The New England School of Art & Design at Suffolk University

Oprha is one of two graphic designers for the entire Au Bon Pain corporation.  Her responsibilities include concept development, in house production, corporate identity/branding, social media, and advertisements. She works with everything you see in stores, from bakery tags to large menu panels.

She has been with Au Bon Pan for six months and has gotten to know the brand, as well as received a wide range of design projects, from designing PowerPoints for Human Resources to designing a campaign for a new product. Her position has allowed her to work with non-designers on a daily basis, from the head chef to the printers.

Orpha credits the NESAD Master of Arts in Graphic Design Program with helping her become a professional.  She learned how to create strong concepts, the art of critiques, as well as how to listen to criticism with a constructive ear.  She believes that brainstorming and having a reason for every element in her design proposals has benefited her greatly. When she meets with the Chief Brand Officer to discuss her design reasoning, she feels that NESAD has more than adequately prepared her to defend and communicate her ideas.

To see more of Orpha Rivera’s design work, please visit orpharivera.com

Keith Moskow of Moskow Linn Architects in Boston, has been a visiting lecturer in the Masters in Graphic Design department for years. He has provided inspiration for the Theoretical Project, also known as Urban Interventions, the final project in the Graduate Seminar class.

Based on student observations of the city of Boston and surrounding areas, they are asked to create a project that will add to the betterment of life in the city. The exercise is relevant in that it gives graduate student the opportunity to find and develop a project of their own doing just as they will be asked to do for their Thesis projects.

In a similar vein, Keith Moskow has created a summer program called Studio North, Building small-scale rural interventions.  Design students rarely have the opportunity to bring their ideas to fruition. This program offers a venue to imagine, develop and construct inventive design solutions.

For more information and to see examples of Urban Intervention projects visit: www.moskowlinn.com

See Studio North projects:  Swamp Hut, Chicken Chapel and Rolling Pig Pen. Click image for larger view.

Graphic Design Master’s Student, Grace Jullian Murthy, was recently accepted as a part of the Switchbox Program through Malden Arts, in Malden, Massachusetts.  While designing the POP ART box, she thought about the popping sound something electrical makes and decided to embrace this by connecting it to the art world.  Her goal was to create something fun and intriguing, hoping to inspire and bring together the people of Malden with the style of Pop Art.

Her second switchbox, entitled “Life Is Sweet” was in inspired from one of her father’s sayings.  The saying encapsulates the idea that we should not forget to appreciate the small things in life.  The shape of the switchbox reminded Grace of a gumball machine, something as a child she relished.  She sought to bring this nostalgic feeling to all viewers.

For more information on the Switchbox Program, please visit http://www.maldenarts.com/pages/Switchboxes_Completed.htm

This summer Graphic Design Masters student Michelle Pergal spent her time with young students and taught them design through the Artists for Humanity program. AFH is an organization that provides creative art projects for creative youth. It provides young artists with the unique opportunity of real client projects that matter, giving them a great head start.

Michelle helped out in the Graphics Department, which includes doing Graphic Design for professional clients. She worked with full time AFH employees and Boston high school students who are interested in the arts. The students were given a project by the National Grid that involved creating its community involvement brochure. Michelle worked with the students teaching them how to use Adobe InDesign and how to properly implement layout design and acted as a mentor for the students as they designed.

Michelle describes her experience:

“Working with the students was great. I loved working with the kids directly and learned a lot from them. They all struck me as being very well-informed and savvy. When I helped them out, they picked up on important concepts quickly.

It was a great real-world project to experience. Most people going into design don’t get that kind of exposure until they have started their career as adults, and these kids were the ones working on it as high-schoolers.

I could see myself in an environment like that in the future. I have always liked working with kids. They are inspirational and just fun to be around. It was awesome to be doing design, while at the same time working with and teaching kids, and being around a lot of other artists. Sometimes design seems like a solitary activity, but that is the furthest from the way things are at AFH. It is definitely a community, and there is never a dull moment.

I took away a lot from my experience there. Especially after this summer, I think what AFH is doing is absolutely crucial. All the kids that work there were so talented and invested, and without a place like that, they might not get to explore the arts as much as they do. Overall, I think there needs to be a dramatic increase in art resources for kids everywhere, and also more importance and validity attributed to it as an occupational choice. I think sometimes people don’t understand the incredible variety available to someone who decides to go into the arts as a career. I know I didn’t, or I probably would have done it to begin with.”