Interview: Kevin O'Callaghan

I'm currently the "writer in residence" for The School of Visual Art's (SVA) graphic design department blog. Luckily, I managed to work with a few excellent people who allow me a lot of freedom, and we came up with the idea of interviewing faculty members.

The GDAD Interview series aims to explore the award-winning graphic design and advertising faculty. Each interview reveals the history of the teacher, the classes they teach, if they're working on any special group projects, and their perspective on creativity, learning, and art.

Photographer: Roza Gazarian

Kevin O'Callaghan is an iconic three-dimensional designer and instructor at SVA. His clients include MTV, Nickelodeon, Warner Brothers Records, and ABC Pictures. Joey Cofone, a student in the graphic design program, spoke with him about why he chose chess, how he inspires his students, and what he expects them to get from his class.

The SVA Chess exhibit has been put together by Kevin O'Callaghan's well renown three-dimensional design class. Students spent a semester conceptualizing, sketching, and building their pieces. The exhibit was shown at the School of Visual Arts main building, 209 E. 23rd St.

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Joey Cofone: For your third year class project, why did you choose a chess set?

Kevin O'Callaghan: Chess has always intrigued me because of the fact that there's a hierarchy. It's a little war—it's kind of violent. As a kid I was very into conflict. There are these pawns up in the front and they take all the abuse, the king is kind of back there, safe. I wanted to explore the concept of hierarchy in the form of other objects. Basically, if you were making a giant chess set out of automobiles, the pawns would be Yugos (don't know what a Yugo is, you gotta see this), the kings would be Rolls Royces.

JC: Every piece in the show is pretty amazing, and I don't know, maybe you're hiding the bad ones [laughs], but every single piece is excellent. How do you get such high quality work from your students.?

KO: Right, they're all good. If you look real closely you'll see the craft is better on some than others, but in my class we deal with the problem conceptually first. The craft is something that just kind of comes along as the year goes on, some people excel better than others, but I don't look at that. I look at the solutions conceptually.

JC: They're all pretty creative and unique. How do you get your students to push the concepts so well?

KO: They're all pretty different from each other, which always amazes me, because with thirty-something students you'd think there would be some overlap. I think the key to my class is that we work as a group. So when they bring in sketches, we put them up on the wall and critique them as a class. It isn't just me passing judgment. I have a say in it, of course, because I'm the instructor, but it's important that we work together. We all vote on each student's project. It's a good example of what life is about, to be out there in the real world without much of a say about what you have to produce. As a good designer we have to deal with the hand that we're dealt.

JC: Are there any rules to your projects? I see that some of the chess boards aren't functional pieces; does this matter to you?

KO: Not functional in what respect?

JC: As in you can't play chess with some as easily, if at all, as you can with others.

KO: It's nice if the pieces are functional, but it isn't mandatory. These are designers, not engineers, and I always stress that. The concept is the most important aspect of the project, and construction facilitates it. The underlying theme of my class is product design. As far as actually functioning correctly, product designers don't necessarily have to produce something that's been engineered. Concept is first, building is second, and engineering is third.

JC: Okay, that makes sense. They're pieces of art.

KO: All of my projects are geared toward letting students find a solution from many directions, whether they're into illustration, set design, package design, and so on. It's about finding your niche and going in that direction. Then you can make decisions, find out what you what to do in your life. These decisions develop through working on these assignments, if that makes sense.

JC: It does; it's about how we can find solutions that express ourselves and our preferences, and still solve the problem.

KO: Right. Exactly. And that makes for a better designer, in general, if you can go in your own direction within the restrictions of the problem. My mission is to help students find their direction. I find that a lot of students haven't decided a direction by their third year, and I try to solidify that.

JC: It looks like you're doing just that. Thanks, Kevin.

KO: You're welcome. Thank you.

[You can check out the original post here.]

