Brian Roettinger and Samuel Farfsing
California Institute of the Arts

A Year's Work

Biography: Samuel Farfsing completed his BFA in graphic design at the California Institute of the Arts in spring of 2004. During college he interned with Stephen Kinder Design Partnership, working directly with clients. He built lasting relationships with like-minded designers at CalArts and plans a collective studio to work in all design-related media. He is currently designing a book, created primarily with images and illustrations, based on the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition for “The Society of Image-Makers.”

Brian Roettinger recently graduated from the Graphic Design Program at California Institute of the Arts. He maintains a pale complexion; a cheery disposition; a diet that allows for the faintest similitude of a night’s sleep; a passionate, vacuum-like sixth sense for understanding the ideas, sounds, and formal/conceptual languages of tomorrow.

Objective: This is the graphic design of the exhibition titled A Year's Work for the CalArts Graphic Design Department 2004. Our objective was to come up with a system that would graphically represent the entire Design Department. By using colors and creating a four-point graph system, we were able to represent each year level with a circular ring system. Every year level in the Design Department had a unique ring symbol based on the curriculum for that year. The four variables for the graph were history, context, concept, and form — these determined the shapes of the rings for each class. Once the information was compiled, we designed an exhibition around it based on that structure.

Tools used: Adobe® Illustrator® was used to design a typeface and poster. It also was used for output of color separations and for creating the files for vinyl cutouts on Plexiglas. Adobe Photoshop® was used to make JPEGs for the Web page, and Adobe Acrobat® was used for the PDF e-mail files.