I went to an AIGA workshop this morning at the Santa Fe Complex. The topic was “Expiramentations in Typography”and it was a kind of photographic typographic scavenger hunt for letterforms around the rail yard area. Each of us had to look for and photograph the 3 letter forms, which we drew from a pile on the table, around town. Some of the replicas people found were surprisingly identical in font, color and composition. We shared everyone’s around the table in conclusion.
In addition, we were asked to form a chosen word through photography. The project example given was writing the word orange with a bunches of oranges in the supermarket and photographing the result. As a group, we decided the word of our workshop would be “inspire”. These assignments all sounded quite familiar to me and off I went feeling like I was doing my MFA coursework again. I found the letters inspire in shadows. Shadows of grass stalks and bike parts and fence posts. I could almost have done the entire word in bike parts and would have had there been time or if my piece had been for a bike company.
Afterwards, I migrated to a cafe with a few of the other participants. One woman I talked to a lot was from Northern Ireland, has operated a successful graphic design studio in London, sustains herself on design work in Santa Fe now and satisfies herself with sculpture and art work. It was great to talk to them all. We bounced around the idea of starting a design collaborative studio in Santa Fe. How necessary this is! And members could be any kind of designers, not just graphic designers. There are so many freelance designers in Santa Fe. It would be fantastic to share a space, maybe one of those modern lofts over on Second Street. We could all share ownership of the building and work stations, help each other out, bring clients in, collaborate on fitting projects, pass along work to others who would be better at it or when we were swamped. There would be a healthy competitiveness and motivation, but no possessiveness. I want to be involved in creating such a design co-op and I think it will happen! It would also allow designers to have a base to come and return to when they need to travel and recharge (me!). I don’t know why, but I feel incredibly idealistic and full of ideas today. A chandelier suspended from the ceiling of the world.
Oh, and I found some awesome awesome shoes on sale today during my “inspire” search! There was a 70% off side-walk sale at “On Your Feet” and I could not resist Fly London shoes made in Portugal, regularly $163 on sale only for today for $52, and so comfortable and different! Look, see:
