Design History as a Model for Contemporary Practice
with
Alexander Tochilovsky
Does design history really impact what designers do or make today? Should it? My answer is an emphatic yes—just not in the way we've been taught in design schools. This lecture will closely analyze examples of work by designers, such as Herb Lubalin and Karl Gerstner, through the lens of their relevance to contemporary practice. Design history is rich with examples of what one can make, but it also has lessons on how to be a designer. The lecture will be framed from my perspective as a curator of a design archive, as an educator, a historian, and most importantly, as a graphic designer.
The Herb Lubalin Lectures are recorded and made available here and on Vimeo with the generous support of Adobe.
About Alexander Tochilovsky
Alexander Tochilovsky is a graphic designer, typographer, curator, and teacher, with 20+ years of professional design experience, and 15+ years of teaching. Born in Odesa, Ukraine, he graduated with a BFA from The Cooper Union, and holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is currently the Curator of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography. In 2009 he co-curated the exhibition “Lubalin Now,” and has since curated several other exhibitions including: “Appetite”, “Pharma”, “Image of the Studio”, “Thirty”, “Swiss Style Now”, and “We Dissent”. Alexander has taught typography and graphic design at the Cooper Union, Fordham University, City College, and SUNY Purchase. He also teaches the history of typeface design at Type@Cooper, the post-graduate certificate program he co-founded in 2010. He is co-director of the annual Typographics conference and created the Lubalin100.com, and Flat File web projects for the Lubalin Center.