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At three
years old, Michele Y. Washington could be found in her
grandmother's kitchen rearranging the collection of salt-and-pepper
shakers by color. This first clue that her life path would lead
through the landscape of design came as no surprise to the other
creatively inclined members of her family: her uncle Horace Baldwin
Washington, a San Francisco sculptor and muralist; a great aunt who
ended up teaching grade school because it was extremely difficult
for a black woman artist to earn a viable living through her own
work at the time; and another uncle who studied glass blowing and
advertising design at Syracuse University but spent his life
working as a shop teacher. The coveted prize of a design career
would prove to be more easily attainable for a member of
Washington's generation.
Her journey
as a graphic designer, educator and writer reflects
an omnivorous approach to life and learning, each area of her work
informing and overlapping the others to form a unified whole.
Whether teaching a graduate-level exhibition design class at New
York's Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) or working with
clients at her firm, Washington Design, in Brooklyn's DUMBO
neighborhood, she brings a structured, nuanced combination of
eclectic influences to bear on the finished result. Her design
embraces the world of hand-based craft while remaining modern and
disciplined in its regard for the formalities of typography and
composition.
On
what inspires her:
I find the work of photographers inspirational, and printmakers and
sculptors, because each has their own sense of visual language.
Washington's work incorporates language and
writing systems from
other cultures—from Zimbabwean to Native American to Korean—in what
she calls an "understated, indirect way." She'll use letterforms
and symbols as background patterns, blowing the type up, or
hand-printing woodblock type over a silkscreen to create rich,
densely layered surfaces. Paging through her process sketches and
finished projects—ranging from posters for a DUMBO arts festival to
packaging for Mausam, her own line of natural body and home
products—reveals a love for pattern and texture that's paired with
vivid color saturating every surface.
Her
color sensibility blossomed from an upbringing near the
ocean—and her grandmothers' church hats. "The colors you like
depend so much on where you grew up; light and bright environments
lead to bright colors," she says. "In Atlantic City, with that wide
open seaside light, our neighbors always had beautiful gardens,
just a menagerie of colors. There were flowers everywhere. Ever see
black women's church hats? My grandmothers wore hats covered with
flowers—not sedate like Queen Elizabeth's! These were exuberant and
descriptive; you could tell a woman's status in the church and
community just by looking at her hat."
Washington's
mother encouraged her interest in craft, teaching
her to knit and sew when she noticed her only daughter (out of five
children) was always busy making something, anything, with her
hands. In fourth grade, her father presented her with a stamp
album, recognizing her propensity for organizing and collecting.
She still has her childhood stamp albums, but these days she
collects Russel Wright ceramics, Eva Zeisel tabletop wares and most
recently, KleinReid vases. An earlier passion for mid-century
modern chairs had to be put on hold when she ran out of space to
display them in her Harlem apartment.
Her
advice to young designers:
Be persistent and never let anyone stand in the way of your
dreams.
While studying
for her graduate degree at Brooklyn's Pratt
Institute, Washington switched from printmaking to graphic design,
calling it a "fluke, but one of the smartest decisions I ever
made." Her first real design job, at Vogue Butterick Patterns,
introduced her to designer Mel Skirloff, who became a mentor,
helping Washington to hone and develop her portfolio. Washington's
wide ranging interests and boundless intellectual curiosity have
led her to explore newspaper design at the Chicago Tribune
and The New York Times, editorial art direction at
Essence and Self magazines, and to the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago, Parsons the New School for Design, Pratt
Institute and FIT.
Teaching has been
particularly rewarding, though the idea of a
rigidly structured syllabus makes Washington shudder. She prefers
to view the classroom as an idea lab. "I want students to walk out
knowing how to think. When I started teaching in Chicago, I was
looking for ways to make them feel at ease with their own cultures.
Some are into it, others are somehow perplexed and embarrassed. In
a class of 12 or 15 students of different backgrounds they usually
break into groups and don't interact. So I mix them up cross
culturally to force them to talk to each other. I have them choose
an ethnic community different from their own and go out and share a
meal with to help break down barriers. The small rituals around the
social act of eating are something every living human can relate
to."
Her next adventure?
Building a creative space in another country.
A provocative poster by art director Phil
Mimaki for
Charlotte-based BooneOakley Advertising uses 99 white Pantone
swatches and one black swatch to illustrate the shockingly low
percentage of African-Americans employed in the advertising
industry. When shown the work, Washington shakes her head
vigorously in agreement. "It's critical for students to be shown
this kind of information so that open conversation can happen," she
says. "I have been marginalized by sex and race. Sometimes it was
hard finding the right fit with work, other times it was companies
or art directors uncomfortable working with a black designer.
Frankly, I hate the word minority, it's limiting. Why put
people in categories? I try to maintain my classroom as a neutral
zone where race, sexism and gender issues can be discussed
gracefully."
Washington is currently
studying for an MFA as part of the
School of Visual Art's Design Criticism (DCrit) program. When asked
why she sought a second master's degree, she grins. "I'm good at
telling stories, and writing is the next progression—I want to do
exhibits and books. I like the idea of learning new things,
solidifying what I already know and putting it into the spectrum.
You need to keep evolving your depth of intellect to be able to see
design from another side."
By Angela Riechers
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