Kali Nikitas is Chair of the Communication Arts department at Otis College of Art and Design. She previously served as an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Visual Arts at Northeastern University in Boston, chaired the Design Department at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and was on faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Kali has curated two international design exhibitions: "And She Told 2Friends: An International Exhibition of Graphic Design by Women" and "Soul Design." Her work has been published in Emigre, Eye, I.D. and the AIGA Journal. She has received awards from the ACD, AIGA and the Type Directors Club. Kali has been considered to be one of the best and well known designers in the Los Angeles/Chicago region. Because of her vast reputation, it was an honor for her to come give her inspirational speech at cal state LA. (Wikipedia)
As a cal state LA design student, I felt privileged to be part of this Gauge event. Throughout her presentation, Kali gave a sense of gentleness when it came to her work, especially when it came to her personality. Kali started off her presentation with an interactive exercise which many thought to very interesting. The exercise was very personalized. During the exercise, the audience had to write down three descriptions of a personal, professional, and global nature. At first, I couldn’t see where she was going with it but soon became clear. She had us jot down our future ambitions pertaining to our view of the world, our career and ourselves. She instructed us to store these cards away, forget about them, then see if you were to run into them again that these ambitions would have came true. This exercise seem to be an activity in which one can help better themselves both personally and socially. An exercise in which she claimed helped her out in her own life. Kali also tried a second exercise with the audience. She took 5 different ideas from the audience and choose one that the audience thought was most important. For some reason everyone choose the idea of owning a Panda Habitat. She then made the audience pull out their smart phones and laptops and post this idea on face book. This exercise seemed to touch on social involvement. Many believe that the purpose of this exercise was to take an issue/idea and try to get an reaction to the topic. Maybe to get people to engage on an issue never thought about.
Despite her creative exercises, Kali gave an intriguing presentation. During her presentation, the audience can see she is very personal and very family oriented. This seems to be her main inspiration for all her work. Kali isn’t like most designers out there. Most the designers seem to lean more towards the professional side of design whereas Kali seems to lean more towards the personal side. Her design seems to work more in her favor than for the client, she seems to be more of an artist rather than a designer. Throughout her presentation, she made many references to other designers, artists, events, and work which many found very helpful. She also mention her excursions in Europe where she met new and interesting artists/designers. Kali must of gained great inspiration from those travels. It seems like she applied a good amount of European design style in some of her work. For example, her line of bag designs seem to be very European oriented. Kali’s Fashion for Love project was also very interesting. I believe the most successful type of creativity is the one where people can interact with. This project has many people involved and engaging in this activity. It is cleverly fun and highly interesting. Kali has a very effective way of interacting with her audience, creative engagement, and most importantly gaining student reaction.
Kali Nikitas was a very inspirational speaker. She made me feel a bit more secure in choosing the field of design. Before her presentation I wasn’t sure in which direction of design I wanted to head for but then she gave me hope. She mentioned that many people tend to get in the field of design without a sense of direction. Fortunately, she expressed the fact that obtaining and education in graphic design/visual communication can help open doors to other interesting careers. One can use what he/she learned in design/art and apply it to another type of career. As designer, she made me realize there is many options to choose from and many open doors available. It all just depends one’s ambition and desire to push forward. She made me realize the importance of getting evolved and participating in the field of design. Inspiration must come from everywhere.
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