Design Works Retrospective Exhibition

In January 2019, the NYUAD Art Gallery hosted the show Design Works. Curated by the students Diego Arias and Van Anh Bui, with the assistance of Erin Collins and Goffredo Puccetti, it presented an overview of all the visual design works carried on in-house, by students and faculty from 2012 to 2018. It served both as an archive and as a celebration.

Visual Design practice entered the curriculum of our university in January 2012 with the offering of an elective class named Designing Abu Dhabi. Since then, in-house graphic design has played a major role in assisting the establishment of NYUAD’s visual identity: student-driven design has not only supported the institution’s needs in outstanding ways, but also–perhaps more importantly–it has helped us to define our mission and vision. Students have assisted faculty and staff in making sure that the quality of everything we did was properly reflected in our designed material. They highlighted our strengths and even corrected our mishaps.

The show was organized around three groupings of work: designing who we are, designing what we do, and design beyond Saadiyat.

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Some of their work is gone for good but many of their best designs are here. And they are here to stay: every time we welcome new students at Marhaba Week, every time we cheer for our Athletics teams, every time our seniors get to hold the silver Torch on Commencement day, the relevance of in-house visual design is apparent. Important conversations on branding, wayfinding and accessibility stemmed out of the discourse around design, and as we continue to grow, these topics will become more and more impactful. It is our hope that this show will inspire new students to continue the work of their predecessors for many years to come. -- Goffredo Puccetti