2003/04 Season

“If you can’t understand my work, it sure as hell is not my fault.” Introducing Design Madison’s first-ever member show. Here’s how it works: we send out a call for entries to Design Madison members. You submit up to five pieces. We hang them. People look at them. And maybe, just maybe, they understand. There’s [...]

“if somebody out there is going to render you obsolete, it better be you.” Portland, Oregon-based Sandstrom design definitely haven’t rendered themselves obsolete. Instead, they’ve filled a refrigerator with every major design award in the book and boast a client list that reads like a who’s who of american consumer culture: Nike, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Sony, [...]

“the separation of physical and geopolitical space between like-minded individuals is getting less and less all the time.” Jim Coudal’s internet is cooler than your internet. he’s got a wealth of links to the ridiculous and the sublime. he’s got designers from weworkforthem and praystation batting a photoshop file back and forth competitive collaboration. but [...]

Kevin Lyons is definitely one of the big guys. As art director for Urban Outfitters, Lyons serves as an arbiter of youth-culture cool. A lofty post, but he’s got the just the right mix of pedigree (degrees from Risd and Calarts) and street cred (his work with Tokion Magazine, for example) to pull it off.

Good looks, a nice smile, and the gift of gab will only get you so far. Eventually, you’ll have to whip it out. Your portfolio, that is. Design Madison invites you to attend this year’s student workshop: ‘Get aJob!!’

If that strikes you as pro-teamwork, then Art Chantry is not your ideal lab partner. Too bad, because those lab reports would’ve looked amazing. Chantry has spent the last 30 years creating amazing imagery,

The room was cozy, the screen tiny, the sound quality iffy. It was the perfect setting for our first-ever movie night, aka the Design Madison Film Festival.

He put wieners on the streets and boomerangs in the kitchen. Milwaukee native Brooks Stevens was unquestionably one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th century. From the Olympian Hiawatha passenger train to the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, from the iconic 50s boomerang graphic (designed in 1950 for formica) to the Miller Bbrewing logo, stevens’ work spanned five decades of the fastest-changing century in human history.