This social networking event follows an association forum (AF8) on challenges /solutions in the design industry during this economic downturn. Meet the presenters and discuss new strategies for developing your business or career. Light hors d’oeuvres and complimentary white wines will be served. Entry is free for AF8 forum attendees, or $5.00 at the door.



To register contact Gwen Williams, board member, Project Osmosis eclecticdzinr@yahoo.com. Registration also accepted at the door.

A thought provoking forum on Haitii with some experts from the fields of design, planning, international development and cultural anthropology. The forum will involve critical thinking about shelter and disaster with a focus on planning, cause and effect, and risk management after a disaster. 



This session will be followed by an interactive discussion and networking hour for potential collaborations and partnerships from 4–5 p.m. Sponsored by IIDA, FocusOnDesign, Designers for the 21st Century (D421), Project Osmosis, and The Black Design News Network

Speakers:  Kerl LaJeune - architect, founder and principal, Atelier AzaraRenee Kemp-Rotan - urban designer and co-founder, Black Design News Network; Atim Annette Oton, architectural designer and co-founder, Black Design News Network; Bryan Hudson, architect, principal, SOMA Design Consultants Inc.; and Lee Bey, writer and architectural critic, African American writer/architectural critic. 



To register contact Atim Oton, director of the Black Design News Network atimoton@yahoo.com. Registration also accepted at the door.

Article by Yuka Yoneda, 02/28/10

Karen Oh, Owner & Creative Director of HOUSEOFCAKES

Karen Oh
Owner & Creative Director of HOUSEOFCAKES
Brooklyn, NY

What’s Your Story?
I am a graduate of Colby College with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a passion for creativity.  Initially, I was self-taught then I returned to Minneapolis College of Art and Design for my M.F.A. in Visual Studies.

Now, I have over 15 years of experience in print, web and environmental design and management, and worked mostly for educational and non-profit institutions before starting my own business. During this time, I have had the opportunity to exhibit my design work internationally.

With HOUSEOFCAKES, I have been able to collaborate with a wide range of clients in the areas of social justice, social service, public policy, publishing, cultural and arts organizations, as well as start-up and established businesses. I find myself assisting clients in developing comprehensive communications brands, helping them integrate all their communications in order to send a stronger message. By working with mainly non-profits that are striving to improve communities and residents, I feel that I am filling a need and advancing social causes.

What’s Your Favorite Thing  About Being  Designer?
It has given me the ability to do a wide range of things outside of just design and so I’ve been able to develop a wide range of skills from administration to programming. By using design thinking, I am able to figure out how best to communicate with people and develop systems in order to (hopefully) create change that people can be invested in.

What Career Challenges Have You Faced As A Woman? How Did You Handle It?
Sometimes, I think people still don’t take women as seriously, especially in leadership roles. However, in my experience, I have found that it is mostly women who are active in their communities and effecting change. To be taken seriously, I’ve had to ‘look’ the part (e.g. look more professional) so that people can see beyond what I look like and concentrate on what I’m saying.“

Poster for the Brooklyn Public Library

Life Beyond Design
In addition to being a designer, I also have experience in non-profit management, having worked in non-profit operations and administration for several years. When I’m not working, I try to be active in my community, working together with residents to improve our neighborhoods, especially concerning animals and food access. Using my design and management skills, I helped to found my neighborhood Community Supported Agriculture program and currently I serve on the board as communications chair. I also have been active in controlling feral cat populations in New York City, by helping residents trap and spay/neuter wild cats and returning them to their locations. I am now working on a large-scale community development project to organize the community so that we can open a 6,000 square-foot member-run food cooperative.

For more information about Karen Oh and her work, visit the HOUSEOFCAKES website.

In the midst of this movement towards national recognition, President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation with words of encouragement that ring true today. May we always embrace the spirit of inclusivity to which he referred:

“From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well. As Dr. Gerda Lerner has noted, “Women’s History is Women’s Right.” – It is an essential and indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range vision.”

