AIGA Baltimore Honors Masters Of The Local Design Community

by Joe Augustyniak
AIGA Baltimore honored many of the pioneers of the Baltimore design community Thursday evening December 4, when the chapter hosted the event “Barton Gillet Retrospective and 50 years of Ed Gold.” This event held at the Brown Center at MICA featured a reunion and panel discussion among members of the renowned Baltimore design firm Barton Gillet, and the awarding of the first-ever AIGA Baltimore Fellow medal to the firm’s creative director Ed Gold.

Barton Gillet was the first design firm in Baltimore—-indeed, one of the very first in the entire country—-and flourished during the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, giving rise to many of the most prestigious graphic design firms in the Baltimore area today. Ed Gold was honored for his role in helping to build the firm into a nationally recognized design powerhouse, and for his role as a teacher, mentor and innovator in the design community after leaving the firm.

Helping to bring the energy and creativity of the firm to life were past designers, writers and account executives of Barton Gillet. Featured as panelists were Ed Gold, Gerry Willse, Edgar Finegold, Dave Treadwell, David Ashton, and Jane Keller. The event was moderated by Jerry Litofski, and featured two films by chapter Board member Sarah Kiley in which Jerry Litofsky, Bob Shelley and Gigi Boam (Ed Gold’s daughter and a designer herself), discussed the creativity and productivity of Barton Gillet.

After the panel discussion, Ed Gold was awarded the first-ever AIGA Baltimore Fellow medal by chapter president Chris Jones. For his acceptance speech, Ed discused the future of graphic design in the context of global changes, and emerging opportunities for graphic designers. Ed was also given a commemorative poster by Bob Shelley featuring an original logo design and the names of all the people who worked at Barton Gillet during Ed Gold’s tenure. The evening ended with a humorous tribute to Ed by his daughter Gigi Boam, who recounted her father’s many “would-be” careers including boxer, chess master and greeting card designer!

AIGA Baltimore is proud to have been able to honor the outstanding design careers of these individuals, and will be honoring more of their colleagues and designers of their caliber in the years to come. Highlights of this event, including two short films, will be made available by the chapter on DVD. Please check our website for future updates.

Pulp, Ink and Hops

by Joe Augustyniak
Quick! Where could you find Superman and Batman, Homer Simpson, George Jetson and The Beatles, a few hundred great graphic designers, top-notch printers, paper, computer and imaging professionals all under one roof? You’d know if you were at this year’s Pulp, Ink and Hops (PIH)trade show held at the Geppi Entertainment Museum in Camden Yards.

AIGA Baltimore held their annual printing and paper show in one of the area’s most visually exciting and fun venues on Thursday, October 23 when PIH took the stage at a unique museum dedicated to capturing the history and energy of popular American culture. Hundreds of enthused designers and industry professionals were entranced and enthralled by the seemingly endless halls and galleries that held memories and childhood recollections of everything from Monkee lunchboxes to Luke Skywalker laser swords. As everyone networked, reconnected with old friends and colleagues, and made new connections, the energy level at the event was as high as a Road Runner cartoon! Good food, drink, conversation and laughter filled the halls like the thousands of comic books, action figures, and record albums that populated the museum.

And the economy aside, the event attracted a great turn-out—-over four hundred members of the design public and twenty vendors—-proving once again that an industry that works best through professional and personal relationships will pull together to promote everyone’s interest. Professionals, students, educators, trade sponsors and friends and fans of the graphic design industry came together for one evening to celebrate what’s going right in a time where good news is sometimes hard to find.

AIGA Baltimore would like to graciously thank all our returning sponsors (especially——we know how hard a financial commitment can be these days!) and brand new sponsors, you the public who have enthusiastically shown again and again that this event fills a big need in the Baltimore design community, the Geppi Museum for their wonderful space and accommodations, and all the volunteers who worked with our Board to make this event a bright light in a dark time. Thanks everyone, and we’ll see you next year——Same Bat venue, Same Bat time???

AIGA & SHAG at The Baltimore Museum of Industry

By Chris Jones
On October 11th, the Baltimore marathon was run through massive stretches of Baltimore. Yet in the Baltimore Museum of Industry a collection of marathon type-o-philes braved the unexpected road closures for a visit to the Linotype display provided courtesy of the staff. The event co-sponsored by the Society for History and Graphics and AIGA Baltimore provided a tour for a dedicated group of 15 people who viewed displays on everything from the history of oyster shucking in Baltimore to the history of canning meats and the growth of Baltimore’s seafaring industry.

The tour culminated with an in-depth display of the working elements of the Linotype machine operated by a veteran operator, Ray Loomis, a graduate of Mergenthaler Vocational high school (Mervo for those of you in the know). At 78, Loomis a wonderful piece of history in and of himself called the Linotype machine “his baby” and operates the machine as a hobby in his spare time. Operating the same type of machine since his graduation in 1948, Lommis’ stories about the evolution of type—in part through his own career—with stints at both the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post over the years tell a tale about the evolution of the printed word.

Watching him operate the machine, one gets the sense of someone who is intimately knowledgeable about the machine. That sense is only confirmed when he composes a story. As quickly as your younger sibling might text back and forth with their BFF, Loomis oomed through sentences developing lines of copy that then get cast into type and as we were shown, get cast into lines that would compose a book or a newspaper.

Pictures available of the tour on Flickr; More information about the tour at the Baltimore Museum of Industry website: the bmi.org; More information about SHAG at shag.squarespace.com; More infromation about AIGA Baltimore available at http://www.aiga.org.