lot of windows. Designed by Ștefan Păvăluță, founder and principal architect of Romanian…

Working as an art director in New York City in 1962, Joel Meyerowitz was tasked with designing a booklet, the imagery for which was shot by Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank. Knowing very little about photography or the acclaimed documentarian, Meyerowitz’s life and career were nevertheless indelibly altered during that collaboration. “When I watched him work,…

Ready to take your practice and creativity to new heights? The Division of Continuing Education at the School of Visual Arts (SVACE) has the resources and expertise to help you go to the next level.  With a diverse range of more than 200 courses and 10+ artist residency programs, you’ll find everything you need to…

Anyone who’s donned protective glasses and spent hours camped outside with eyes toward the sky knows the strange, life-changing experience of witnessing a solar eclipse. The lunar equivalents are intriguing, too, and have fascinated people around the world for millennia. A new archive collects maps, illustrations, and newspaper clippings documenting this alluring phenomenon from 1654…

Those tedious email exchanges and endless Zoom calls don’t have to be boring. Thanks to Dirk McGirk, every work task can double as a mini cocktail party—just don’t get too dishy. The designer was inspired by a font resembling tiny cubes of Swiss to create a “mechanical cheese board,” a collection of 104 keycaps shaped…