Outside the Box of Design
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WHO IS
essica Walsh is somewhat a child prodigy of design. Her parents own a software company, and at 11 years old she was already working on their logo. Around this time she also learned coding and developed her own website as a resource to teach HTML and CSS to other kids, running Google Ads on her site. In a 2016 interview with Print Magazine she says the moment she started getting ad revenue checks she realized, “Oh shit, I can make money doing my
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hobby.” This gave her the confidence to pursue design as a financially secure field. After high school Walsh was set on design, but unsure whether to keep coding or take a more hands on approach though formal art school education. In a 2012 interview with The Great Discontent she says, “I’ve always been a gut instinct person and my gut told me to go to RISD, so that’s where I ended up. RISD puts a lot of focus on working with your hands, which was a shock for me coming from a digital background where I was glued to my computer 24/7.” This is an
5 important piece of the puzzle for Walsh, as her merging hand and digitally crafted elements are a trademark of her “style”. After college, Walsh moved to New York City. Here she would intern with Paula Scher at Pentagram, who would help her get a job at Print Magazine as associate art director. Eventually, Walsh became discontent, and wanted to be working in a design studio with her hand in many different projects and brands. This prompted an email to Stefan Sagmeister, a well known New York based designer whom Jessica greatly admired for the “emotional quality” of his work. Sagmeister
agreed to meet with her. “I didn’t go there thinking it was a job interview— I didn’t even think it was possible to work with him. But he looked through my book and was like, ‘Before you do that, let’s try working on a few projects together and see if it works out.” They worked together for two years until Walsh become discontent once again and wanted to branch out with her own studio. Unwilling to lose her they negotiated a partnership and the rest is... Sagmeister & Walsh!
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CLIENT WORK Aizone and Aishti favorite client of Walsh’s because they allow lots of creative freedom (and had reasonable budgets, too!) “You would think that having no constraints would be a dream, but in reality, it’s much harder to come up with a solution when there are no boundaries or guidelines, I think creativity thrives off constraints. When I have limitations, it does make it much better. So when I’m given open briefs, I end up making my own constraints and rules up, so that it can help guide me to my concept.” Aizone and Aishti are department stores in the Middle East. Aizone is geared toward a younger crowed, and Aishti is a higher end store.
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Fugue “Sagmeister & Walsh has created an elegant visual identity for Fugue, a software product that creates cloud infrastructures. The dynamic system is designed to convey “lineage and humanity” without relying on traditional tech imagery, and features an animated logo and graphic patterns generated in response to user data…” – creativereview.co.uk
Frooti (Frooti is the largest and oldest brand of mango juice in India) “we designed Frooti’s campaigns to be very simple and graphic with bold colors. Looking at the heavily commercial and busy ad landscape, we loved the idea of creating images that had sweetness or humor. These graphics will be posted all over the country on billboards, above shops, and painted on the sides of buildings. Whether its a mango hula hooping, a couple kissing behind a mango sunset, or a group of friends riding down a mango blimp, we tried to create imagery that could make people smile.”
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CLIENT WORK The Jewish Museum agmeister & Walsh has designed a new visual identity for New York’s Jewish Museum based on the same ancient geometry as the Star of David. The museum was founded in 1904 and houses over 30,000 artifacts. The organization recently appointed a new director and is keen to reach a wider audience, so asked the studio to create a more contemporary identity. The new system has been applied to merchandise, communications, stationery and a new interactive website due to launch next month. “Claudia Gould, the new director, approached us to help re-brand the museum in an engaging, fresh and unexpected way that could appeal to their current visitors and help attract a wider audience” – creativereview.co.uk
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The art world loves it.
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PERSONAL WORK 40 Days of Dating hen New York–based graphic designers and long-time friends Timothy Goodman and Jessica Walsh found themselves single at the same time, they decided to try an experiment. The old adage says that it takes 40 days to change a habit—could the same be said for love? So they agreed to date each other for 40 days, record their experiences in questionnaires, photographs, videos, texts, and artworks, and post the material on a website they would create for this purpose. 40 Days of Dating: An Experiment is a beautifully designed, expanded look at the experiment and the results, including a great deal of material that never made it onto the site, such as who they were as friends and individuals before the 40 days and who they have become since. – Jessica Walsh, Behance
Staff Pictures Continuing the tradition of nudity favored by Sagmeister, when their staff grew beyond himself, Jessica, and an Intern, they employed the strategy of getting naked to show off their team once again, and again....
