Design As Social Agent

A one day conference presented by the ICA and AIGA Boston that explores the intersection of visual culture and social transformation.

Sponsored by Zipcar and Meridian Printing.

Through a full day of presentations, interviews, gallery tours, author talks, and more, this program considers the place of Shepard Fairey's work in a powerful design history of civic empowerment and resistance, seeks to understand how images resonate and gain momentum, examines the latest trends in communication and messaging, and discusses the implicit challenges of social agency in design.

Main stage talks feature speakers from the fields of design, street art, music, and advertising. The programs look at design and culture and how our understanding of originality, plagiarism, legality, and the artistic process has been exploded.

SCHEDULE 

Main Stage Talks

Culture and Resistance
10 am
Designer Kevin Grady, and Boston-based street artists Caleb Neelon and the Project Director for PIXNIT Productions provide a cultural orientation to frame Shepard Fairey’s work, while designer, design curator and author Elizabeth Resnick explores how his work fits into a diverse and powerful history of dissent in design. More…

Elegant Dissent and Anarchy
11:30 am
Designer Elliott Earls presents his perspective on establishment and anarchy. How does one visualize dissent? Should designers look beyond traditional sources of inspiration or court contradiction and chaos to produce relevant, resonant, and prescient design? More…

The Obama Effect: What Art Did for Advertising
12:45 pm
Pete Favat, Arnold Advertising’s Chief Creative Officer, and Nicholas Blechman, Nozone designer and New York Times Book Review art director, discuss how guerrilla marketing has taken hold and what it means for the way artists, designers, and the media operate. More…

Steve Heller, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State
2 pm
Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State, the first illustrated survey of the propaganda art, graphics, and artifacts of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Communist regimes of the USSR and China, explores how these regimes succeed in influencing the minds of millions. Its author, Steve Heller, illustrates how the elements of visual language—imagery, typeface, color palette—were used to “sell” the totalitarian message. More…

Something Borrowed, Something True
3:30 pm
Is appropriation an effective means for subversion? Kevin Grady moderates a panel discussion with designers Steve Heller, Nicholas Blechman, and Elliott Earls, examining the success of new images in comparison to subverted or altered familiar ones. What defines this practice as a design tool, and what could it suggest for the way design develops? Who defines the fine line between appropriation and plagiarism? More…

Also in the theater, between Main Stage Talks

Tickets are not required.

The Good, the Bad & the Runway
Student designers at the School of Fashion Design create characters and design garments that comment on the heroes, the villains, and the stars of fashion. Original graphic stencil artwork will be on display, one-of-a-kind garments will be modeled, and student designers will be on hand to discuss the meaning and the messages behind their work. This project was created and facilitated by SFD instructor and the Executive Director of Boston Fashion Week, Jay Calderin.

Related Programs in the Art Lab

Admission to these programs is free with a ticket purchase to any main stage talk and is on a first-come,
first-served basis.

Social Networking for Social Good: What Stickers, Facebook and Flickr do that Press and Advertising Don't
10:45 am
Laura Fitton, social networking consultant and author of Twitter for Dummies, shares her experiences using new media to raise money for a clean water initiative in India. More…

The Many Mutations of Viral Marketing
12:15 pm
Social networking consultant Laura Fitton interviews members of Street Attack, an alternative and digital marketing agency, about their integrated marketing campaigns and how the latest trends, technology, and media can be harnessed to communicate social messages and more. More…

The Next Generation
Organized in partnership with the Berwick Research Institute
2:15 pm
Organized in partnership with the Berwick Research Institute. Hear what the next generation of artists have learned, adapted, or rejected from Shepard Fairey’s work and where it is leading them. Designer Elliott Earls will interview Boston-based artists including a representative from Goldenstash, Dana Woulfe, and Kenji Nakayama. More…

Author Talk and Book Signing: Caleb Neelon
3:30 pm
The Book of Awesome (2009) deliberately ignores the obvious global centers of New York, Los Angeles, and London to document artist Caleb Neelon’s street presence in places like Kathmandu, Sao Paulo, and Tegucigalpa. Neelon has made art on five continents, collaborating with noted street artists Os Gemeos and Andrew Schoultz, and made work in streets where he is the first foreigner—-let alone street painter—-to wander in quite some time. More…

Book Signings in the Lobby

Kevin Grady
12 pm
Lemon Magazine is pop culture with a twist: a new breed of magazine that stakes its claim at the intersection of
60s – 70s pop and 21st Century hyper-culture. Design and produced with obsessive attention to every last detail, each issue of Lemon is pure pop art. More…

Steven Heller
1 pm
Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State (2008) is the first illustrated survey of the propaganda art, graphics, and artifacts of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Communist regimes of the USSR and China. More…

Nicholas Blechman
2:15 pm
Nozone is a graphic-based political zine. The theme for the current issue, Nozone’s tenth, is “Forecast.” Inspired by prophesies of all kinds – from weather reports to doomsday predictions – Nozone X takes a long look at our relationship with an increasingly uncertain future. Over fifty designers, cartoonists and artists offer their vision, projects, and scientific findings. More…

Caleb Neelon
4:15 pm
The Book of Awesome (2009) deliberately ignores the obvious global centers of New York, Los Angeles, and London to document artist Caleb Neelon's street presence in places like Kathmandu, Sao Paulo, and Tegucigalpa. More…

In the Galleries

Hear differing perspectives on Shepard Fairey's work, and see it through the eyes of designers, artists, critics, and curator with gallery talks scheduled throughout the day.

Designer's Eye: Fritz Klaetke
10 am, more… 

Critic's Eye: Cait Curran
11 am, more… 

Artist's Eye: the Project Director for PIXNIT
12 pm, more…

Curator's Eye: Randi Hopkins
1 pm, more…

Artist's Eye: Caleb Neelon
2 pm, more…

Designer's Eye: Rochelle Seltzer
3 pm, more… 

Playlists

Listen to exclusive music playlists from Brett Anthony Johnson, Interpol, Roger Miller of Mission of Burma, designers Kevin Grady and Clif Stoltze, and artists Caleb Neelon and PIXNIT Productions.

Video Box: in the Art Lab

Share your views and tell us what you think in the video box, located in the Art Lab. What has been answered and what has not been addressed in the day's program? Footage will be regularly projected in the theater between programs. Hear your views, share your thoughts, and have the day's speakers consider what you say.
10 am - 5 pm

ADMISSION

Purchase your tickets at www.icaboston.org, or call 617-478-3103
(call for AIGA member discount, or to purchase tickets for the whole day)

$15 to AIGA and ICA members, seniors and students
$25 to non-members

Individual ticket prices include admission to any one of the main stage talks listed above, as well as access to related programs in the Art Lab, lobby and galleries.

Attend them all

$75 to AIGA and ICA members, seniors and students
$125 to non-members

SPECIAL OFFER: Buy tickets for all 5 main stage talks and be entered into a drawing to win admission to an upcoming AIGA event or ICA talk.

ICA directions and parking 

CONTACT

Franz Buzawa
franz@newpathdesign.com
978.994.9694