At the CUSP: saving you, one good design at a time
“So great, so enveloping is the ambition of CUSP Conference, that it overtakes us all — designers graphic and industrial, young and old, architectural and digital, those whose methods are orthodox, those whose pants are skinny, and those who, by any other standard, are designers not at all. In an empire of design, everyone turns out to be a designer.”
Jim Miller, founder of a museum dedicated to preserving the history of wood type printing, was among the speakers at the CUSP conference, which I covered for Newcity magazine
The first story I ever published in Newcity magazine, this review of CUSP conference reads a little like a gossip column. In a way it is, since professional gatherings like CUSP tend to generate giggles and lots of good industry gossip.
CUSP, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, assembled a varied cast of characters, from epidemiologists to sword-swallowers. (Well, just one sword-swallower.) My piece weaves in and out of the conference, capturing formal talks along with sidebar conversations and cocktail party chatter. It telegraphs the way that design — in all its forms — is intertwined into the fabric of contemporary life.