Podcast appearances and mentions of rick valicenti

Our guest is Rick Valicenti, founder of Thirst (1988–2019). In this episode, Valicenti speaks with host ⁠Christian Solorzano⁠ and reflects on the journey and highlights of his career, which has spanned decades. Valicenti shares insights from his collaborations, friendships, and encounters with designers such as Paul Rand, Art Paul, Saul Bass, and Tibor Kalman. Valicenti walks us through his creative process and the methods through which he stays inspired to continue to create and use graphic design as a means of expression and communication. Music by the band ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Eighties Slang⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Our guest is designer and partner at the Chicago-based studio Span John Pobojewski. In this episode, John speaks with host Christian Solorzano about his background and education in music and the ways it influences his approach to his graphic design practice.  From 2003–2019 John was a designer and later partner at Thirst alongside Rick Valicenti — and he shares with us his experiences and lessons learned from that time. He dives deep into his belief that design is one of the many ways to look at the world as a place of discovery and possibilities, in which designers have an opportunity to respond through their creative disciplines and values.  We also hear about the power of listening, which serves as an imperative skill that allows us to create thoughtful and purpose-led solutions to problems, and so much more. Music by the band ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Eighties Slang⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Over the past two decades, graphic designer, Nick Adam has been shaping and contributing to Chicago's visual culture through collaborations with institutions, studios, and leaders. He describes himself as strategic and values-driven, focusing on and exploring identities and stories while producing work that leads to rich conversation and experiences by merging craft, theory, and optimism. In 2018, he graduated with an MFA in Graphic Design from RISD. Currently, he is a Design Principal at the design studio Span. Before that, he was an Associate Principal at Rick Valicenti's studio, Thirst, and before that, Strategic Director at Firebelly. In this episode, Nick Adam speaks with host Christian Solorzano and Jaime Cisneros and, discusses his upbringing, early design influences, approach to design, the Chicago design community, and more. Music by the band Eighties Slang.

Patric King is a graphic designer and typographer based in Chicago. In this episode, King speaks with host, Christian Solorzano and discusses coming to Chicago in the mid-1990s to work alongside Rick Valicenti at the design studio Thirst and the work that he did while there. King also shares how he founded House of Pretty, his design studio, and speaks about some of the early influences that shaped his career. King is also the designer and typographer responsible for Big Shoulders, the official typeface for the City of Chicago, released in 2020.

This week (1/7 & 1/9) on ART ON THE AIR our entire show features Rick Valicenti, founder and design director of Thirst, a communication design practice providing design and immersive environments for high profile clients in the architectural, performing arts, and education communities. He also is as an adjunct professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Our spotlight is on Art Z and Company rebranded and relocated to downtown Valparaiso with owners Bridget Nadolski and Cathy DeLeo. Tune in on Friday at 11am for our hour long conversation with our special guests or listen on the web at WVLP.org Listen to past ART ON THE AIR shows at brech.com/aota. Rebroadcast on WVLP - Monday at 5pm and Sunday (1/9) on 7pm on Lakeshore Public Radio 89.1FM or lakeshorepublicradio.org/programs/art-air Please have your friends send show feedback to Lakeshore at: radiofeedback@lakeshorepublicmedia.org Send your questions about our show to AOTA@brech.com LIKE us on Facebook.com/artonthairwvlp to keep up to date about art issues in the Region. New and encore episodes also heard as podcasts on: anchor, NPR ONE, Spotify Tune IN, Amazon Music, Apple and Google Podcasts, plus many other podcast platforms. Larry A Brechner & Ester Golden hosts of ART ON THE AIR.

Rick Valicenti (founder and design director of Thirst, a communication design practice for clients in the architectural, performing arts and education communities), Iker Gil (architect, director of MAS Studio, editor in chief of the quarterly design journal, MAS Context), and Jenn Stucker (associate professor and division chair of graphic design at BGSU, founding board member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, AIGA Toledo) discuss community-based collaborative design.    Transcript: Introduction: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Intro Song Lyrics: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the BG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and american culture studies and the director of ICS. Today we're joined by three guests working in collaborative design fields. First is Rick Valicenti, the founder and design director of Thirst, a communication design practice for clients in the architectural, performing arts and education communities. His work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art and resides in the permanent collections of the Yale University Library, Denver Art Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2011, he was honored by the White House with the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for communication design. Jolie Sheffer: We're also joined by Iker Gil, an architect, the director of MAS Studio, editor in chief of the quarterly design journal, MAS Context, and the editor of the book, Shanghai Transforming. He curated the exhibition, Bold: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, included in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. Iker is the associate curator of the US Pavilion at the 16th Annual Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2010, he received the Emerging Visions Award from the Chicago Architectural Club. Jolie Sheffer: Finally, I'd like to welcome Jenn Stucker an associate professor and division chair of graphic design at BGSU. Her work has been published in several books on design and she's received various awards including two international design awards from How Magazine for her community based works in Toledo. She's also a founding board member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, AIGA Toledo. And she previously co-chaired two national AIGA design education conferences. Jolie Sheffer: The three of them are here to talk to me as part of the Edwin H. Simmons Creative Minds series. Thank you and welcome to BGSU. I'm thrilled to discuss more of your work on creativity and collaboration. I like to start by having you each give a little background on your current work and how you came into the kind of design work that you're doing. So Rick, how did your career change from your time as a student at BGSU to your work now? What are some of those major u-turns or forks in the road for you? Rick Valicenti: Well, thank you. That's a good question. That's a really good question. Okay, so let me fast backwards to 1973 when I graduated from Bowling Green. I went back to Pittsburgh, spent some time in a steel mill for two years, went to graduate school at the University of Iowa. Came to Chicago afterwards with two graduate degrees in photography and discovered that I was not interested in photographing hotdogs, cornflakes and beer. So with that I thought I would leverage a time in the writer's workshop doing a little bit of letter press work as well as my time at Bowling Green studying design. And I thought I'll be a designer. It wasn't that easy. But it has been a journey for now almost four decades since then to get to a place where I feel there's relevance in what I do. And that has been the challenge, and it continues to be the challenge. Design, as you know, is a practice that has at its core, or patronage, somebody else. Rick Valicenti: In fact, it's been said you have to be given permission to practice graphic design. Not necessarily the case, you can do self-initiated projects. And it was in leveraging what I learned in graduate school, which was how to make up a project, how to provide for myself a thesis and then create work in response to that. That has allowed me to both do that on my own as well as in collaboration with other people. And then to encourage younger designers under some guidance to do the same. And of late, the more interesting work has been work that has been related to an issue, not unlike the work that Jenn practices in her classwork. But to me that's the most fulfilling and it was unfortunately not the work that I showed because it was work I was prepared to end the evening with. But I chose because we had been blabbing for so long last night to just stop early. But it's okay. Jolie Sheffer: Tell me what led you to start your own firm? Rick Valicenti: I was one of those lucky designers who, while it was difficult to crack the Chicago design scene, two years of doing what I would refer to as thankless design work, design work where I was asked to do something prescriptive. Like do this by Friday. Yes, I could do that. I was quite good at it. I lucked out by having the opportunity to be the dark room guy for a very reputable Chicago designer, who was at that time 63 years old. And so in his last three and a half years of practice I had moved from the new guy in the studio to the last employee he had. And it was a fantastic experience to be in the company of real design practice. Design practice that understood the history, it understood the present, and it was looking out to the future. This guy was connected to the other thought leaders