DHA 2311: Drawing and Illustration, Spring 2008

MCAD LECTURE SERIES - ERIK BRANDT

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
06:30 pm - 07:30 pm

Minneapolis College of Art and Design - MCAD
2501 Stevens Avenue
Auditorium 150
Minneapolis, MN 55404
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MCAD Assistant Professor Erik Brandt discusses the impact of globalization on international visual communication systems with specific focus on cross-cultural "viruses"—non-native graphic and typographic forms that disrupt, overwhelm or otherwise affect native environments. What drives these viruses? Pure petro-cool capitalism, cynical marketing/consumption, or simply the survival of the fittest (and those with the most resources to project)? If the role of the modern worker is to produce, as Mieke Gerritzen has said, not new product but new ways to consume, have we lost anything? Or have we generously simplified and opened our aesthetic needs, broadening them in favor of an appreciation of the democratization of visual communication (YouTube, etc.)?

New to MCAD, Erik Brandt has been active in university education for eight years, most recently teaching typography and visual communication in Doha, Qatar. He began his career as a magazine editor in Japan, and he maintains a small graphic design studio, tÿpøgrafika. Educated internationally, Brandt's research interests focus on issues of globalization that affect and drive the complexities of intercultural visual communication systems.