… I urge libraries, schools, and community organizations to focus their observances on the leaders who struggled for equality – - Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy
Stone, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and Alice Paul.
Understanding the true history of our country will help us to comprehend the need for full equality under the law for all our people. This goal can be achieved by ratifying the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that “Equality of Rights under the Law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

It’s with this same spirit that Designers421 was founded and by which we celebrate the heritage and experiences of our members. Please join us this month as we share the stories of women designers from around the world. And, help by spreading the word to your personal and professional networks, and inspiring as many girls as you can!

For more information about Women’s History Month, please visit: the NWHP website.

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Joi L Roberts

D421 would to thank the featured designers — Chuck Harrison, Noel Mayo, David Adjaye, Rodney Leon, and Peter Cook — for allowing us to share their success stories.  We are also excited to have introduced you to our guest contributors, Gloria Williams, Nii Commey Botchway, Atim Oton and GA Gardner, who shared their unique voices on a variety of topics relevant to the entire D421 community.

As we begin the next annual cycle towards another black history month, it is important that we all continue to share with each other those black designers who were most influential in our lives, those we simply appreciate and those we just discovered and wanted to share. If we move in these ways next year this time we can look forward to a site that is a wealth of information and to a community that is engaged in a range of conversations that further enlighten many others. So let’s keep building!

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Eric Anderson

The collective force that took Barack Obama from unlikely presidential candidate to the White House inspired millions in America and around the globe. I, like others, was moved by our ability to unite, to believe, to stand as one. As an artist, this powerful movement resonated with me through the myriad of visual expressions I witnessed throughout the presidential campaign and beyond. In my neighborhood, as in many others, signs of hope and inspiration were common place. Both accomplished artists and those simply moved by the life-changing prospect of the nation’s first African-American president, felt compelled to express their feelings through design and visual means.

When I saw the sea of American faces on the night of President Obama’s victory, it became apparent that this was the story I wanted to tell.  I accepted the challenge and began a closer look at the man and the historic milestone.  In approaching the creative process I thought that a mixed media collage as a medium would provide me the most freedom to do whatever came to mind. I decided to do the original on wood, selecting a photo of him and interpreting it on an abstract background of sky and sea (a nod to his Hawaiian background). I used newspaper text to highlight the image, employing type as a design tool. People’s jubilations were also important and faces were positioned throughout the image, mainly in Obama’s hair, neck and coat.  I also placed his daughters in his eyes and his wife above his right brow – symbols of their importance both to the president and America.  My goal was to create a piece that personified hope visually.

The campaign and election underscored my belief that visual communication could play a crucial role in matters of profound importance to democracy and equality. I believe that the expressions of hope and change so often iterated throughout President Obama’s campaign and election can continue to be re-enforced through visual mechanisms as the country and our leadership face many difficult transitions.

Images, we all know, speak a thousand words. As the President and his administration continue their dialogue with the American people, visual communication can be a bridge that transports ideas, sometimes complex, across cultural, political and social landscapes, unburdened by semantics or misinterpretation so often associated with the use of words.

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GA Gardner, Ph.D. is an artist and art educator.  He creates mixed media collages and abstract art and his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. For more information on this poster, his website or join him on Facebook.

We are always excited to see members of the design community who are passionately engaged in activities that broaden our collective reach. D421 member Atim Oton definitely fits the bill.  You’ve probably seen our posting about the 2011 design conference in Africa that she’s planning.  And, if you haven’t heard about her latest project, Black Design News Network, be sure to look for its launch in a few weeks.  Today, in continued celebration of Black History Month, Atim recounts her recent encounter with three contemporary black architects.

On a cold winter late-afternoon, three black architects at the mid-points of their careers –David Adjaye, a British-Ghanaian; Rodney Leon, a Haitian-American; and Peter D. Cook, an African-American – convened to speak candidly and frankly about their unique approaches to architecture. The three designers showed a range of projects that demonstrated how ideas, concepts and design processes evolve into the built form. Their distinct design philosophies and inspiring work were well received by the excited audience of professionals and students.  Sponsored by the Black Alumni of Pratt, this Black History Month celebration of architecture ended with a short panel discussion between Adjaye, Leon, Cook and their moderator, Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum of Harlem.