in the Chicago design community and I had access to them even though it was vicarious. Jolie Sheffer: Great. Thank you. Iker, tell us about your journey into Chicago architecture and the current kinds of collaboration you do. How has your approach to design changed over time and what were some of those key junctures for you? Iker: So I'm originally from Bilbao, which is a city in the North of Spain in the Basque country. And I think a lot of the changes in design and a lot of the ways that I've been thinking had been motivated also by the change of place or how the people that I've encounter or any other aspects that really change as I move from other places. So from Bilbao I went to Barcelona to study architecture. I had the chance there to not only have the professors that were faculty there, but also other visiting professors, like David Chipperfield and Kazuyo Sejima. So that was a way of beginning to connect with other experiences that maybe were not the local ones. And I was very interested in expanding that. And I've had the luck to get a scholarship from IIT in Chicago to go there for a year. Iker: So it was a little bit coincidentally in a way that I ended up in Chicago. And I was there for a year as an exchange student, I still had to do my thesis so I went back to Spain. But there was something about Chicago, a apart from my girlfriend that now is my wife, who is from Chicago. But there was something very intriguing about the city, a lot of potential, very different from being in Barcelona. But there was something always in Barcelona that was interesting for me about the cultural aspect of architecture. There was the aspects of people building a significant building or just a civic building that there was always a publication and an exhibition, a way of coming together to talk about why those things were important. Iker: So when I went to Chicago, when I moved back and I did my master's, I worked for an office. I was always interested in the ADL, the community, the design community, the architecture community. How do you strengthen that and how do you create the platforms to do that beyond what you can design? So I decided at some point that I really wanted to make sure that I did both of those things. And I went on my own about 11 years ago just to make sure that I could create the designs within my office, but create other platforms for others to have that conversation. And more recently I've been able to create the structures to support or organize design competitions and really began being interested in not only the final product, but how do you structure the conditions for those things to happen. Jolie Sheffer: So you're talking about not just designing buildings, but designing communities and relationships. Iker: Yep. And I think that's a role of, in my case, an architect or designers. Like the work that you do, but also the work in the city that you do. And how are you part of the community, and also how are you proactive shaping that community? Not something that you want to benefit from someone else's effort to structure something. What is what you can do and why you can give to the community back? Jolie Sheffer: Great. Jenn, talk to us about your path into graphic design and how your approach has shifted over time. Jenn Stucker: So I was at graduate here at BGSU. Very proud of the training and the experience that I had from Ron Giacomini, a chair that Rick also had the opportunity to study under. And when I graduated I went right out into the field, I got a job in graphic design. And I think was pretty good at my craft and pretty good at making. And also at the same time pursuing this educational path. I am originally a transplant from Colorado, I guess you could say. And one of the things about the Toledo area is there's this "neh" mentality. It's the rust belt. I- Jolie Sheffer: Better days are behind us. Jenn Stucker: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:09:16]. Yes. It's definitely like, why did you move from Colorado to Toledo? Is usually the question that I get asked. And I'm always like, wow, there's so many great things here. You're four hours from Chicago, you're this far from Toronto, you're this far from here. In Colorado you're four hours from the border of Wyoming, at least where I live. Right? And you're looking at the same topography and you're not getting any cultural change. And so for me, my family was here. My husband and his family. And so I was here for the long haul. Jenn Stucker: So the idea really just became, I need to bloom where I'm planted. I need to make this space and place better, and contribute to it and work towards that. Changing the attitude, how do we create positivity in this community? And so I started getting involved in creating projects that really illuminated Toledo in a positive way. And so then I reflected back on the fact that I wasn't necessarily armed with that as a student, with that understanding of the fact that I had agency and power that I could do something. I didn't necessarily have training with, how do you collaborate and get a, you know, writing a grant to get the funding for this? And who do I need to talk to and who needs to bring this to the table? And all of those things. Jenn Stucker: So part of that I think now is coming to what I do as an educator, is to show those students. I tell them, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm completely fumbling through this. I don't know what I'm doing. This dots project in Toledo that I'm literally the one that's going to be photographing all the dots around Toledo, or trying