Interview: John Ruggeri

I'm currently the "writer in residence" for The School of Visual Art's (SVA) graphic design department blog. Luckily, I managed to work with a few excellent people who allow me a lot of freedom, and we came up with the idea of interviewing faculty members.

The GDAD Interview series aims to explore the award-winning graphic design and advertising faculty. Each interview reveals the history of the teacher, the classes they teach, if they're working on any special group projects, and their perspective on creativity, learning, and art.

John Ruggeri has been teaching in nearly every undergraduate department at SVA for more than 25 years, and in that time he has been an influential figure for many of the students who have taken his classes. Joey Cofone, a student in the graphic design program, spoke with him about his history with drawing, how he engages graphic design students, and more.

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Joey Cofone: How did you start drawing? What led you to where you are now, not so much in terms of teaching, but as an artist.

John Ruggeri: I think the fact that I was so quiet and shy, as far as I can go back. I remember spending a lot of time with my mother, so I was around a lot of adults. I was extremely watchful, just interested in how people gesticulated, their tone of voice, what they wore, how they smoked and held a cigarette. All this was fascinating to me. I found myself always with a pencil trying to copy what these people looked like. I didn't have much interest in going out of the four walls; I liked being indoors. I think that wanting to be protected, and feeling that I was good at something, even at four years old, drove me.

JC: Do you remember at what point you said, "This is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life"?

JR: Four years old.

JC: Really? You loved it that much?

JR: This is totally true: Whenever someone mirrors a trait in you, that's what you're good at. My caretakers, my mother, my father, my grandparents—everyone whoever came into my sphere—always praised my drawings. It went without saying that my identity was being formed at four. The outside world did that to me, really, when you think about it. As individual as we think we are, the outside world is constantly impacting us, and it impacted me in a positive way. So I would say, all my life I knew who I was on that front. I'm John, the artist. There was never a question.

JC: You're given the task of taking these graphic designers, which, when I started, I remember someone telling me, "It's a weird thing, but most graphic designers don't like to draw." I know that there are many that do, but it seems to be true that the general feeling I get from graphic designers is that a lot of us don't enjoy drawing. With this in mind, how do you approach it in a way that engages these designers?

JR: Graphic designers, to me, seem very savvy. They come to me already having an understanding of the world, far more involved in the world than illustrators. On that front, they're more receptive. When they come into a drawing class they have nothing to lose, whereas an illustrator, cartooning, or fine art major comes into the classroom being self-protected. They don't want to let go of how they are. The graphic design students that I've had in the last decade, with this whole idea of breaking down everything in the world into a shape, they're much more open to that idea, to look at the world as if you were an alien.

JC: Would you say that graphic designers lean towards the conceptual, then?

JR: Yes, conceptual and I think you're more free because you have nothing to lose. You come into the class understanding the idea of me speaking graphics. You know, "the figure is a graphic." Everything you're looking at is broken down into positive, negative, vertical, horizontal, diagonal—all of that—and it's relating to you.

JC: There was a time a friend of mine came to visit your class, a non-artist. You happened to give a lecture that day on how we need to draw what we see, not what we think we see. I suppose, as visual artists, we've heard that before and understand where it's coming from, but I think we may forget how impactful that is, because my friend was blown away. He couldn't stop talking about it for days. How do you try to break that barrier down when you're teaching?

JR: It's complex, but it's not so complex. You have to split your attention down the middle, and give half of it to your ordinary momentum, which is what you're presently doing. For example, right now, we're talking and I'm aware of what I'm saying, that I'm looking into your eyes. As I'm speaking, I have to make an effort to also look at the your shape as some kind of abstraction, and not lose what I'm seeing. It's difficult to combine thinking and looking. What happens is, language is constantly moving in your head, it's the barrier you're talking about. Like you're nodding your head now, it's automatic, what's going on in that head of yours is chatter. It's making some kind of a critique.

JC: I'm labeling everything.

