About DMS | News | August 28 2008

News : Faculty : Courses : Labs and Classrooms : DMOC : _pH-

Recent Coverage of Prof. Rafael Fajardo

Professor Rafael Fajardo has been named one of the leading proponents of the "diversity school of design" by Kathy McCoy in her essay "Diversity Happens", Emigre #67, Oct 2004. Magazine available at http://www.emigre.com/EMag.php?issue=current.

In another publication, Steven Heller interviews Katherine McCoy about contemporary design experimentation. Rafael gets mentioned:

"Also, communications programs often require a wide variety of media channels. There are really rich examples out there of ideas that originate in one media being reinterpreted wonderfully into other media, including print.

Heller: When Cranbrook was at its peak, youth culture demanded a break from the status quo. Is this the same now? Is the current academic, and ultimately, client-driven environment inviting experiments of any kind?

McCoy: I don't think youth culture was much on our minds at Cranbrook. The students weren't that young students were 25 to 35 years old. Much of the published design work executed by our students was for cultural institutions with mature audiences. But Cranbrook experimentation probably influenced a lot of the commercial/professional design projects for younger audiences. I recall Campbell Ewald, Chevrolet's advertising agency, asking Ed Fella c1976 to design their car catalog in ³that New Wave style² in hopes that Chevrolet would appeal to a younger market. And David Carson sought out Cranbrook students' experimental fonts for use in his youth-culture publications.

Electronic gaming enabled and disseminated by the Internet is a youth-culture phenomena that is adding energy and ideas to design now. I see it's influence in really interesting work by Elliott Earls at Cranbrook (www.theapolloprogram.com) and Rafael Fajardo at University of Denver (www.du.edu/~rfajardo/juego/lamigra.htm).

But clients of all kinds demand time-based and interactive design, including E-commerce, all kinds of corporate communications, trade shows, entertainment media, cultural and educational institutions. Much of it is quite edgy."

Get the full article here.

Also, Neural.it, the Italian site for new media art, electronic music, and hactivism, featured Fajardo's Crosser & La Migra: www.neural.it/nnews/bordergames.htm.