to find spaces in January and it's cold. And then actually putting them down on the ground and actually taking them off the ground and doing these sort of things. I don't know that when I'm creating the idea. But I know it has to get done and I'm going to do that. And the fact that I'm just Jenn is what I tell them. I'm just one person, I'm not any different than you. And so I try to give them a lot of power that they can do that thing that they want to make change for. Jolie Sheffer: You're all talking about very place-based design practices, or in different ways your work is all very much about locating yourself, right? And building in relationship to that community, and creating community. Could you give an example, Rick, of one of your projects that had a very Chicago-centric, and how that place shaped the process and the collaborations that you developed? Rick Valicenti: With pleasure. In 2016, I was the artist in residence at Loyola University. And there we devoted an entire year to prototyping empathetic ways of grieving for those who were left behind by gun violence. That was a very Chicago-centric theme. And it was something that I was curious about beyond the candle vigil, right? Or the protest march. Are there other ways we can come together both as community led by design in order to acknowledge and honor the life lost? And of course help the healing process for the families left behind. That was a very place specific design assignment. The difference was we were doing it on the North side, and a lot of the activity, gun violent activity was happening on the South side. Not all of it because in the building that we were located, in the alley right next door one of the students had been shot. Rick Valicenti: Down the street the young photographer had been shot and killed on that street. So as they call it, the franchising of gun violence had migrated North to the Rogers Park and Edgewater area, which is where Loyola is located. It made it more real and more tangible, but the prototyping of these empathetic gestures was, I think, healing for all of us. And I've been rewarded by that project ever since. And I really want to see now if something like that can migrate to other cities. And I've been talking to a few people like, wouldn't El Paso benefit from this kind of intervention? Dayton, Ohio, would they not benefit from it? Jolie Sheffer: And could you talk through what that project actually ended up looking like? Rick Valicenti: I'll give you an example. There were 20 students in the class, half of them were from the fine arts area, half of them were from design related fields. And so they all had different approaches to it. And every class began with somebody from the outside. Rick Valicenti: Okay? And I thought this was important. And Iker knows this model of practice that I use, I call it moving design is what I have named the umbrella. But I'll give you an example of three kinds of people who came to the class. One person we arranged for a car to pick up the head of the emergency room at Stroger, which is the hospital, Cook County hospital. And this guy was picked up in a car, came to our class in his [Ohar 00:14:07] blacks with his red tennis shoes. And it was the day after a very violent weekend. This guy showed up shell shocked. You could just see the trauma in his face. He never made eye contact with the students. He was a young guy, maybe 38 or something, had his head down as he spoke. And that was a moving moment. More for me, I think, than anybody else. Rick Valicenti: But it was like, oh my God, here's a first responder who's there and he told us of some of the things that he had seen that have kept him from sleeping. We also had Emory Douglas, who was the communication director, minister of the Black Panthers. So Emory talked about the use of graphic design to move an agenda. And how an unskilled, unfunded initiative of communication design could migrate into the public through the printed ephemera. And he was there to really rally these students. That was fantastic. And then another woman, her name was Cecelia Williams. Cecelia Williams was 28 years old. She is an activist. She's a mother. And in her 28 years she has lost 29 family and friends to gun violence. The first one was her second grade teacher. She came to the class, again, with her version of PTSD. Moved the students and begged the students to do something. Rick Valicenti: Just something. It was in the form of just write the mothers of one of these victims a sympathy card after you hear the headline. Right? That's a simple thing. Or, gather all your cards and one person just take it to the funeral home and leave it in the basket. Simple moment. If you'd like I could share you an example of one of the projects, how we manifested our work at the end. We had lots of installations and interventions around the area, but one in particular was a community based exercise. I showed them an image of logging in Wisconsin. Tree logging. And those images that we're all familiar with are the felled trees in the shallow water, and the guys are standing on the tree trunks. And I said, it wasn't too much earlier before that picture was taken that those were living organisms, but now they're felled to the ground. And let's just imagine that we use the tree trunk as a symbol of those who are fallen. Rick Valicenti: And we've returned them to their vertical position. So that was the form of it. And then we started to talk about, well what could we put on those and what is the form? Are we going to be having tree trunks, that seems wrong. So we ordered lots of