LEFT: Poster for Ignacio Genzon's photography thesis show at CALARTS, 2005. TOP MIDDLE: Visiting artist poster for Gimhongsok and Sora Kim, 2004. TOP RIGHT: CONDUCTOR SANS type specimen poster, 2005. BOTTOM: Visiting designer poster for dutch design Rick Vermeulen, 2004. Perhaps the master's design program at CALARTS biggest claim to fame is the visiting artist series of posters.
Attending college in close proximity to Cranbrook Academy of
Art provided Eli Carrico with a remarkable number of design
mentors from the West Coast. After spending time in Chicago
and New York, he followed their lead and ventured to California
Institute of the Arts’ (CalArts’) MFA program, where the sunny
style that began to bubble up from within him quickly found a
home. His teacher, Michael Worthington, asked him to assist on
the forthcoming L.A. architecture book Bohemian Modern: Living
in Silver Lake, which eventually lead to a gig at the design firm
Brand New School, where Carrico has freelanced ever since. “Eli is
a natural form-maker,” says Worthington. “He doesn’t think, then
make; the work just pours out of him.”
What pours out of Carrico is design that can’t be categorized—
like his looping typefaces with shiny happy names like Gush,
Renewal, and Creatine. For his thesis project he animated Massimo Vignelli’s New York subway map. “I used the particularities
of motion to reconstruct it in a way that was not possible in any
other medium previously,” he says. “I am a very active researcher
and consumer, in addition to maker of visual culture. That map
falls into a golden era of design that just doesn’t happen any longer.”
His determination to make “weird stuff,” “pretty pictures,” and
things that “vibrate visually,” means his face is usually bathed in a
warm fluorescent glow from his monitor. To spread the love, Carrico
creates limited-edition series buttons and T-shirts for his
friends to liven up the drab, dark colors he says they wear.
Actually, it’s not all hot pink and rainbows: He really misses
New York. But when he slides over a business card in exuberant
traffic-cone orange, it’s hard to believe Carrico’s future could ever
be dull.
Alissa Walker
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