They want to talk about equity, social justice, ethics in design and how, as designers, they can make a positive impact with what they’re doing. “The students I’m teaching now are extremely proactive,” says Matthews. Studio Matthews’s graphic treatment of the photos and text brought OMA&D’s rich and complex history to life. Beginning with a collection of photos and a timeline, the design became a series of five freestanding structures that represented the Black Student Union’s protest of five barriers to education for minority students. The anniversary exhibit came with many challenges, from concise storytelling to constructing an installation that was prohibited from having any attachments to the walls, floor or ceiling. Matthews noticed the effect on the current students, saying, “You could just see them studying the 1968 photos of UW students literally climbing the walls of the administration building in protest, and thinking, ‘Would I be willing to do that?’” This office was a direct result of protests led by the UW’s Black Student Union in the 1960s that demanded equity for minority students and faculty.Īctivist and historian Emile Pitre inspired the class with his firsthand account of the nonviolent actions, culminating in the occupation of administrative offices and university president Charles Odegaard’s office, which convinced him that the time for change was now. Matthews has found a successful collaboration between her studio practice and her students by engaging them in real projects, such as the exhibit to honor the 50th anniversary of UW’s Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D) in 2018. She accepted a faculty position in UW’s Visual Communication Design program, and set up her company in 2008. “We just sort of jumped in at large scale,” says Matthews, “and were working with high-profile organizations from the get-go.” They ran the business for ten years until Matthews, who was pregnant and wanted to live closer to her family, returned to the United States. matthews in London, and their experimental installations and designs for spaces attracted positive press. Their research and presentation led to sustainable practices as a design principle for their subsequent projects, and for Studio Matthews’s work today.Īfter graduation in 1997, the two women started thomas. Thomas and Matthews researched the number of polystyrene cups and aluminum cans the university threw away in one week, then suspended this collection of 7,070 items in a gallery and sold reusable coffee cups to help fund recycling at the university. Matthews and British student Sophie Thomas won with What Comes Around Goes Around, an exhibit that convinced the university it could save money by recycling. The university awarded a prize for the best collaboration between a design and an illustration student. “I think in my group of 25 graphic design students, there were 18 different nationalities.” “The international mix was fantastic,” she says of the experience. For her postgraduate work, she moved to London, United Kingdom, to pursue a long-held interest of living in another country, and earned a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art. Matthews realized she was drawn to typography as a teenager and studied graphic design at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. “We’re telling a story in a space in different ways and in different forms.” Their clients include the Louisiana Children’s Museum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the University of Washington and the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. “ Graphic designer feels like a really old term now,” says Matthews, who prefers visual communicator for her work on the variety of messages and environments they’ve created. Studio Matthews continues to work remotely, designing 2-D and 3-D identity, installations, exhibitions, and the accompanying signage and wayfinding. Nearly a year later, some barricades remain, and Seattle is reopening at partial capacity with health and safety guidelines. Marta Bernstein, Meg Graham, Dan Neifert,Īmy McHorse, Brett Arrington, Daniel Robinson, This page: From left to right: Kristine Matthews, Principal Kristine Matthews remembers the community’s mix of fear and compassion as they watched the events unfold. Next door, the Seattle Police Department East Precinct was ground zero for protesters and activists, who joined Black Lives Matter and occupied several blocks around the station in Capitol Hill. By June, their building was barricaded and on the evening news. Just three weeks after Studio Matthews moved into bigger, brighter offices in the spring of 2020, Seattle was shut down by COVID-19, and the team went home to their cramped kitchen tables.
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