very long and very huge custom mailing tubes from a firm in Chicago called Chicago Mailing Tubes. And they made 24 inch, 18 inch and 12 inch mailing tubes of varying lengths. We had them wrapped in white paper and then the students took the grid of Chicago and wrapped each of those trees with black tape to suggest, not replicate, the grid of the city. And then we invited the community to come. And we had the list of the 760 some victims from the previous year to write their first names in whatever black calligraphy we could, whether it was with a Sharpie or whether it was with a brush pen. Rick Valicenti: And to see the community members come together with the students, honoring everybody with the names. And so, okay, that's one facet of it. And we have all these tubes now, and we put end caps on the tubes and the students started to talk about things that they would like to say. If you had to say something to a mother, to a community, to just reduce the pain of gun violence, what might it sound like? Everyone is a hero. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. Whatever those messages were. And they typeset them in a black and white type, in all caps in a Gothic typeface on an orange disk. That orange disk had a hole cut in the middle and there was an orange piece of a cord, nylon cord, that we knotted. And that provided now these tree trunk-like forms to be carried. Rick Valicenti: And so there was a procession around town into the quad of the campus until they... Oh, I'm sorry. When the morning started all of the trunks were there in the center of the quad. That's right. Like the felled tree trunks. And then the procession started. And there were prayers read, and some music played, and some dancers from the music school came and they did a performative dance. A kind of celebration and resurrection, if you will. And then we were all invited to grab the chords and walk the trunks back to the alley where this student had been shot in the back, and return them to their vertical position. And there, I don't know, there we just reflected on it. But it was all quite moving. And we had it filmed and photographed and there was the record of it that could carry on. Rick Valicenti: We thought that could live in other places. The alderman, I'm sorry if I'm going on so long, I'm taking up this whole hour. But the alderman, his name is Harry Osterman, he was also invited to come. And he said, you know what, I would like that to be re-installed in my local park. And sure enough we installed it in his park and complete with all of the rides that a kid would have, the seesaw on the slide. A couple weeks later we get a call from alderman Osterman's office saying, it seems that there has been some violence in the park and your display has been vandalized. In fact, it has been destroyed. It has been cut up. It has been sawed. It has been smashed. Rick Valicenti: And I thought immediately, oh my God, the last thing we need is for Loyola to be a headline. And this good intention to be diminished. So we quickly scrambled and we went and we cleaned up the site and we got a chainsaw, we rented a chainsaw and we cut the things up so that we could transport it. And here what had happened was the other gang from the other side of the street was upset that, right, there had been some franchise in some retaliation of a recent shooting and this was the way that they could mark their territory. So there's lots healing that needs to be done, but design was certainly there to put a mirror to it. To make a good intention. And to certainly reveal the scab or the wound. Jolie Sheffer: Iker, can you give us an example of some of your place specific work? Maybe one particular project. You talked last night about the Marina Towers. I don't know if you want to talk about that or feel free to take that in a different direction. Iker: Yeah. Maybe one thing that I think is more important is structurally I think being in Chicago is what has saved my practice. I think a lot of the opportunities of doing self-initiated projects or projects that I was particularly interested are allowed to happen in Chicago because maybe there is not the pressure that there is in New York or any other places. And I think the idea of having space as a designer and an architect to think about things was something that I found very important and very unique to Chicago. Iker: So I think in a way, the way I was trained and the way I practice right now is different because of being in Chicago. And particularly that project of Marina City, I think it's one that it's very specific to the idea of Chicago about how it reflects how I work and how the projects evolve. And taking one icon of the city and really using that for me as a personal interest in understanding not only the building but understanding the architect, the ambitions of the architect. Why that building was so forward thinking when it opened in the early 60s. And then beginning to understand, how do you capture that value? Iker: How do you tell that story to people who are not architects? What are the tools that you have? And in that case I worked with Andreas Larsson, a photographer, to really begin to capture the diversity of the community. And it was a way of saying, you don't have to read plans in sections and elevations or use models to communicate the value of a building. There are other ways that maybe you can engage. And then through that you can learn some of the other things. Iker: And then that was exhibited, and then it has continued in doing then renovations in the building with Ellipsis Architecture. So