Mike McQuade “I am obsessed with visual communication, sometimes it’s strange and awkward, other times beautiful and moving, most of the time it’s outrageous and full of insults. Nevertheless, it’s fun to observe and it indirectly informs all of my work.“
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
In 2020, Mathew Sifuentes established 2D3D Magazine as a lighthearted, artist centered magazine—a “breathe of fresh air,� he called it. Today The 2D3D Magazine is considered by many to be the most influential magazine in the world, renowned for its indepth spotlights, artist interviews, and universal comprehension. In addition to the weekly print magazine, 2d3dmag.com has become a daily digital destination for ideas and cultural coverage by staff fellow designers and contributors. In print and online, The 2D3D Magazine stands apart for its commitment to the artist community and students a like, for the quality of its prose, and for its insistence on exciting and moving every reader.
CONTENTS
1-2 BACKGROUND Who is I.M. Pei?
3-6 PROJECTS
Pei’s most famous work
7-8 RECENT WORK
Pei’s most recent projects
SPONSOR
CONTENTS
1-2
BACKGROUND
3-6
PROJECTS
7-8
TODAY
Where’s McQuade today? Mike’s famous projects Who is Mike McQuade?
GRAPHIC ARTIST Mike McQuade is an American graphic artist living in Richmond, VA. His work has graced the pages of The New Yorker, and the covers of major publications such as WIRED & The New York Times Magazine. Mike also runs a small design studio, themcquades.com — working with respected institutions, brands, publishers, and entrepreneurs.
1
BACKGROUND
Mike McQuade admits that as a high school student, he spent too little time studying and too much time skating through the streets of New Jersey and New York City, leaving street art in his wake. Twenty years later, he’s producing illustrations for the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Institutional Investor—respected publications housed in towering buildings not far from where he wielded cans of spray paint. That unlikely journey began after McQuade graduated from high school (with a less than stellar grade point average) and followed his passion for art and illustration to the only school that would accept him: The Art Institute of Philadelphia. There, he learned technical skills, if not the big-picture problem-solving skills that define the best graphic designers. He says he developed those skills both on the job and with help from his wife, Nicole—a professional photographer and graduate of the Tyler School of Art. inpratus antes videndii inari stabunum tenat rena, nin nihicturesil vit. While tackling entry-level positions at a small agency in Philadelphia and Comcast Interactive Media, McQuade spent his evenings and weekends dreaming up his own personal projects, putting together a portfolio that eventually caught the eye of a cre-
ative director at BBDO and resulted in a move to the Chicago agency. But the financial crisis of 2008 led to layoffs, and that left the remaining staff with 80-hour work weeks and sizable branding projects to be tackled in mere hours. So McQuade went across town to Tom, Dick & Harry Creative—a boutique agency that offered an up-close look at the process of acquiring clients and issuing proposals. The company’s leaders were so supportive, they paid McQuade’s full salary while he took a months-long leave of absence to care for his ailing mother, who would succumb to cancer. “They took care of me, and in a way that is pretty rare nowadays,” says McQuade. “But as I received more inquiries into my freelance work, and I had the opportunity to work on some really interesting projects, the full-time work started to feel like it was getting in the way. I knew going out on my own would be tough the first year, but watching someone you love pass in front of you gives you a different perspective on what you should be doing with your time. Ultimately, I wanted that bigger challenge.
2
PROJECTS 3
For his riff on the “Visible Man,” produced for a Fortune article about doctors leveraging medical data to help patients, McQuade made some sketches, scanned in an old Dover medical illustration, and sampled the colors using Photoshop. He then masked out portions of the image, added shadows to convey depth, and spent some time using layers to to push and pull the components until the composition felt just right.
McQuade’s initial sketches
The Atlantic - Poland Far-right Problem AD - Paul Spella
4
McQuade uses Adobe Photoshop CC throughout his process, to slice up images, to make grids, and to organize hundreds of layers created using imagery from old magazines. He often starts by scanning photos into an old HP printer, removing backgrounds or adding color, and then applying textures from a library that he’s created over the years. He also uses Adobe Illustrator CC to build icons and symbols; then he brings them into Photoshop for placement.
5
History of the FBI & White House AD - Matt Willey
Nike - LeBron World Tour AD - Jason Sfetko
6
TODAY 7
Harvard Business Review - Humans As Social Media Currency
These days, he’s moving into the realm of collages with a 3D look. When Berenberg 10, a British financial publication, commissioned an illustration focused on psychological responses to a shift in the global stock market, McQuade borrowed a phrenology bust from a friend and spent hours in Photoshop, replacing the labeled sections of the brain with stock-ticker data. When Oregon Humanities printed a piece debating the use of trigger warnings on important college literature, McQuade’s solution featured a book wrapped in caution tape that seems to come off the page. Even simpler illustrations like those for the New York Times and Johns Hopkins Magazine appear to be actual multimedia pieces rather than creations composed entirely of pixels.
