School of Architecture & Design announces spring 2021 Hallmark Symposium lectures

LAWRENCE — The School of Architecture & Design at the University of Kansas has announced programming for the Spring 2021 Hallmark Symposium Lecture Series. 

The Hallmark Symposium Lecture Series was established in 1984 through the generosity of the Hallmark Corporate Foundation with the goal and intention of enriching the education of KU students and in support of those in particular in the Department of Design through exposure to designers, artists and educators from the United States and abroad. During these nearly 30-plus years of collaboration, approximately 10,000 students have been exposed to this rich array of practitioners.    

The lectures are free and open to the public via Zoom.   

All lectures begin at 6 p.m. See event site for Zoom details.  

Feb. 11 

Alexis Du Mond Puchek has over 17 years of experience in front-end web development and design, user experience design, interaction design and information architecture. She has experience working in-house with Fortune 500 companies like Visa and PayPal, and in advertising and consulting firms with companies like Razorfish. She is the Americas IXD Practice Lead for Frog, where she serves as the creative director on client projects and directs the internship program in the Austin studio.   

Feb. 25  

Geoffrey Holstad is an artist, creative director, plein air graphic designer and citizen meteorologist. He is a senior graphic designer at Patagonia and a freelance art director and graphic designer. Some of the brands he has worked with include Google, The North Face, Stüssy, Fjällraven, Poler, Dakine, Toms Shoes, Lifetime Collective, Chaco and Merrell, among many others. His current ongoing projects are Cabin Time and Watch This in a Yurt: for-free films curated by Geoffrey Holstad.   

March 11  

Meg Lewis is a brand designer creating experiences for companies who effect positive change. She has worked with over 100 brands to bring her unique playful style into design-centered experiences. Lewis empowers individuals to discover their unique selves through books, video series, workshops and talks titled "Full Time You." She also founded Ghostly Ferns, an international collective of designers and commercial artists.   

March 25 

Farah Al Qasimi, based in New York and Dubai, works in photography, video and performance. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco; the CCS Bard Galleries at the Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Helena Anrather, New York; The Third Line, Dubai; The List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto. She has participated in residencies at the Delfina Foundation, London; the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; and is a recipient of the New York NADA Artadia Prize and the Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship.  

April 8 

Jennifer Daniel is the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee Chair. Responsibilities include technical implementation, driving strategy for emojification, aligning consensus across company lines, innovating on encoding methods to meet the demand of the public, PR, improving process and maintaining a healthy team of volunteers. When not working to digitize the world's emoji, Daniel spends her time working on ways that use machine learning, augmented reality and other buzzwords to create composable expressive experiences for Google. Previously, she was a visual journalist at The New York Times and graphics director at Bloomberg BusinessWeek.   

April 22 

Susan Sokolowski is an associate professor and director of the Sports Product Design Program at the University of Oregon. She has over 25 years of performance sporting goods experience, working cross-functionally between footwear, apparel and equipment in creative and strategic roles. Her work is holistic in nature, where consideration of the athlete’s body form, performance, psychology, sport, materials and styling are addressed to develop game-changing innovation solutions. She is specifically focused on issues surrounding design of products for special populations, including women, children and athletes with disabilities.    

May 6 

Heather Brantman Torpey is a freelance designer. Previously, she worked for almost a decade as one of eight members of MK12 Studios, a motion graphics and design collective with critical acclaim in both commercial and artistic arenas. Brantman Torpey has worked for commercial clients such as Budweiser, FX, Mastercard, Beatles Rock Band and HBO. She has also worked on short films that have been featured in many international film festivals and exhibitions, and she has worked on visual effects for feature films including "Quantum of Solace," "Particle Fever" and "Equals."