NAME: Amy Wang
LATIN NAME: amicus ambianimus

Amy Wang, a Harvard graduate, was fast on her way to med school when she happened upon Steven Heller’s book Becoming a Graphic Designer, and her path was reset. She decided to apply to grad school and began looking for an internship that would help her build a portfolio. She interned with Stefan Sagmeister in the fall of 2002 and then enrolled in the School of Visual Arts’ Designer as Author MFA program, where Sagmeister, who regards Wang as “an exceptionally bright designer,” would become her thesis advisor.

The SVA program requires students to develop a thesis concept that uniquely responds to the needs of society. The problem that defined Wang’s project was close at hand. She had noticed how international students at SVA struggled to use U.S. Customary units. “All the time our casual conversations would come to a stop, because no one could find a synonym for a certain number,” Wang recalls. So she decided to create a public awareness campaign that would facilitate the U.S. conversion to the metric system.

Analyzing the approaches of India’s conversion to metrics in the 1950s, England in the 1960s and Canada in the 1970s, Wang decided that the main concentration should not be on “awkward conversion formulas for systems that were not designed to be compatible with one another.” Instead, Ametrica! focuses on how the metric system can affect peoples’ lives positively through a series of humorous and informative devices. From their first cup of morning coffee, users of the Ametrica! coffee cup hand-protector are taught about temperature in Celsius. The sleeve contains facts about coffee’s ideal brewing temperature (93ºC), its ideal serving temperature (83ºC) and the temperature at which water boils (100ºC). The campaign also includes bus stop advertisements, which inform the viewer of the distance to the next stop should they miss a bus and want to try to run to the next stop. The Ametrica! packing tape doubles as an educational device by incorporating a measurement system in centimeters and a series of bizarre world records, like the longest ear hair and the highest height jumped by a pig.

In the summer of 2006 Wang was awarded one of Sappi’s Ideas That Matter grants. With it she has produced a book, which will be sent to each member of Congress and 500 leaders of industry, to help gain support for Ametrica! While it is doubtful that the U.S. will actually convert to the metric system before 2010, when the European Union will ban the dual labeling of products, Wang believes conversion will happen within the next few decades. “Then, at last, my friends and I will be able to talk in the same numerical language.” Isaac Gertman

(TOP) CLASS PROJECT: Book jacket redesign of PORTRAITS 9/11/01: THE COLLECTED PORTRAITS OF GRIEF FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES. Unsatisfied with the existing state of this book, Wang decided to create a design that would better suit its content and offer a moment of meditation to its readers. She used materials such as diecut printed watercolor stock over newsprint “bookcloth” to accentuate the volume’s tactility and to encourage lingering. The redesign was created as a class project in fall 2006 For Stephen Doyle, who left the decision as to which book should be redesigned to his students.