always in collaboration with someone else. And the idea there is that, how do you celebrate the spacial qualities of the marina architect, but at the same time making it modern so new people can be living there. So it's an interesting project that has been ongoing for 10 years. And it just summarizes my interest in Bertrand Goldberg. And then as you work with other people, as you evolve or you have other skills, you can really begin to communicate that in different ways. And I can see that he's probably not going to be the last renovation or not the last project in some shape or form that I'm going to do about that building and that architect, which I think it's fantastic. Jolie Sheffer: Well there's something really interesting. You said something about this at your talk about how a project never really ends, it just sort of evolves into some new shape. Right? And clearly that work is an example of that notion that you never really have an end point. And your example too, Rick, went that way. That it takes on a new form and it may be not what you intended or what you imagined, but you have to let that life go on. Iker: I think in the end they are like your own personal obsessions. They are your interest, but it's sometimes it's an interest and sometimes it's an obsession. And they are in the back of your mind and then there is something that happens that it comes forward again, you have the opportunity to do it and then he goes back. But there are things that obviously you have a certain attachment. And then you realize that there are a lot of buildings, in this case, that share some of the ambitions because they were built in the same period. And then you can make a comparison or connect it to other experiences in other cities. So something that is very local and particular you can engage in a conversation with something that is happening in other cities. So I find it very particular, I never let go of those interests. It's just they transform and the outcome is very different. Jolie Sheffer: And Jenn, you mentioned the dots project. Could you talk about what that was and how that was very much play specific to Toledo? Jenn Stucker: Absolutely. So the genesis of that project came from the Arts Commission. I'd previously had done a banner project for them collaboratively with my colleague Amy Fiddler. And at the time I was president of AIG Toledo. And they came to us to say, oh we're having the GAS conference, the Glass Art Society is going to be coming. It's an international conference and maybe you could do some banners again. And I thought about that and really wanted to do something different. And one of the things about banners is the passivity that it has. And you have to be looking up, kind of encountering those. And so I've always been fascinated with maps and the "you are here" dot specifically. When I go to museums, when I go to zoos, wherever I'm going, I look for that and it gives me a sense of place. And the idea of sense of place seemed very important here at this time. Jenn Stucker: They were going to have people coming from all over the world. What is our sense of place? What is Toledo? And knowing that I wanted people to discover the city, and hopefully through walking. And how could I branch out into various places? So thinking about this dot of "you are here" and wanting people to discover the city, came up with this idea of three foot circular dots that had artwork on them created by a hundred different artists in Toledo that were site specific to that place. So working with the Arts Commission, what are the signature places in Toledo? The Toledo public library, the San Marcos Taqueria. It could be anywhere within the Toledo area, Point Place. So they helped curate that list. We talked about signature points, reached out to all of those establishments to say, more or less, congratulations, you're going to be part of this project. So that they would know that there was going to be a dot in front of their place. Jenn Stucker: And then having artists participate in creating those dots. And then on the dots was a QR code, and this was 2012, so it was still kind of cool then. And the idea was that you would scan the dot and you could then get the background information about the place in which you were standing. So you would learn about St. Patrick's Cathedral and get more information. And then to also give honor to the artist that they too would have their artist statement and what inspired the artwork that they created. And so one of the things about public art is that oftentimes if it's a sculpture, it's a very place specific, and only if you go to that place. And it's typically usually one artist. And so what I really liked about this project was that it was a hundred different artists that were participating in this. Jenn Stucker: And it was originally developed for outsiders to discover Toledo. The things that happened secondarily to that were amazing, where I was getting emails from people that had read about it in the newspaper. And one couple in particular said, we've read about this, we went out to start looking for these dots. They collected 25 of them and ended up at San Marcos Taqueria, said they had the best tacos they've ever had, had no idea it was even there. And they said they were looking forward to discovering more of their city. And I was like, that's a mic drop kind of moment. It couldn't have been any better than having people really realize the great things that we have in the community. So the byproduct of that was just, like I said, people seeing the great things that were here. Jenn Stucker: