Event Review by Christine E. Tran

Marking the middle of the first annual Design Week, AIGA hosted a student mixer at Columbia College Chicago to promote collaboration between young designers. Students from schools throughout the city and state mingled between tables of food, layer tennis stations, a set of doodle walls and an interactive table provided by 15letters.

But the real event was another exciting special segment: DesignChat, a video chat show featuring weekly conversations with innovators in the design industry. For the first time, the program aired in front of a live audience, populated by the students in attendance.

DesignChat is broadcast in real time on the web to a chat room of viewers. To enhance dialogue, participants have the opportunity to submit questions and hear responses from the featured guest.

For this session, host Ryan McGovern spoke with Seattle designer Art Chantry, who proved a most interesting and entertaining personality for a group of fresh, ambitious designers.

A self-proclaimed curator of cultural artifacts, Chantry is most widely known for his graphic design in the music industry during the grunge rock era. At a time when technology began to dominate production tasks, Art Chantry positioned himself as a creative with ideas that no computer could ever generate.

The initial conversation with McGovern unveiled Chantry’s roots as a self-taught designer who eventually grew into his reputation as a fine artist based on his less paid, but much less corporate work.

“I used to be a corporate designer … But, in the meantime, I was doing all these pieces for my friends. We were in the underground scene in Seattle: theater people, music people, writers, photographers, artists and performance people. These are people I hang out with. So, basically, I got into doing the work I do because I worked for my friends.”

His attraction to vintage entertainment advertising is clearly evidenced in his raw style, a mix of texture, asymmetric shapes, bold color and handcrafted detail. Some pieces are reminiscent of Saul Bass, while others show inspiration from sci-fi and horror movie posters. Another portion of Chantry’s work blares the kind of visual volume synonymous with the 1970s punk rock movement.

When time arrived for students and chat room participants to submit questions, Chantry advised designers to follow their most natural and imaginative senses, and to find inspiration in everything. However, separate from creative exploration, he noted the talent most important to any professional:

“You’ve got to hustle … That is more important than knowing what graphic design is. Be a salesman. We live in a capitalist society, and that is what we do. We hustle. We’re a bunch of salesmen in this culture.”
 

Event Overview:
All AIGA student chapters and non-member students will have the opportunity to gather at Columbia's Conaway Center to take part in a live recording of DesignChat with guest Art Chantry. DesignChat is the weekly video and text-based conversation between creatives. Enjoy a night of lively conversation as people from Chicago's creative student community, shake hands and exchange ideas.

Art Chantry
Born a poor black child in southern Louisiana and long time sufferer of halitosis, Art grew up training elephants to stomp out roadside bombs in downtown Nova Scotia. After loosing all of his limbs, he learned to create artwork with his tongue using non-toxic Crayola® paints. He now resides in New York's gold coast with his wife (his nurse and caregiver of 32 years) and 37 children.

Just kidding. He's a graphic designer often associated with the posters and album covers he did for bands from the Pacific Northwest, such as Nirvana, Hole and The Sonics. He is also notable for his work in logo design.
Chantry advocates a low-tech approach to design that is informed by the history of the field. His work has been exhibited at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, the Smithsonian and the Louvre.

Chantry received a bachelor's degree from Western Washington University in 1978.

Born in Seattle in 1954 and reared there and in Tacoma, Wash., Mr. Chantry is largely self-taught. He returned to Seattle in the late 1970's, and in the early 80's became the art director of the Rocket, a monthly music magazine. He also emerged as a graphic designer known for quick turnarounds and innovative (and cheap) ideas about production.

Mr. Chantry is probably best known for expanding on the bristling low-tech aesthetic of punk music, in posters and album covers for bands like Nirvana, Hole and the Sonics, as well as lesser-known groups like the Cramps, the Lord High Fixers, Mono Men and Bert. These works reflect an omnivorous talent for the incisive recycling of vintage images, usually with a handmade look that Mr. Chantry calls roughed up. Basically, Mr. Chantry seems never to have met an image or a technique that he couldn't bend to his own or his client's advantage. If you don't happen to be steeped in the history of graphic design, punk rock or the Seattle underground -- or even if you are -- his gritty inventiveness gives this show the force of revelation.

Ryan McGovern, DesignChat Host
In 2003 Ryan graduated from Northern Illinois University with a BFA in Visual Communication. Since that time he has worked for multiple design agencies throughout Chicagoland. He is currently an Art Director at Aspen Marketing Services in West Chicago, IL. Before he discovered design, Ryan studied architecture for two years at The University of Illinois at Chicago. The drive for innovation and new ways of thinking has always been the force behind his career.

He founded DesignChat early in 2009 as a weekly twitter-based conversation between creatives. It quickly caught the attention of the design community and grew in to a live video discussion and downloadable podcast. With the help of SamataMason, a design agency in West Dundee, IL, Ryan has committed to bringing the most interesting people in design to the community every week, and to continue breaking down the corporate and competitive barriers that prevent those in the creative industries from connecting.

This is a FREE student event.  Seating is limited. Registration is required.