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Interview with Silvia Minguzzi |
Home > Designer Interviews > Silvia Minguzzi |
Editor Frank Scott (FS) from DesignPRWire has interviewed designer Silvia Minguzzi (SM) for A’ Design Award and Competition. You can access the full profile of Silvia Minguzzi by clicking here.
FS: Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
SM: I have a communication and new media background, I started an MFA in graphic design in 2009 after having worked as an art director for a theater production company in NY for 4 years.
FS: Can you tell us more about your company / design studio?
SM: I'm a one woman show right now. I work and teach at the university and design, mostly websites as a freelancer. My mission (I call it manifesto) is to create successful projects that are tailored to empower small business needs to reach maximum potential. I like to collaborate on all work and find the right marketing solutions to take your business to the next level, bringing big agency customer service to the small business client level. Mine is a proactive approach to advertising by helping small businesses establish themselves and grow; combining branding, strategy, web and print work looking for out of the box affordable media outlets to publicize your business.
FS: What is "design" for you?
SM: I will use a quote from Bruno Munari "Design is a bridge between art and life"
FS: What kinds of works do you like designing most?
SM: I can tell you for whom I like to design, and it is usually clients whose mission I agree with. From web to brochures, poster (I love posters), video reels, I like to use my skill to help a cause that needs to be helped.
FS: What was the first thing you designed for a company?
SM: It was a brochure for a international conference. At that time I was still living in Europe and working for a tech company designing softwares to manage hospitals. I was organizing this 4 days conference in Rome with people coming from all over Europe and I was given the task to redesign an identity brochure for my company Gesi.
FS: What is your favorite material / platform / technology?
SM: I like to jump and dance around media. Maybe is my communication background, but all my designs starts with a precise message and my idea is that using multiple media will help me deliver them to a wide range of audience. I do graphic design, web design, digital fabrication, video, traditional and digital printmaking
FS: When do you feel the most creative?
SM: when I have the idea
FS: Which aspects of a design do you focus more during designing?
SM: First is the message, that is the first thing. Then is a long way of tweaking and tweaking small details
FS: What kind of emotions do you feel when you design?
SM: Like the disorganized objects, data, colors, fonts are in a better order. It gives me peace and pleasure.
FS: What kind of emotions do you feel when your designs are realized?
SM: Now is the time to switch role and become the agent of myself and start advertising for it. Not sure I like this part, but if I don't do it no one will. In a way I fell like my work just started over again.
FS: What makes a design successful?
SM: universality, simplicity, that umft that no one can explain!
FS: When judging a design as good or bad, which aspects do you consider first?
SM: How I respond to it. The first look is so important, it will make me stop and appreciate the details later.
FS: From your point of view, what are the responsibilities of a designer for society and environment?
SM: Designer should use their skills to simplify complicated messages and be able to deliver them to a vast audience. That doesn't mean delivering a simplistic answer to a complicated question. Being a designer is being a problem solver, we have to find the best way to do it.
FS: How do you think the "design field" is evolving? What is the future of design?
SM: I hope the future of design is a conversation with different media and I hope it will be full of interesting challenges between a fast world that is getting accustomed on receiving mass informations every seconds.
FS: When was your last exhibition and where was it? And when do you want to hold your next exhibition?
SM: My last exhibition was in late August, a small design campaign entitled "Equality makes the difference", in the visual Art Building in Fort Collins. My next one will be a Solo juried show at the Hatton Gallery of Colorado State University from Nov 18 to Dec 6th, entitled Another Perspectives and will includes work from different media (graphic design, printmaking, digital fabrication, video and fiber) on the issue of immigration from north Africa to Europe.
FS: Where does the design inspiration for your works come from? How do you feed your creativity? What are your sources of inspirations?
SM: Usually data. I mostly work on human rights and lately I've been focusing on immigration a lot. The Immigration I experienced when I was living in Italy, so the one coming from North Africa to Europe.
FS: How would you describe your design style? What made you explore more this style and what are the main characteristics of your style? What's your approach to design?
SM: Simple, graphic, interested in typography and messages, spread all over different media.
FS: Where do you live? Do you feel the cultural heritage of your country affects your designs? What are the pros and cons during designing as a result of living in your country?
SM: Right now I live in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA, but I'm originally from Italy. I was born in the North of Italy in Turin, but I spent most of my live in Rome, but 4 years in junior high when I moved to a small city in Tuscany, Grosseto. I moved to the UN, NY in 2005 and lived there for 4 years until 2009. I honestly really like to live in a Country that is not mine, I think it is a very important exercise to feel diverse, be the diversity and I'm not even that diverse let's face it...I grew up in big cities, but I'm enjoying my time in this small US town close to the Rockies. Plans for the future? Still don't know. Maybe Europe again. Every 2 years I spend 5-6 weeks in Hanoi since my husband has an appointment with the Foreign Trade university, and I love it.