David Adjaye

International Architect David Adjaye, a British Ghanian and graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, was the main attraction for the event. Lecturing twice – once to a student-only audience and later to the professional audience – Adjaye spoke about his beliefs and timing that the interest in civil society was one of the key intersections that allowed for his trajectory in architecture. In his words, “the timing of my practise came at a point when there was a period in London to re-imagine public architecture.” This afforded him opportunities for work and commissions at an early age.

Articulating his definitive approach to design, Adjaye continues, “Design is about self, process and clients.” Using a series of his successful projects – the Dirty House in London, the Museum of Contemporaty Art in Denver, the Idea Store in London and the Stephen Lawrence Center in London – he elaborated on the key concepts that flow through his work and process. Important and recurring themes for Adjaye include an obsession with utilizing cheap materials formally, an exploration of light and color, leveraging thresholds and voids in architecture, breaking the movement between public and private realms, and a desire to create form and space by blurring the lines between architecture and its surrounding landscape.

Expanding on his approach to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture which he designed with architects Max Bond and Philip Freelon, Adjaye talked about their collaborative process and the shared vision for representing the hope, celebration and spirituality of the African-American community through raised hands or fists. An archetype of Adjaye’s work is his current project, a business school in Russia encompassing an expansive plan and massive structure with color and light, a play on materials and bold ambition. Bringing the imagery of Vegas to the middle of Russia, requires an architect with audacity, daring and a zest for breaking conventional thresholds while ironically displaying flashes of theater and drama. During the closing panel discussion, Adjaye explaine with surprising candor that his decision to open design studios across the world – one in London, Berlin and New York – was not necessarily a great business idea but a strategy to slow down and engage in each city, and make each home.

Rodney Leon

New York-based Rodney Leon’s presentation revolved around his cultural identity and how, through it, he has explored notions of form, space, procession, site and context in architecture. During the session, Leon, a Haitian-American and graduate of Pratt and Yale, discussed his experience with the African Burial Ground Memorial project.

In partnership with Aarris Archiects (architect of record), he designed the African Burial Ground as a sacred place and focal point of slavery, identity politics of past, present and future African history and culture. “In my process of design, I realized that memorialization was immersed in ritual”, Leon contended, and this site was about different generational experiences steeped in African-American, African, Caribbean, local and International culture, yet carved in the social fabric and cultural context of lower Manhattan.

This cultural memorial represents an opportunity for education. As a symbol that is spiritual, it was designed to be participatory, from its architecture elements– Walls of Remembrance, Memorial Wall, Ancenstral Chamber – to its spiral procession ramp. Leon’s design process for the memorial and a number of his projects, Leon remarked, dealt with an exploration of his cultural history, personal identity, African and Caribbean roots intermixed with his contemporary identity and a search to give form through architecture. Simply put, “Architecture is a medium to discover self and a therapautic process”. He also spoke briefly about the importance of reconstructing Haiti as a sustainable society that would involve Haitians, Haitian-Americans and the Haitian Diaspora.

Washington, DC-based Architect, Peter D. Cook, an African-American and graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities, began his talk with the profound statement, “I know some of you believe that with the election of Barack Obama, things are good, but we are not a post-racial society, even though we have a black president. Black architects are still a rarified group and diversity events like this one are more important because there is a push back.” Cook is plainly spoken and comes from an exceptional place and perspective.  His lineage as a fourth-generation black architect began with his great grand-uncle Julian Abele and his grandfather Julian Abele Cook and continued with his mentor, architect Max Bond, who passed away last year. Bond was deeply respected by his peers and deemed by the New York Times “the most influential African-American architect in New York and one of a few black architects of national prominence”. What a impressive heritage Peter Cook shares.

Peter Cook

As the design principal at David Brody Bond Aedas, by taking on the focal mantle of socially relevant design, Cook signals a continuation of Bond’s legacy and philosophy of social empowerment. That thread is evident in his role as the lead designer for programming on the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture which Cook, Bond, their partners, and architect Philip Freelon of the Freelon Group worked on for ten years before adding lead designer David Adjaye and winning the competition.

During the presentation, Cook also reflected on the Benning Neighborhood Library in Washington, DC, which highlights the firm’s emphasis on public architecture.  He explained how their design strategy focused on the site, its context and their understanding of how the neighborhood uses space. As Cook put it, “Davis Brody Bond Aedas is a firm of partners with a variety of voices, and not one style. We respond to client’s needs, site, context and program”. And at the core, “I believe that architecture can affect change through design.”

For more information about Max Bond, see the NY Times Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/arts/design/19bond.html?_r=2

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Atim Annette Oton is a Nigerian-born, U.S. and British educated designer and co-Founder of the Black Design News Nework (http://www.blackdesignnews.com), a cultural writer, editor and publisher who stepped down from her role as the Associate Chair of Product Design at Parsons School of Design in 2006 to concentrate on a bi-monthly lifestyle publication about black Brooklyn home décor, fashion, culture, and lifestyle, Calabar Magazine and take her company, Calabar Imports globally. She studied architecture at the City College of New York in Harlem under the influential black architect Max Bond and the Architectural Association Graduate School in London, England; and worked for Davis, Brody, Bond Architects and various other firms in New York. She also worked as a design consultant on the Underground Railroad Experience, a cultural education website from 2000 – 2004; and won an Independent Grant from the NYSCA on her work, the Black Hair Salon in 2002. She served as the editor-in-chief and executive vice president for Blacklines Magazine, a quarterly magazine publishing features on black designers in architecture, interior design, construction, development and the arts from 2000-2002 and the Co-Organizer, Limitless Layers, Blacklines’ Second Conference, Design Showcase and exhibition, April 11-14, 2002 and Co-Organizer, Bridging the Gap between Education and Practice, Blacklines Architecture Conference, Design Showcase and exhibition, October 19-22, 2000. She can be reached at atim @ blackdesignnews (dot) com.

Noel Mayo

In 1960, after becoming the first African American to receive a Bachelors degree in Industrial Design from the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts), Noel Mayo began a wildly successful career designing telephones, seating, desks, lighting fixtures, offices, stores and restaurants.

Early on, he also stretched his entrepreneurial wings, establishing Noel Mayo Associates (NMA) – the first African American industrial design firm in the United States. Noel and his team have completed high profile projects like the interior design of the United Bank of Philadelphia; signage programs for hospitals, universities, and transit authorities; and US government exhibits across North America, Morocco, Spain, and Nigeria. With partners and clients like NASA, IBM, Black and Decker, and Lutron Electronics Company, Noel and his team have made an indelible impact on society.

As an educator, Noel returned to his alma mater, University of the Arts, where he taught and served as chairperson of the Industrial Design Department for 11 years. During his tenure there, the department grew by three hundred percent, from the ninth to the third largest department in the college. In recognition of his outstanding achievements in and contributions to design, he was awarded an honorary doctorate (D.F.A.) from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1981.

Noel then transitioned to Ohio State University where he teaches product, interior, and graphic design. In 1989, Noel was named the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Art and Design Technology, a program designed to attract nationally and internationally known scholars to further strengthen outstanding academic programs that deal with compelling statewide issues. Since that time, Noel’s leadership at the university remains strong. Most recently, he has been helping drive recruiting and retention initiatives for minority students and establishing a directory of minority professionals in industrial, graphic, interior, and architectural design.

Noel places a very strong emphasis on the importance of mentoring and advocates alternative methods for education, accelerated learning, and information dissemination using new technologies. Mayo’s personal interest is in the development of synergistic learning products that include vision, music, color, psychology, and light.

For those of us who know Noel personally, he is a leader, a mentor, an inspiration, a friend, and a strong reminder to do great things!  Definitely someone worth knowing.

Now, let’s talk . . . In the comments below, tell us:

• Has Noel taught or mentored you personally? Tell us about it.
• What personal experiences you have with Noel or NMA’s product, exhibit and communication designs?
• What other design masters would you like to see profiled here this month and in the future?