AT THE BASE OF WRIGHT'S SPIRAL
Adobe has a way of rolling out the plushest kind of red carpet beneath the feet of people it likes, and the software company was very fond indeed of the 26 students who, using Adobe tools, created the best work of the 2005 Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA). To start, there was the trip to New York, where students from around the world stayed for two nights on Adobe’s dime in the ultra-swank boutique hotel The Marc. There was all that shoulder-rubbing with design luminaries during tours of 12 acclaimed studios and media companies, including Pentagram, karlssonwilker, and O and Paper magazines. And for the nine winners, there was the $5,000 cash award, which will variously be put toward school tuition, laptop payments, and “fresh records,” in the case of one German winner.

All of this was very nice. But for many finalists, the opportunity to see their work in closer proximity to that of Picasso and Brancusi than most dare to dream gave them an almost out-of-body thrill. On July 21, 2005, before the commencement of the ceremony itself, finalists’ work was exhibited in the first floor reception area of the Guggenheim Museum, just at the base of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral. “For one day,” says Sophie Clements, winner of the time-based media category, “we were projected into this world—a world that in our dreams may be real in 20 years (but very doubtful). It was like being a musician and for one day playing a huge gig, getting a little taste of it. And then getting back to reality.”

CHEAN WEI LAW—SELF-EXPRESSION
Graduate, The Ringling School of Art and Design (Sarasota, Fla.)
BFA in Graphic Design

Malaysian-born Chean Wei Law’s dystopic landscape, a kind of digitized Garden of Earthly Delights, is a portal to the innerworkings of his brain. Instead of Bosch’s copulating medievals, however, Law populates this world with rasterized icons that represent the images of his memory. A legend on the back of this two-sided poster provides a key to each of 200 icons: A bomb, for example, represents his brother, whose hot temper earned him the English nickname Atom. Also making cameo appearances in iconic form: human intestines, Law’s girlfriend, and his favorite hiphop artist Fatboy Slim.

Law landed his current job as interactive designer at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami, by sending 60 portfolios to that many agencies whose addresses he found in an AIGA book. He was delighted to receive a call from CP+B, about which he admits he knew nothing at the time. Law hopes to one day open his own studio, which he’ll call “Undo-boy,” one of his many nicknames, this one the result of his fascination with the Command-Z function. Depending on the context, he is also called Bastard and Cactus. “I don’t know why I have so many nicknames,” he says.

The 2005 ADAA Jury
Gail Anderson, Senior Art Director, SpotCo, New York Kathy Fredrickson, Principal Partner, Studio Blue, Chicago Frank Gladstone, Vice President of Artistic Development for IDT Entertainment Animation, Los Angeles Dava Guthmiller, Creative Director | Founder, Noise 13, San Francisco Tim Mason, Art Director, WXIA-TV, Atlanta Matthew Richmond, Principal | Designer, The Chopping Block, New York

The ADAA Advisory Board
Sean Adams, AdamsMorioka, Los Angeles Michael Bierut, Pentagram, New York Richard Doust, Royal College of Art, London Allen Lab, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Chris Pullman, WGBH, Boston Howard Simkins, Sheridan College, Ontario Lita Talarico, School of Visual Arts, New York Richard Weinberg, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Meg Young, Massachusetts College of Arts, Boston