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Welcome Announcement agmeister, no stranger to getting naked in the name of design, sent out a similar card when he started his own studio: naked at his old place of employment next to the same pose in his own place. To announce Walsh’s partnership, the same style was proposed to use nudity as a constant to highlight the difference. “I was sheepish about it,” Sagmeister says. “I suggested we could do it with her dressed really conservatively but she said why can’t I be naked?” Walsh confirms that having them both naked was her idea: “I said ‘why am I the conservative one?”
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PERSONAL WORK 12 Kinds of Kindness hat if someone created a 12-step program for selfishness, a course of action for turning egocentrism on its head? This is the idea behind 12 Kinds of Kindness, the latest project by designers Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman. If reality programming has proven anything, it is that audiences possess a goodly appetite for voyeuristic, self-effacing, and redemptive entertainment. Like 40 Days, 12 Kinds of Kindness feeds that hunger by combining clever graphic design, audience participation, and more than a little exhibitionism, all in the name of narrative. – Steven Heller, wired.comx
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The art world hates it.
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hat I learned is that a lot of designers like to keep design in this box of what design is, and anyone who tries to do something outside of that box, it’s really easy to critique them. So we got a lot of hate from designers I actually really admire in the industry who thought it was wrong that we were putting our personal stories into design... A lot of graphic designers want to remove themselves. Which is fine. Some people’s style
doesn’t lend itself to putting your personal voice in it, and certainly not in every client project is that appropriate to do. But that doesn’t mean as designers we can’t do that. Design is just a tool like writing is a tool, to express yourself. [talking about 40 Days of Dating] The funny thing is, I’m less proud of the content and more proud of the realization that design can touch a mass audience like that.
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CAPTIONS Cover ◼ Aishti “By the Sea” campaign, 2015 Page 3 ◼ AGDA - Jessica Walsh / Melbourne
Page 10 ◼ Postcard announcing Walsh’s partnership with
◼ Quotes On Shit, teacup, Sept. 2014 ◼ Quotes On Shit, bowling pins, Oct. 2014 Page 4 ◼ Screenshot from LG’s “Creativity
Page 11 ◼ Illustration for 12 Kinds of Kindness
Keynote Presentation announcement
Unbound” video with Jessica Walsh
Sagmeister, May 2012
◼ Astronaut staff picture, May 2013 ◼ Staff picture w/ flag, May 2016 by Leah Schmidt
◼ Website Screenshot, Step 3 ◼ Illustration for 12 Kinds of Kindness by Leah Schmidt
◼ Website Screenshot, Step 2
Page 5 ◼ Aishti Fall/Winter ad campaign, 2010 and 2012 Page 15 ◼ Aizone F/W ad campaign, 2012 and 2015 ◼ Photo by Mario De Armas for thegreatdiscontent.com Page 6 ◼ Frooti rebrand ad campaign, 2015 (two Endpapers billboard images) ◼ Boot photos shot for Details Magazine, 2011 ◼ Fugue Identity system, 2015 ◼ Note from 40 Days of Dating book, 2015 ◼ Fugue branded accessories, 2015 ◼ Aizone Identity, 2011 Page 7 ◼ Quotes on Shit, Wine Glass, Sept. 2014 ◼ The Jewish Museum gift bags and ◼ Painted models from Aizone 2012 campaigns wrap, 2014 ◼ Aishti Spring/Summer ad campaign, 2013 ◼ Geometric pattern based on star ◼ Sagmeister for Barney’s (photo by S. Hamza) of David developed for the Jewish ◼ 40 Days of Dating, dust cover, 2015 Museum identity. ◼ Jessica Walsh Self Identity, early 2010 ◼ Integrated website design for the ◼ RISD “Shared Voices” promo photo, 2012 Jewish museum. ◼ Font developed for the Jewish Museum ◼ The Borealis Wind Quintet album cover, 2011 Identity. ◼ Quotes on Shit, Bookends, Sept. 2014 ◼ Painted model for Aizone 2012 campaign Page 9 ◼ 40 Days of Dating, spread, 2015 ◼ Front/Back book covers, released ◼ Aishti Identity, 2011 January 2015 ◼ Pins Won’t Save the World, A World Troll ◼ Responsive website where 40 Days project ◼ Painted model for Aizone 2012 campaign was first documented, beginning March 2013. ◼ Book and additional marketing accessories ◼ Hand lettered quote posted on Instagram ◼ Walsh B&W portrait, sagmeisterwalsh.com
Designed and written by Kristen DeVico Composed in Helvetica Neue, typefaces designed by Stemple Type Foundry in 1983. Printed from a Toshiba e studio printer onto Hammermill 80lb white paper. Copyright Š 2017 Kristen DeVico, Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art