TOP LEFT: DRUNKS ON THE STREET, 2004, is a visual transcription of recorded conversations between drunken street vagrants. BOTTOM LEFT: LIGHTGRIDS, a black-and-white 35mm photograph of the way in which “slivers of streaming sunlight built grids of light in this parking garage.” MIDDLE: GRID POSTER was created from vectors, charts, and tables from one of Huang’s colleague’s thesis work, a website on accessible web design. RIGHT: This poster was designed for a typography exhibition, the transient message, at RISD, fall 2003.

Cavan Huang, cavanthology/Time Warner Latin Name: Memeopolis Architectus Age: 28 212.484.8254 | www.icav.ca

Cavan Huang is very much influenced by his surroundings in New York City. “I’m driven by urban motion. It’s beautiful how cities are designed with a sufficient level of complexity in order to sustain interest without becoming chaotic or unmanageable. There is hardly any wasted or unused space,” he says. “I especially love how cities are portrayed in film. Cities and film serve as inspiration and metaphors for my approach to design—sharing the world through dense spatial experiences and narratives that continue to evolve and expand over time.”

There aren’t too many jobs where an emerging designer can put these combined interests into practice. Huang appears to have found one of them, however, at Time Warner’s Distributed Media System (DMS) where he designs, produces, and manages creative content. “The DMS is an internal network of advanced projection, plasma screens, media walls, and lighting systems integrated throughout the Time Warner Center, an 80-story complex at Columbus Circle in New York City,” he explains. “The goal of the system is to provide a multimedia information experience that begins the moment people enter the building and follows them throughout the complex. Given the opportunity to design for a miniature city, how could I refuse?”

Huang made a crucial turning point while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he earned his MFA in graphic design. “Not only did it change the way I see things and help me develop new design approaches,” he says, “but I made some important lifelong friends. I was fortunate to have advisors and instructors of the highest caliber. Thomas Ockerse, Bethany Johns, Franz Werner, Nancy Skolos, Thomas Wedell, and Martin Venezky were influential with their design philosophies and approaches. But perhaps I gained the most from interacting and collaborating with so many talented colleagues. Scott Thorpe and Rodderick Grant were especially great collaborators and designers who encouraged me to let go of traditional habits and pushed my design to new levels.”

Bethany Johns, Graduate Program Coordinator and Associate Professor at RISD, says, “Cavan’s work as a graduate student was energetic, smart, and an engaging embodiment of his thesis inquiry into type and motion in the urban context. It is all the more interesting to stand free of the definition of ‘graduate work.’ Time Warner certainly recognized this when they hired him the instant he was out of school.”

“There are already so many ways you can design for a single screen,” says Huang. “When you multiply that and spread it across spaces, the possibilities are endless. At the end of the day, it’s satisfying knowing that designs and concepts I create are reaching many people in and around the building at Columbus Circle.”
Emily Potts