I wish I'd partnered with a cell phone company at the time because we had people that are actually buying cell phones. Because really, the iPhone had only come out, what, 2007 or something. So we're not too far to not everybody having a smartphone. There were people that were going out to buy a smart phone so that they could participate in this project. And there was a scavenger hunt component too, so we had an app for it. And the first hundred people to digitally collect 25 dots got a custom silkscreened edition poster. And so people are posting on Facebook and finding this dot and taking their children out. And I don't know, couldn't ask for a better project. Jolie Sheffer: We're going to take a short break. Thank you for listening to the BG Ideas podcast. Speaker 1: If you are passionate about big ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie Sheffer: Welcome back. Today I'm talking with Rick Valicenti, Iker Gil, and Jenn Stucker about the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in creative fields. One of the things that you both talked about during your visit was the idea that the form of a given project will change, right? And I think Iker, you put it as something like, what's the story I want to tell and what's going to be the best form to tell that story? So how do you go about, what is part of your process and figuring out that answer to that question of the relationship between form and story? Iker: Yeah, I think that came out about the work and the way we structure MAS Context. And then really the first thing is just framing what the topic that we want to do, and then who should be the voices that need to be part of that issue. And sometimes you realize that you need something that sets the ground and it might be more academic. It might be an essay that really gives the shape to that. And then there are many other elements that can compliment, that can contra, that could take another direction that comes in the form of a short essay. And you need to be very aware. I think that a lot of the work that I do is actually paying attention to what other people are doing in their work. So whenever there is an issue that is coming together, I know I already have in my head what's the work that everybody's doing so I can make those connections. Iker: So it's really understanding how they work, what they are trying to say, what's the shape that it can be. And we've had, in the issues, we have long essays, short essays, photo essays, diagrams, poems. But also the people who write, they don't come from all the academic world. And some of the most interesting articles have come from people who are just residents in a building. And they can tell a story much better than an academic that has talk about housing. And one of the examples is we've done this for 10 years, and then the most read article is about Cabrini–Green, about our resident who grew up there and live there. And we walk with him, with Andreas Larsson actually. And we told him just let's walk around the neighborhood and tell us the stories of what are the meaningful places for you here that you grew up here and your families. Iker: And we just took photographs of that and we made captions of that. And it really was a way for us to understand what it means to leave there. Yes, there are some negative things, but there are many other positive things about Cabrini–Green that they all mask under headlines and other things from other people who have no relationship. So yes, there are many people who write about public housing, about Cabrini–Green, but his point of view and the way to talk about it in a very clear, succinct, and just experiential way of there. It was remarkable and it obviously resonated with the rest of the people because it's still the most read article. And it was in issue three, 10 years ago. Rick Valicenti: We should also keep in mind that Cabrini–Green, if we're talking about form, no longer exists. That building complex has been raised and it's gone. Now it's a Target. Is it not? Iker: Yep. It is. So it's like, when you demolish buildings you just don't demolish the actual building, you demolish the structures, the society, the relationship, everything that is built around that. So the void that it's in the city with the destruction of public housing is not just the building, it's all the fabric, the social fabric that got destroyed. And it's very complicated to regain. And unfortunately nothing really... It's happening at the level that it should be done. Rick Valicenti: And at the time you had an idea that it was going to be demolished or did you not know it was going to be demolished at that time? Iker: I did know that it was going to get demolished. Rick Valicenti: Oh, you did. Okay. But in either case you have left behind through the medium of design and this documentation a real important record of what it was like there at that moment. Iker: Yeah. Because in a way, these stories are not just headlines that once the headline leaves the story leaves. These are people who this is the place where they grew up. Where they live. Where they have their family. And then once the buildings are remove, they have to keep going with their life. They have to do other things. So it is really unfair to just live through headline after headline. The city is a much more complex thing. And I think one of the goals that we tried to do with the journal is really, yes, talk about issues that are important. But that there is a legacy that those things are looked in depth, that someone can go back 40 years later and finding that it's still