Andrew Blauvelt
Andrew Blauvelt has been a practicing graphic designer for more than 30 years. Blauvelt’s interest in graphic design started in high school when he was involved in his school newspaper where he helped in production. In an interview, he explains how he’s always been interested in art, taking art classes throughout school. He was introduced to graphic design as a career when he found a small art’s school named Herron School of Art. He attended that school at Indiana Univeristy where he earned his BFA in Visual Communication. After he earned his BFA, he attended Cranbrook Academy of Acts for his master’s program and obtained his MFA in 1998. Blauvelt had explained that he didn’t go to Cranbrook to simply learn how to do graphic design, but it was more about learning about the field and what Graphic Design really is. He had also been encouraged by his teachers at Herron to pursue getting his MFA. When Blauvelt was first starting out in his career, he contributed some of his own writing on design in Emigre, Looking Closer, and Dot Dot Dot. In addition to being an alumni to Cranbrook, Blauvelt was also offered a position there in October of 2015 to be the director for the Cranbrook Art Museum and the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research. Before the Cranbrook, he worked at the Walker Art Center where he was the Senior Curator and worked in Design, Research, and Publishing. He served as the Walker’s Design Director and Curator from 1998 to 2010.
In 2009, Blauvelt earned the National Design Award for Institutional and Corporate Achievement from the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Andrew Blauvelt’s work has earned more than 100 design awards collectively. He has had multiple highly recognizable positions in the design industry as well. Blauvelt was also the Director of Graduate Studies and Chair of the Graphic Design Department at the College of Design at North Carolina State University. Andrew Blauvelt had explained how he had a lot of training from undergrad that he knew would help him to be able to teach straight out of school. He also knew that by teaching he would be able to keep practicing and he was very interested in education. While he was teaching, he was also running his own practice simultaneously. In addition to teaching design and architecture at several universities, Blauvelt has served on the national board of directors at AIGA, and in 2016 he was also named a Fellow of AIGA Minnesota. Andrew Blauvelt has curated several design exhibitions, including Graphic Design – Now in Production, which he did with the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. This exhibit, also book, had a substantial impact on the Graphic Design community, and had quite a large impact on getting Blauvelt to where he is today. Andrew Blauvelt stated that he always thought of his role as being here to make good design happen. He wanted to create a culture to allow for good design to be done, and he didn’t feel like he needed to be the only one doing it but it was something to be shared within the design community.
Bibliography:
https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/experimental-mindset-an-interview-with-andrew-blauvelt-56442/
https://www.aiga.org/inspiration/talks/andrew-blauvelt-everyones-a-designer-critic-curator
https://designobserver.com/feature/towards-relational-design/7557
https://www.emigre.com/Essays/Magazine/InandAroundCulturesofDesignandtheDesignofCulturesPart1