Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Option Two: Jaime Koval on Thursday or Artist Now tonight.

Please list at least one take away from either of these presentations. Please post your comments to this post.

9 comments:

  1. Jamie Koval – VSA Partners – Chicago

    Jamie’s topic was Love Stories. He broke down the topics he talked about into different parts about love. Love is Messy. At VSA the magnetic walls were constantly covered with ideas. At the partnership they blend all of the disciplines for collective thinking. Love is Meaty. If you truly love what your doing it doesn’t seem like a lot of work. Love is quality and quantity, design strategy and brand identity. Then he went on to saying that you can’t talk about love without touching on a few relationships. Love is more than skin deep. He talked about how to move the market. At VSA they redesigned converse, by thinking of the shoe like canvas or designing a shirt then use that design for the shoe. Love thyself. He used a quote “I don’t like defining myself…I just am.” VSA created an episode called “Off Register” and we watched one episode and it was pretty funny! Love is engagement. Love can be heartbreaking. The process is better than the actual project, because with the process you are able to understand the persons thinking and reasoning. Love can lead to better things. IBM is soon having their 100-year anniversary and VSA refreshed their brand identity, they created 100 different identities. Love is enduring.

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  2. On Thursday, September 15 Jamie Koval from VSA spoke at the Intercontinental downtown Milwaukee. Jamie introduced his talk as “Love Stories” and went on to explain what love can be and how it can affect us. The first quote that I pulled from Jamie’s talk was “Love is… the intersection between people and something truly compelling to move minds or market.” Jamie explained, over the hour and a half he was talking that working at VSA is much like working with your family. He talked about how architecture is no longer at the top of the pyramid, design is. I agree with Jamie when he says that because we deal with anything and everything, we are at the top of the pyramid an should say “hell yes!” when someone asks us to design a building. “Design is a contact sport.” You have to be ready for anything and willing to take a few blows for the end goal. I think the most important thing I pulled from Jamie was always to “align yourself with the companies you’re working with” by asking, not telling… and suggesting alternative routes after listening. “High talent, low ego” really describes VSA and someday I hope to take the things I learned from Jamie and apply them to my own career. I could go on forever about how much I pulled from his talk and how inspiring he was but I guess the thing that impressed me most was his gracious attitude toward the gifts he was given and the team he has to work with.

    “At the end of the day, everything you look at is in someone’s portfolio… as crappy as it may be.”

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  3. I attended Jamie Koval's talk at the Intercontinental Milwaukee, downtown. In his presentation he made many different, interesting points about design. Here are some of my favorites...

    "Design is like rugby... it's a mess!"
    "Architects used to be the top of the period... I don't believe its true anymore. What architect can work with typography and image to convey a message and feeling..."

    He also made the point that when working with a client you should treat them as part of the team, they have a lot of information that will benefit your project.

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  4. I went to the Jamie Koval talk on Thursday. The talk was called "Love Stories" and he organized his presentation comparing design and his work at VSA to love. He started by saying that it's an intersection between engaging a group of people with something truly compelling to move minds or a market. His quote that "love is messy" also stuck out to me that design is messy because it takes a long process to end up with a clean finished product. Overall, I really enjoyed his talk.

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  5. I thought the Jamie Koval talk on thursday showed an interesting side to working in a large firm. Jamie talked about his love for design and how it translates through his works. I really found the Chicago 2016 campaign to be interesting. It was amazing how the whole city was polarized by the torch like icon.

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  6. Jamie Koval was the person behind the One Day for Design all AIGA members got in the mail last year. He was attempting to get the attention of designers by sending them print pieces, since no one utilizes print material anymore.

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  7. The Jamie Koval presentation was very interesting to watch. It was nice to see the process he and his team went through in designing the Olympics 2016 logos. They weren't allowed to put the word "Olympics" on anything or use any preexisting Olympics logo work. Some of the logos they designed were quite cool and it was interesting to see how they dealt with the situation of not using anything from the Olympics specifically. For me, I liked one logo in particular, but apparently the Chicago public really loved the one I liked the least.

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  8. Option 3: Ad Workers Milwaukee 99 Advertising awards.

    The award show provided not as much a direct lesson, but offered an experience and awareness of the quality of design being produced in Milwaukee. I was inspired by many of the pro bono projects created in the last year.

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  9. Jamie Koval compared branding to a love story, talking about client relationships and past experiences he had gained through VSA. Things that stood out to me have been mentioned previously by my peers, but as a whole, it was Jamie's passion for design that stuck with me the most. He had mentioned that design wasn't for everyone and that if he hadn't been willing to work his ass off, he wouldn't be where he was today. And if he didn't love what he was doing, he wouldn't have worked his ass off to get there. It's this passion for design that I find to be truly inspiring and motivating.

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