Friday, March 27, 2009

a night with AIGA...

The other night I attended an AIGA talk in Philly featuring Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich. It's not often that AIGA features a book cover designer so I was quite happy to go. Already very familiar with Roberto's work, I've long been a admirer, but had an especially good time seeing not only his new work, but also plenty of "shelved" comps...always interesting to see.

No one does type like Roberto. He has an intuitive sensibility about type as image. While some designers limit their typefaces to a few, there is a huge range in Roberto's typography--it is simply beautiful and never appears as an afterthought. And what a relief to see some beautiful work. What happened to beauty? While I think there is a lot of great work today, somehow beauty is too seldom a part of the equation anymore. Modern, engaging, fresh, bold, conceptual, yes, but beautiful...well, not always. Somehow beauty has been relegated to boring.

Roberto's work fills both those categories of being modern, fresh AND beautiful and it was wonderful to see.

Maybe in part because this was my first time being on my own for more than 2 hours since my daughter was born, but attending this talk was a pretty great way to spend an evening.

1 comment:

jonathan said...

Did you feel guilty? It's hard (for me) to go to events of my interests and leave the family at home. It's become easier, but when our was a baby it was very difficult.

Roberto hasn't given a talk in NYC in a few years. Since he was Harper. Book cover designers just don't present often.

Glad you got out and had a great time!