JR: Me too, as I'm speaking. Now it's not necessarily negative, it just means we have a commentary running all the time. When you become aware that that's going on all of a sudden there's a shift, and your associations calm down a bit. Words have taken a back seat. You can start seeing almost one step removed.

JC: So it goes from what we see to our hands without some sort of mental labeling and translation.

JR: Yes! That's it, very clearly.

JC: One last question. You teach a class where you take students all over New York City and draw. If you could take your class anywhere in the world, where would you go?

JR: I have no interest in travel. Going to another country does not interest me at all, I can find everything I need in this room. I must say, I feel this strongly, in my bedroom there's a crack that, no matter how much I paint the room, eventually it comes up. I prefer it to a sunset. I love the tension, the vertical of the door, I love the hinge in relation to it. [Points to a small pock mark in the desk.] If I didn't bring this to your attention, this poor soul would live in eternity never being seen. This little imperfection, we just validated it.

JC: That's beautiful. And I don't know about you, but when I see something like that I wonder how it got there. What's the story behind it? It makes it even more beautiful.

JR: Yes! I totally understand that.

JC: Thanks, John.

JR: Thank you.

[You can check out the original post here.]

Interview: Laina Leckie

I'm currently the "writer in residence" for The School of Visual Art's (SVA) graphic design department blog. Luckily, I managed to work with a few excellent people who allow me a lot of freedom, and we came up with the idea of interviewing faculty members.

The GDAD Interview series aims to explore the award-winning graphic design and advertising faculty. Each interview reveals the history of the teacher, the classes they teach, if they're working on any special group projects, and their perspective on creativity, learning, and art.

Laina Leckie, also a freelancer in the advertising and publishing fields, has taught many classes at SVA for nearly 20 years. Joey Cofone, a student in the graphic design program, spoke with her about teaching, process, and silly wildlife.

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Joey Cofone: How did you start in graphic design—was there another field that you initially intended to study or did you always know that graphic design was the thing for you?

Laina Leckie: My path was a bit circuitous. I actually started studying in a community college and I got my associates in TV production. Thought it was cool, very technical, I liked the computer aspect and all of that. Then I went on to Montclair State University for my BA and I discovered I wanted to do something a little more individual as opposed to group oriented, because TV production is such a group effort. I decided, “Ooh, let me try graphic design!”

There were no computers at that time and they didn’t bring them in until the year after I finished. So I went to an interview with my big old portfolio of handmade work and got my first job at a printing company. They were starting an art department and hired me to run it. I was in charge! I ended up being vice president of the company. I didn’t enjoy management so much after a while—I wanted to do art!—so I went back to SVA for grad school and got my masters in computer art. While I was getting my masters, SVA asked me to teach, and I said yes.

JC: And for your Computers in the Studio class, which is what you’re currently teaching, what is the purpose of the class? What do you hope students leave with?

LL: That’s tricky, because I think the main purpose from the school’s point of view, and maybe from the students coming in, is to get technical instruction in graphic design programs.

JC: I love that you said “from the school’s point of view.” I’ve noticed that it’s much more than technical application.

LL: For me it is. If I just taught tutorial after tutorial I would get bored after 2 minutes, and so would the students. I hope I bring fun and enthusiasm about discovering new ideas — even new ideas about themselves. What I also want to bring is my production know-how and my business know-how from being a freelancer, and I think that’s valuable to students as well. Teaching the programs but intertwining my real-world experiences—good and bad—to help students know what does and doesn’t work.

JC: In your class today, I liked how you explained the importance of bringing logo options to a client as opposed to just one that we really like. It’s a way to involve the client, to bring them into decision making so that it isn’t just, “Here I’ve cooked you dinner, now eat it.” These things may seem obvious after the fact, but it’s important to discuss them with students who have no experience with that kind of thing.

LL: I think it’s also the responsibility of graphic designers to educate the client, to nurture them in the process. They often don’t know about art that much and so you’re kind of teaching them, but also encouraging them to understand the process.

