![]() The Vignelli Center is located in Booth Hall | |
Parent institution | Rochester Institute of Technology |
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Established | September 16, 2010 |
Director | Josh Owen |
Key people | Jennifer Whitlock (archivist) |
Location | , , U.S. |
Website | rit.edu/vignellicenter |
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The Vignelli Center for Design Studies, established in 2010, is a college of design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Named after the New York City based Italian designers, Massimo and Lella Vignelli, this 15,500 square foot facility also holds the archives of their work as Vignelli Associates. [1]
The Vignelli Center for Design was created after Massimo and Lella Vignelli decided, in 2008, to donate the entire archive of their design work to Rochester Institute of Technology. A groundbreaking event took place on October 7, 2008, [2] and the grand opening was held on September 16, 2010. [3]
Programs offered at the Vignelli Center for Design include graphic design, industrial design, interior design, new media design and imaging and computer graphics design. The college also has international exchange programs with the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau, Germany, and in Copenhagen, Denmark. [3]
The Vignelli Collection is an archive of all of the couple's work over the past 50 years, including their ventures into graphic programs, publication design and packaging, transportation design, furniture, product, and exhibition design, jewelry, silverware, and even clothing. [4]
Other than the Vignelli collection, the college also includes work from Unimark International (where the Vignellis worked prior to starting their own firm), and boasts 35 collections of modernist graphic designers such as Lester Beall, Will Burtin, Cipe Pineles, William Golden and Alvin Lustig, which the university had begun to collect from the mid-1980s. [5]
While the archives are primarily for the research and study purposes, they are also open for public viewing. [4]
Hermann Zapf was a German type designer and calligrapher who lived in Darmstadt, Germany. He was married to the calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse. Typefaces he designed include Palatino, Optima, and Zapfino. He is considered one of the greatest type designers of all time.
Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private research university in the town of Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university was founded in 1829 and is the tenth largest private university in the United States in terms of full-time students. It is internationally known for its science, computer, engineering, and art programs, as well as for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a leading deaf-education institution that provides educational opportunities to more than 1000 deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
Emigre, Inc., doing business as Emigre Fonts, is a digital type foundry based in Berkeley, California, that was founded in 1985 by husband-and-wife team Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko. The type foundry grew out of Emigre magazine, a publication founded by VanderLans and two Dutch friends who met in San Francisco, CA in 1984. Note that unlike the word émigré, Emigre is officially spelled without accents.
Burton Kramer is a Canadian graphic designer and artist who lives and works in Toronto.
The National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) is the first and largest technological college in the world for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. As one of nine colleges within the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York, NTID provides academic programs, access, ASL in-class interpreters and support services—including on-site audiological, speech-language, and cochlear implant support. As of fall quarter 2012, NTID encompasses just under 10% of RIT's enrollment, 1259 students. Roughly 775 deaf and hard of hearing students are cross-registered into another RIT college's program with support from NTID.
Massimo Vignelli was an Italian designer who worked in a number of areas including packaging, houseware, furniture, public signage, and showroom design. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his wife, Lella. His motto was, "If you can design one thing, you can design everything," which the broad range of his work reflects.
Michael Bierut is a graphic designer, design critic and educator, who has been a partner at design firm Pentagram since 1990. He designed the logo for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse was a German book-binder, calligrapher and typographer.
Lorraine Wild is a Canadian-born American graphic designer, writer, art historian, and teacher. She is an AIGA Medalist and principal of Green Dragon Office, a design firm that focuses on collaborative work with artists, architects, curators, editors and publishers. Wild is based in Los Angeles, California.
Rochester Institute of Technology of Dubai is a satellite campus of Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, USA, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The college is located in the Dubai Silicon Oasis and started offering part-time graduate courses in Fall 2008. In 2009, the university began its full-time graduate program. RIT Dubai's first graduating class was in 2010, with the graduation ceremony taking place in Rochester, NY. In 2010, a full-time undergraduate program was started as part of the university's planned expansion. In the fall of 2011, RIT Dubai moved its campus to a new premises to accommodate the growing student body. By 2019, RIT plans to expand the campus to 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) to provide facilities for 4,000 students.
Josh Owen is an American industrial designer, educator, and author. He is the president of his eponymous design studio, Josh Owen LLC and is a Distinguished Professor and Director of Industrial Design at The Rochester Institute of Technology.
Unimark International was an international design firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded in 1965 by seven partners: Ralph Eckerstrom, Lella and Massimo Vignelli, Bob Noorda, James Fogelman, Wally Gutches, and Larry Klein. Although they were not listed as founding partners, Jay Doblin and Robert Moldafsky joined the new firm almost immediately. Initially, Unimark had three offices: Chicago, Milan and New York. The American branches were founded by Vignelli and his wife Lella, who subsequently founded Vignelli Associates. Additional offices opened around the world, but these were often short-lived as the client base and funding varied, and as American and global economic issues influenced the viability of each office.
Katherine McCoy is an American graphic designer and educator, best known for her work as the co-chair of the graduate Design program for Cranbrook Academy of Art.
The Gene Polisseni Center is an ice arena on the Rochester Institute of Technology campus in Henrietta, New York. Ground was broken for the project on October 19, 2012, and the arena was officially dedicated on September 18, 2014.
Lella Vignelli was an Italian architect, designer, and businesswomen. She collaborated closely throughout much of her life with her husband Massimo Vignelli, with whom she founded Vignelli Associates in 1971. She was known for the "spare, elegant style" of her architectural and industrial design work, as well as her management skills and entrepreneurial expertise. She is famously quoted as saying that, "If you do it right, it will last forever."
Jacqueline S. Casey was a graphic designer best known for the posters she created for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While practicing a functional Modernism, Jacqueline S. Casey was a graphic designer in the Office of Publications from 1955 to 1989 and assigned the position as director in 1972. In discussing her design, Casey stated, "My work combines two cultures: The American interest in visual metaphor on the one hand, and the Swiss fascination with planning, fastidiousness, and control over technical execution on the other."
The Cary Graphic Arts Collection is a library and archive of books, type specimens, manuscripts, documents, and artifacts related to the history of graphical communication. Located in Wallace Library at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), in Henrietta, New York, the Cary Collection contains literate artifacts as old as cuneiform tablets and as recent as computer tablets and e-books, in all comprising some 40,000 volumes in addition to manuscripts, correspondence, printing types and traditional letterpress printing equipment.
Louis Danziger is an American graphic designer and design educator. He is most strongly associated with the late modern movement in graphic design, and with a community of designers from various disciplines working in Southern California in the mid-twentieth century. He is noted for his iconoclastic approach to design, and for introducing the principles of European constructivism to the American advertising vernacular.
Rob Roy Kelly was a design educator who established multiple design programs in the formative years of graphic design education at art schools and universities. Known as a collector and scholar of wood type, Mr. Kelly authored American Wood Type, 1828–1900 (1969). His comprehensive wood type collection now resides at the University of Texas.
Vignelli Associates was a design firm co-founded and run by Massimo and Lella Vignelli in New York City, from 1971 until 2014. They worked firmly within the modernist tradition, stressing simplicity by using basic geometric shapes and a limited range of typefaces. Their design work, encompassing graphic design, branding and corporate identity, architecture and interiors, and industrial design is considered among the most influential of the 20th century.