BOOK LAUNCH MAY 16TH 8-9:30PM
MULTIPLE SIGNATURES: On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users
By Michael Rock/2x4
With a panel discussion moderated by Mark Wigley with Lucia Allais, Ron Jones,Michael Rock and Daniel van der Velden.
To celebrate the publication of Michael Rock’s new book, Multiple Signatures: On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users (Rizzoli, May 14th), we are hosting a book launch and panel discussion at the Prada NY Epicenter Store in Soho on May 16th.
Panel Discussion: Superficiality
Moderator: Mark Wigley
Mark Wigley is Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and the author of Constant’s New Babylon: the Hyper-architecture of Desire, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture, and The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt.
Panel
Lucia Allais is an architectural historian and theorist teaching at Princeton University. She is working on a history of international politics and monument preservation in the mid-20th Century, tentatively titled Designs of Destruction. Recent publications include The Real and the Theoretical in Perspecta 42 and Disaster as Experiment in Log 22.
Ronald Jones is the Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. At Konstfack he leads The Experience Design Group, and he is a guest professor in Experience Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. He is the author of numerous museum catalogs and writes regularly for Artforum and frieze. He is a member of the Advisory Board, Center for Change, the d. School, The Design Program at Stanford University.
Michael Rock is a founding partner and creative director of multi-disciplinary design studio 2x4 Inc., New York City, and Director of the Graphic Architecture Project at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
Designer Daniel van der Velden is co-founder of Metahaven, a studio for design and research, and a Senior Critic at Yale University’s MFA program in graphic design. His writing includes Uncorporate Identity and Can Jokes Bring Down Governments?. He has designed t-shirts, scarves and other products for WikiLeaks, and works between freedom of information and overload of information.
About Multiple Signatures:
From Rizzoli: In the tradition of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, Michael Rock, principal and founder of 2x4 Design in New York, explores the history and development of twenty-first-century visual and design culture. This book presents a thoughtful and witty exploration of graphic design today. Set forth in an engaging and humorous way,Multiple Signatures examines all aspects of modern design, from typography to the evolution of screens in advertising to trusting one’s own creative instincts, through a series of smart and often irreverent essays and images. Using 2x4’s own collaborations and projects as examples, and drawing on the experience of the contributing authors, the result is not a clinical textbook, but a fantastic and thought-provoking work about the limitless applications of design. Multiple Signatures challenges standard ways of understanding design and inspires readers to think of graphic design as a building block for all creative disciplines.