McQuade is currently working in a 3D style, as with these illustrations for Berenberg 10 (the bust) and Oregon Humanities (the book with caution tape).
8
For more than 60 years, Pei was one of the world’s most sought-after architects and has handled a wide range of commercial, government and cultural projects. In the early decades of the 21st century, his firm turned much of its energies to projects abroad, marrying Pei’s stark geometry with regional architectural traditions. One such building is the Museum of Islamic Art, which opened in 2009, an ethereal mix of sharp cubes punctuated by traditional Islamic arches.
8
Pei continued to design impressive buildings during the 1990s and early 2000s, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the Nascar Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
RECENT WORK
HALL OF WITNESS The building employs construction methods from the industrial past, and old-fashioned techniques are clearly visible in the Hall of Witness.
HALL OF REMEMBRANCE Situated in the hexagonal structure that overlooks Eisenhower Plaza, the Hall of Remembrance is a simple, solemn space designed for public ceremonies and individual reflection.
7
6
In the late 1980s, Pei also began work on revitalizing Paris’s Louvre museum. Originally sparking controversy for its dissonantly stark modernism, the entrance he created for the historic museum, has since become one of the most iconic representations of his work. Pei’s had visitors descend underground into the museum through a large glass pyramid, which took them to a new entry hub below the existing courtyard.
5
Following the dedication of the Kennedy library, Pei continued to create striking buildings around the world, including the west wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1980) and the Fragrant Hill Hotel in China (1983). His Mesa Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, with its abstracted, blocky forms, took inspiration from the Southwest landscape, in particular nearby Anasazi Indian villages carved into the earth at Mesa Verde National Park. The East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, opened in 1978, is considered one of his masterpieces of geometric precision, famous for its razor-sharp edge that visitors love to touch.
4
In the years following the death of President John F. Kennedy, Pei met with his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, on the designs for his presidential library. The project, built in Dorchester, Massachusetts, met several challenges over the years, including a change in location. Completed in 1979, the library is a nine-story modern structure that marries a starkly angled concrete tower with a glass-gridded pavilion. Pei also designed a later addition to the site.
PROJECTS 3
I. M. Pei was born in China on April 26, 1917. In 1935 he began studying architecture in the United States and eventually earned his B.A. from MIT and his M.A. from Harvard. After starting his own architectural firm in 1955, Pei went on to design such well-known structures as the Kennedy library, a wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the glass pyramid at the Louvre, the Museum of Islamic Art and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Pei left his mark with innovative structures around the world—elegant geometries of stone, concrete, glass and steel that earned him countless architecture honors throughout his long and storied career.
BACKGROUND
sign movement, a crucible for modern architecture, where decorative elements were eschewed under the mantra of “form follows function.” During World War II, Pei took a break from his education to work for the National Defense Research Committee. In 1944, he returned to Harvard and earned his master’s degree in architecture two years later. Around this time, Pei also worked an assistant professor at the university.
Early Life Born Ieoh Ming Pei on April 26, 1917, in Canton, Guangzhou, China, Pei traveled to the United States at age 17, initially attending the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1940. Pei soon continued his studies at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. There, he had the opportunity to study with German architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus de-
2
ARCHITECT I. M. Pei was one of the most renowned architects of the 20th and early 21st centuries, known for crisp geometric designs that married elegance and technology. Signature projects include the Louvre Pyramid and the National Gallery of Art’s East Wing.
1
CONTENTS
1-2 BACKGROUND Who is I.M. Pei?
3-6 PROJECTS
Pei’s most famous work
7-8 RECENT WORK
Pei’s most recent projects
SPONSOR
CONTENTS
1-2
BACKGROUND
3-6
PROJECTS
7-8
TODAY
Where’s McQuade today? Mike’s famous projects Who is Mike McQuade?
In 2020, Mathew Sifuentes established 2D3D Magazine as a lighthearted, artist centered magazine—a “breathe of fresh air,� he called it. Today The 2D3D Magazine is considered by many to be the most influential magazine in the world, renowned for its indepth spotlights, artist interviews, and universal comprehension. In addition to the weekly print magazine, 2d3dmag.com has become a daily digital destination for ideas and cultural coverage by staff fellow designers and contributors. In print and online, The 2D3D Magazine stands apart for its commitment to the artist community and students a like, for the quality of its prose, and for its insistence on exciting and moving every reader.
I.M. Pei
April 26, 1917 - May 16, 2019
“I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity.”
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT