AIGA Corporate Leader and Medalists to be honored at the 2017 AIGA Awards Gala

New York—AIGA, the professional association for design, the 2017 AIGA Awards committee and 2017 AIGA Corporate awards committee are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2017 AIGA Medal and Corporate Leadership Award. The Corporate Leader and seven Medalists will be honored at the annual AIGA Awards Gala on Friday, April 21, 2017 at Pier Sixty in New York City. The AIGA Awards Gala is an annual fundraiser and award ceremony honoring design practitioners and companies who have influenced change in the design industry.

The recipient of the Corporate Leadership Award is based on a firm’s promotion of, or contributions to, the development of design, as well as recognizing its role in exemplifying the highest design standards within its respective industry.

The 2017 AIGA Corporate Leadership Award will be presented to:

• Bloomberg L.P.—Bloomberg L.P. advances design on multiple fronts through its industry leading products and unique company culture. Starting with the groundbreaking design of the original flagship product, the Bloomberg Terminal, the design of media products such as Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg.com, and its innovative work spaces and sophisticated branding programs, design is integral to how the company operates and provides value to customers. In addition, Bloomberg demonstrates commitment to the overall advancement of design, creativity and innovation through a wide range of cultural partnerships.

The AIGA Medalists are chosen based on their individual contributions to the design community through leadership and excellence over the course of their careers. The AIGA Medal has been awarded to design professionals since 1920 to honor recipients’ stellar work and to raise awareness about design’s innovation and impact on the world.

The 2017 Medalists are:

• Art Chantry—Recognized for his intrepid exploration of subculture visual communication, and his fearless celebration of cultural diversity.

  Since the 1970s, Chantry has been changing the culture of design in Seattle. He has served as art director for The Rocket—Seattle’s free monthly tabloid that published the work of nascent talents such as Matt Groening (of The Simpsons fame) and Lynda Barry—which captured Seattle’s burgeoning music scene. Throughout his career, he has remained an individualistic designer and illustrator, creating work for independent record labels, commercial clients and political and community events.

• Emmett McBain—Recognized for his revolutionary design leadership and profound social impact in co-founding Burrell-McBain Advertising.

  McBain’s design for advertising agencies and nonprofit organizations made him a leader of African American emergence in socially-oriented media. His work ranged from album cover art for Mercury Records to Ford Motor Company’s design campaign to introduce the Mustang in 1964. His most influential work includes re-imagined national advertising campaigns for black audiences, which brought black identity directly into American homes through brands like Afro Sheen, Marlboro and Beefeater Gin. McBain’s largest impact on the design community was co-founding Burrell-McBain Advertising in 1971 with Thomas J. Burrell (today, Burrell Communications Group). The company has led Chicago’s design scene for more than 40 years and has branched into public relations, marketing and digital content creation.

• Rebeca Méndez—Recognized for challenging and transforming academia and design with her innovative interplay of identity and culture.

  Throughout Méndez’s 35-year career, she has driven design excellence in the academic and industrial fields. Her work revolves around issues of visual communication, personal and public identity, corporate branding and the development of image culture in the global economy. Méndez has extensive experience as a design educator (1989–2016) and currently serves as a tenured professor at the UCLA School of Art and Architecture. Her strong background in professional practice includes roles as the Designer for the College at ArtCenter College of Design; her private practice, Rebeca Méndez Studio, which specializes in work with culturally- and socially-oriented clients; and creative director and head of Brand Integration Group (BIG), Los Angeles, for global advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather.

• Mark Randall—Recognized for his singular dedication to diversity in design, and his tenacity in funding minority and economically disadvantaged design students.

  Randall is the founder and president of Worldstudio Foundation, a program offering scholarships and mentor programs to creatives in the fine and applied arts communities. He has influenced the design world by raising awareness for social consciousness within the community. He has consistently been decades ahead of his peers regarding the need to increase diversity in design, marked by his incredible courage and determination to positively transform the lives of hundreds of designers. He has set an example of leadership for the design profession that will endure, bettering both clients and our society.

• Nancy Skolos and Tom Wedell—Recognized for pushing the boundaries of art, design and technology with a distinctive vision to find connection among disparate forms.

  Skolos and Wedell established their joint practice, Skolos-Wedell, in Boston in the 1980s. Since bursting onto the design scene, Skolos-Wedell and its founders have pushed the limits of art, design and technology into entirely new forms. They work to diminish the boundaries between graphic design and photography by creating collaged, three-dimensional images influenced by modern painting, technology, and architecture. The studio’s work has received numerous awards including a Gold Medal at the Warsaw International Poster Biennale exhibition in 2010. Skolos and Wedell balance their commitments to professional practice and the Rhode Island School of Design where Skolos is dean of Architecture and Design and Wedell is a senior critic in the Graphic Design department.

• Lance Wyman—Recognized for his mastery of visual ecosystems and for setting the standard for the universal, public design experience.

  Wyman found his way into the field of graphic design with an interest in the design of logos and pictograms and their systematic application. He specializes in logo design and systems design for cities, events, institutions and transit networks. His practice over the past five decades has helped to define the field of environmental graphics. Wyman is best known for creating a universal icon for the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, which has set the standard of having one graphic system to represent each subsequent Olympiad.