relevant because there's another situation that contextualizes in a new way. Iker: So this is just a series of thinking that evolves and it grows and builds from each other. But I think there needs to be some, like paying attention to all these issues and build from those rather than be surprised by the latest thing that happens. And then once it goes, it just, oh, it's all sold. Jolie Sheffer: Could you talk, Rick, about your own forays into book work, as you describe it, and why that form made sense for some of those projects? Rick Valicenti: The book format I particularly love, I love its linearity but I also love its ability to be opened at any page. I also love its form, its tactile nature, its ability to change voices and change perceptions as you change the tactile experience when your hand touches a page. Change the paper, change the size of it. All of those things are available tools to find engagement in that which is being communicated and that which is being received. So you know, perhaps as a writer, you're able to capture your thinking in your typing. Jolie Sheffer: Absolutely. I don't know what I'm thinking until I'm typing it. Rick Valicenti: That's right. Until after maybe you've read it and say, oh my God, that's really special. But the designer takes that source material, if you will, and either amplifies it or adds harmony to it in a harmonic sound, or adds depth to it, or adds another perspective. And so I'm keenly aware when I'm making a book that it's not a typesetting assignment, that it really is a duet at the most basic level with the content. Whether it's with the author, whether it's with a photographer, whether it's with both. And how can you bring something to life in a way that under different hands or different perspectives or different budgets or whatever, it would sound different. Rick Valicenti: And just like you can do that when you're reading a poem, or a kid reading a kid's book, you know it sounds different than the parent. It happens when people perform songs, other than the person who wrote the song. So I like the book form, but I really like its linearity. And I must admit, when non-linearity was all the rage with interactive media, I was like, what's that about here? What's happening? I'm getting used to it, but that doesn't mean I need to like it. Jolie Sheffer: What about you Jenn? You've published work in book form. What for you is your particular process in thinking about that as a medium? Jenn Stucker: Well most of the publications, I guess probably been a little bit similar, it's been mostly for documentation that this happening happened has been a big part of that. The other part is most of the work has been with recent alums or with students, and so there's something about creating the object that adds that secondary level of, I guess, accomplishment, right? Or achievement, or that this thing... I guess the same thing is it happened. And so if we have evidence of that. I taught at SACI in Florence, Italy, through our program here at BGSU, last summer and we self published a book out of that called the FLRX times 14. Or 14 of us and putting material together to sort of, what was our experience here in Florence? All being American citizens coming into this place and space. And I don't see those students again. Right? They were from University of Michigan, Penn State, Parsons, couple from BGSU, Marshall. And it was a nice moment to capture and make a capsule, I guess, of that experience. Jolie Sheffer: Well, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. It has been a real delight. Our producers for this podcast are Chris Covera and Marco Mendoza with help from Aaron Dufala, Hannah Santiago and Kaleah Ivory. Research assistants for this podcast was provided by ICS undergraduate intern Tay Sauer. This conversation was recorded in the Stanton audio recording studio in the Michael and Sara Kuhlin Center at Bowling Green State University.  

Episode 8 of our Cup of Jo video series features our CMO Michael Chase having a caffeinated conversation with Rick Valicenti, Design Director & Owner of Thirst. In this video, Rick discusses the importance of good design, and how it was the ability to engage and cut through the clutter. Check out the full version on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tSNo-oV7FQ

Rick Valicenti is the founder and design director of Thirst, a communication design practice providing design and immersive environments for high profile clients in the architectural, performing arts, and education communities. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), resides in the permanent collections of the Yale and Columbia University libraries, Denver Art Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and has been published in The New York Times. In this episode, we discuss: How he got started in design. Connecting the dots from seemingly unconnected details about his career, to where he his today. Show notes are available at ObsessedShow.com.

Guest: Richard Valicenti, MD Host: Larry Kaskel, MD What are the reasons a patient should have surgery vs. radiation therapy when trying to cure prostate cancer? When are both treatments recommended? Join oncology radiation specialist Dr. Rick Valicenti speak with host Dr. Larry Kaskel about the most promising treatments for prostate cancer patients.

Rick Valicenti, founder of the Chicago design firm Thirst and author of the book Emotion As Promotion, talks to Debbie Millman.

Rick Valicenti, founder of the Chicago design firm Thirst and author of the book Emotion As Promotion, talks to Debbie Millman.