FS: How do you work with companies?
SM: Usually as freelancer, I'm very very very reliable, but I don't like to be hired for long contracts since I still can afford and really value my free time mostly to travel. What I like is that since I learned to work as a designer by myself I'm king of a one woman show, I try to do as much as I can by myself. Designers I've been working with tell me that I'm more like a programmer than a designer and programmers tell me that I'm mostly a designer... I like to be able to talk to all of them, understand the challenges and find the best solution to a problem.
FS: What are your suggestions to companies for working with a designer? How can companies select a good designer?
SM: Results and time managing. I strongly believe in deadlines and don't understand how a designer can be reliable if it doesn't deliver.
FS: Can you talk a little about your design process?
SM: Research research research. Usually I read an article or a book, or watch a comedy show (yes comedy central has been one of my best inspiration John Stewart, Stephen Colbert...) and then I start looking for data that can explain better the phenomena and try to design my personal point of view, supported by those data.
FS: What are 5 of your favorite design items at home?
SM: - my home, I designed it...it is contemporary western, it this makes sense. - before and after furniture found or very old I decide to revamp - my 6ft lime green desk - a 1950 toaster my grandparents bought when they were living in the USA - My pictures walls, where I have travels photos I took and are my window of the things I did and a reminder of so much more I want to do and see.
FS: Can you describe a day in your life?
SM: wake up at 7, breakfast and NY Times, emails and a little bit of work before my classes around 9.30. I usually teach, take classes and work in my studio until 6pm. Every other day I train Capoeira (a brazilian martial art/dance form) and I frequently have dinner with friends or nights at the small cinema cafe in the downtown. I bike around town all year long, we have 300 days of Sun in Colorado.
FS: Could you please share some pearls of wisdom for young designers? What are your suggestions to young, up and coming designers?
SM: Don't fall in love with your first idea, challenge yourself
FS: From your perspective, what would you say are some positives and negatives of being a designer?
SM: Freedom and freedom. A lot of people don't deal very well with the fact that being an artist doesn't mean to don't need to be very organized, actually is probably the contrary.
FS: What is your "golden rule" in design?
SM: Know the rule and break the rule, but know the rule!
FS: What skills are most important for a designer?
SM: listen
FS: Which tools do you use during design? What is inside your toolbox? Such as software, application, hardware, books, sources of inspiration etc.?
SM: pencil and paper, adobe package, rhino, premiere and final cut, after effects, 3d glasses, good music, design book I buy when traveling.
FS: Designing can sometimes be a really time consuming task, how do you manage your time?
SM: I'm pretty good with that. I write lists and sub lists of things to do and I feel profound pleasure when I check and item out...and mostly I set my deadlines a week before the actual deadline (when I have that time...) so that in case I'm drowning I can have some extra time to catch up, or just really work on the details of my work.
FS: How long does it take to design an object from beginning to end?
SM: It depends, sometimes 3 days, sometimes 3 months. sometimes is a small poster or a digital fabrication installation, or vice versa.
FS: What is the most frequently asked question to you, as a designer?
SM: How much would you charge for a website? Nothing complicated...
FS: What was your most important job experience?
SM: So far working for WET Production in New York. A theater production company whose mission was challenging the female stereotype in the media. I was the Art Director for 4 years.
FS: Who are some of your clients?
SM: WET Productions, Vivodec good design doing good, Connectipedia, Capoeira Canavial. I created websites for research centers for some Departments at CSU University: department of Economics, Anthropology and Sociology.
FS: What type of design work do you enjoy the most and why?
SM: I like the art direction, coming up with an idea and collaborate to realize it with a number of people that can and will add their own ideas.
FS: What are your future plans? What is next for you?
SM: Hopefully keep teaching at CSU and find a spot in the design community here in North Colorado to promote the development and understanding of new media art
FS: Do you work as a team, or do you develop your designs yourself?
SM: Both, for artistic project I usually work by my self, but I'm pretty good in teams, I naturally tend to organize other people work, but usually team mates like that.
FS: Do you have any works-in-progress being designed that you would like to talk about?
SM: I'm still int he research timeframe, but I want to keep exploring the world of data and design of date experiment with infographics
FS: How can people contact you?
SM: www.silviaminguzzi.com info@silviaminguzzi.com soooo much better than my cell phone!
FS: Any other things you would like to cover that have not been covered in these questions?
SM: all the freaky people make the beauty of the world
FS: Thank you for providing us with this opportunity to interview you.
A’ Design Award and Competitions grants rights to press members and bloggers to use parts of this interview. This interview is provided as it is; DesignPRWire and A' Design Award and Competitions cannot be held responsible for the answers given by participating designers.
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