TOWLER WEESE

Research statement

In 1992 I founded the graphic design practice Studio Blue. While I serve as creative director and principal, it has always been important to me that the studio be autonomous; that it serve as a form of community, a way to gather a group of people with diverse ideas around a set of common goals.

Through this practice, I hope to contribute to the cultural life of the city, region, and nation through design for institutions that serve the public. My work contributes to civic spaces – universities, museums, libraries, theaters, and public parks – where people come together, share experiences, and discuss ideas. At a time when polarization is weakening our democracy, I believe it’s critical to develop idealistic yet practical ways to head in the opposite direction; to create places where we bump up against one another, to develop projects that help us identify shared values and contribute to civic life. Through this work, I hope to speculate on and facilitate the changing role of institutions and the future of cities.

My practice is part experimental, when I work with materials, forms, and formats in new ways; part conceptual, when I use forms and formats to represent ideas; and part informational, when I organize type, image, and form to clarify meaning. Each of these forms of practice spring from a different methodology, but all work in tandem; I use each visual method more or less depending on the project, client, and collaborator.

I draw on the formal and conceptual qualities of an artist’s or architect’s work to invent visual approaches for organizing information in order to make a theoretical exhibition catalogue or complex exhibition more accessible to a reader or visitor. I bend letterforms around buildings and experiment with bookbinding formats to explore with ways of combining type and space to express the ethos of a place or body of work.

Each project includes an element of speculation — new ideas that haven’t been tested before — yet that don’t overwhelm the content that they transmit. My projects span disciplines, involving close collaborations with architects, curators, institutional leaders, public officials, and fabricators. These experimental, cross-genre, yet functional projects enlarge the design discipline’s scope, and the methods it embraces.

I’ve led the design of capital campaign identities and communications for significant cultural institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the National Public Housing Museum. These projects help raise critical funds that provide a solid financial footing, securing these institutions’ contributions to Chicago’s cultural life. Equally importantly, by translating and expressing their evolving research, mission, and ethics through typography, imagery, and form, I engage readers and viewers in the shifting ideas underlying the institution, generating conversation around evolving goals.

Civic work, like my design leadership of and consulting for the city of Chicago’s Public Art Plan, an exhibition on the architectural revitalization of the city’s 50 wards for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and the development of interpretive elements for the Cook County Forest Preserves, provide new forms of interpretation, encourage stewardship and connection, and help the public envision alternative possibilities for the future.

Other forms of public-facing work create a sense of place, including the design of environmental graphics and wayfinding for leading institutions such as Steppenwolf and Goodman Theatres, the Chicago Architecture Center, the School of the Art Institute, internationally renowned architects Tadao Ando’s Wrightwood 659 and Diller Scofidio and Renfro’s Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago, and UIC’s Center for the Arts finalist competition entry with architecture faculty colleagues Sarah Dunn and Kelly Bair. In the same way late nineteenth century Beaux-Arts artists contributed ornament to architecture, this work supports palaces for the people that encourage gathering and lingering and in so doing, fosters community.

The design of nationally recognized publications and exhibitions that foreground historically marginalized voices, including British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE, Black modernist painter Jacob Lawrence, Chinese activist artist Ai Weiwei, Black sculptor Melvin Edwards, and underrepresented forms of art including Japanese Ukiyo-e paintings and African utilitarian and decorative art can shift public perception and dispel stereotypes.

I’ve begun or completed leadership of each of the projects listed here since I was awarded tenure, and many have received regional, national, or international recognition. My work has been exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center and the Art Institute of Chicago, and is included in collections at the Art Institute, Columbia University’s Rare Book Library, the Newberry Library, and the Denver Art Museum. I’ve received the AIGA’s Fellow award, one of the highest forms of recognition in the profession. And my recent work has won international honors, including from the Society for Experiential Graphic Design, AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers, and the American Alliance of Museums, each of which serves as the leading awarding organization for their sector of the discipline — among the over 100 national and international awards I’ve earned during my career.

Going forward, I hope to continue my work in the public realm and deepen its impact, to produce design that encourages readers, visitors, and users to speculate on our responsibilities to one another — work that expresses values and shapes public space in ways that encourage community, membership, a sense of belonging, and polity.

Cheryl Towler Weese