JC: Sometimes I am afraid to start a project. I truly have fear. There’s confidence somewhere in the back of my mind, but that fear is more prominent. It leads to procrastination for me, and I’m fully aware of it. Recently a friend suggested that when I start a project I should jump in with the goal of initially making the worst product possible. And that’s been working for me. Do you have similar feelings of fear, procrastination—and if so, how do you handle it? Do you have any tricks?

LL: Absolutely! And sometimes I still can’t believe I do after all these years, but it’s human. I think connecting with people who have similar feelings, spending time at creative workshops, and sitting with my inner critic - arm in arm!—it’s almost like art therapy for me. I remind myself that it’s okay to be imperfect. I remember that all I need to do is deal with “right now.” I used to keep trying to guess the future, I’d think about the results before I even put down a line on the piece of paper! I’d be jumping so far ahead or thinking about bad past experiences—I really try to push those away, be right here, right now, and brainstorm away!

JC: I have a hard time knowing whether or not what I’ve made looks good, even conceptually. I’m really trying to be my own critic, asking myself first and foremost, “Do I like it?” Can you relate to that struggle? What passes through your mind when that “Is this good?” question comes up?

LL: It’s a tricky one, I ask myself the same thing all the time. It’s so subjective. We just saw in class that one group came by and looked at two different logos. One group said they loved the first one and the color, the next group said they didn’t like the color and they liked the second one. So there’s this subjectivity that’s really difficult to grapple with. I believe we get training at schools like this with mentors who teach us the techniques and skills we need to visually relay messages effectively to audiences. The time in school working with these techniques gives students this wonderful opportunity to experiment with their creative voice as well, and then they can become stronger in their opinion about “what is good."

JC: Absolutely. One more question, it has nothing to do with graphic design, not directly at least. I think the essence of what we do is, at some point, we have to play. We need to have fun, so my final question for you is—

LL: [laughs] This is the one I’m most nervous about!

JC: You have the choice to be either a panda in pants or a crocodile in sunglasses. Which would you choose, and why?

LL: [pauses] If I think about the accessory, I don’t know if I would do the sunglasses because I hate having glasses. They block my peripheral vision. So if it’s about the accessory, I wouldn’t go with that. If I go to the animal I think about location and the animal’s way of being. [laughs] With crocodiles I think of Florida and that’s where I grew up. I didn’t particularly like it. Crocodiles are so aggressive, tough, stomachs always on the ground—they’re too rough around the edges. Pandas, I tend to think they’re a little lazy, which I don’t like, but I do like their in-the-moment-ness, because they’re just kind of hanging out, eating bamboo. Who know’s what they’re thinking? I love the black-and-white-ness, I used to love cows as a kid, so the panda seems kind of soft and approachable—which I don’t even know if that’s true, but that’s how we tend to imagine them. I’m going to go with the panda in pants.

JC: I love that you went into such depth. That’s the kind of people that we are, or that we need to be. It’s okay to just sit here and be silly, because when we’re silly we come up with things that we didn’t know we could, and that’s what being creative is. We’ve all heard that children are so much more creative and we tend to lose it as we get older. It’s the kids who don’t limit themselves by the level of silliness that create wonderful things. It’s phenomenal that you approached the question from the point of view of the animal, accessory and location.

LL: I told my kids that I was going to be interviewed and I was kind of tickled about that. And I told them you were going to ask me a funky question, and they asked me what I meant. I told them you gave me an example about four giraffes and a toothbrush in a room and what happens. I’m saying to myself, I have no idea what I would answer to that. My 10 year old pipes right up and says, “Mom, this is what you tell him: They got into a big old fight, they knocked each other’s teeth out trying to get to the tooth brush—and then they didn’t even need it.”

JC: That’s a beautiful example! I’m really glad you shared that, and I hope when people read this they don’t overlook this whole animal question, but really ask themselves about the significance of being silly. Thank you very much! I had a lot of fun and enjoyed your insights.

LL: Thank you as well.

[You can check out the original post here.]