Design Milk is excited to share the most recent lecture of the 2023/2024 academic year of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies Design Conversation Lecture Series at the Rochester Institute of Technology. This session features Faride Mereb, an award-winning Venezuelan book designer, researcher, and educator who is based in New York City.
In the lecture, Mereb highlights various case studies she has developed over the years in both Venezuela and now in the U.S. through her design studio, Letra Muerta Inc., spanning book design, workshops, and time as a Latin American Collections curator for institutions. She dives into her archival research linked to design, including the work of Karmele Leizaola, the first female graphic designer in Venezuela, who Mereb studied in 2021 under the 10×10 Photobooks’ Research Grants on Photobook History. Another designer Mereb studied and shared about is the work of Victor Viano, as part of her “Design and Migration” series, which is heavily connected with the oil boom and state financed publishing initiatives in Venezuela during the 1960s and 1970s.
To learn more about Faride Mereb, watch the entire lecture below:
Work Faride Mereb is doing on the archives of Victor Viano:
To learn more about The Vignelli Center for Design Studies at RIT, they have launched digital access to the archives through Google Arts & Culture, joining over 2000 cultural institutions from around the world. The initial launch includes nearly 900 high resolution images of artifacts from the archives so that now anyone with access to the Internet and Google Arts & Culture can search the Vignelli archives or browse it by color or chronological order.
This lecture is presented with the support of RIT’s MAGIC Center.
This lecture series is made possible in part by the generosity of RIT Alumnus, Chris Bailey, and Bailey Brand Consulting.
