New York, NY April 9, 2004 -- In recent years, thanks to the commercial success of his landmark collaboration with Target Storesโ€"a partnership that recently marked its five-year anniversaryโ€"Michael Graves has become a household name, equivalent in the public eye with the very concept of โ€œgood design.โ€ In this new book he states, โ€œIn designing everyday objects, I want to encourage the impression of familiarity and also allow those objects to be seen in a slightly different way.โ€ In four original essaysโ€"Figurative Design, Domesticity, Color, Scaleโ€"Graves describes the thinking and themes behind his work, illuminating his unparalleled ability to create eye-catching, witty, and formally beautiful products with popular appeal.
Generously illustrated with more than 200 color images, MICHAEL GRAVES DESIGNS surveys a fascinating career in design and retail. Featured are instantly recognizable projects with the Walt Disney Company and the Italian tableware manufacturer Alessi, maker of Graves' playful and sophisticated chrome โ€œSinging Birdโ€ teakettle. Since 1985, a staggering amount of two million of these teakettles has been sold worldwide. Also seen are projects with Sunar, Steuben, Belvedere Studio, and Dansk, among others.
And of course, this book documents the Graves-Target phenomenon. Presented are toasters, jewelry, clocks, watches, packaging, telephones, frames, fans, games, a wireless computer mouse, and even a prefabricated modular home. Also included are examples of Target's whimsical advertising campaigns and Graves' architectural renderings of store displays. As Paul Goldberger recently wrote in Metropolis, โ€œGraves' work for Target may be his most enduring legacyโ€ฆthanks to mass merchandising, a tiny piece of an architect's oeuvre is within the reach of everyone. There is also a look, a feel, to the products that is consistent, which comes largely from Graves' own aesthetic. His objects have a playfulness and warmth to them. And almost all of them do something that is wonderful for any object to do, which is make you smile.โ€
Graves' relationship with Target began when the company contributed to the Graves-designed scaffolding that enveloped the Washington Monument during its historic restoration in 1998. Both structural and stunning, the scaffolding provided the proper support and gravitas for this important project, which is also featured in this new book.
MICHAEL GRAVES DESIGNS is bound in a special high-tech rubberlike blue material, called Shadow and manufactured by Fibermark. When Graves determined the color scheme for the Target kitchen appliancesโ€"blue for touch and yellow accents for dialsโ€"the โ€œGraves blueโ€ not only corresponded to the products' cool and comfortable handles and knobs, but also became a signature color familiar to millions of shoppers.
Among the book's illustrations are technical drawings, product models and prototypes, rare examples of personal sketches, and specially commissioned photographs that give a behind-the-scenes look at Graves' Princeton, New Jersey offices. All of these elements, and the book's affordable price, make MICHAEL GRAVES DESIGNS a must-have for the professional, student, and general consumer alike.
MORE ABOUT MICHAEL GRAVES
Born in Indiana in 1934, Graves' father was a cattle dealer and his mother was a nurse. When a young Graves told his mother that he wanted to be an artist, she said, โ€œIf you are not as good as Picasso, you will starve,โ€ and suggested that he become an architect or engineer. When he learned what an engineer did, he said he'd become an architect and started making sketches of the houses in the neighborhood.
Graves graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati in1958. He then went on to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, which had become a center for modernist thinking in the United States under the leadership of Walter Gropius, the former director of the Bauhaus. After receiving his masters degree, he worked in the office of designer George Nelson, famed for his tables and sofas for Herman Miller and his playful Atomic and Ball clocks. In 1960, Graves won the coveted Prix de Rome, which brought him to the American Academy of Rome for two years.
Upon returning to America, he became a professor of architecture at Princeton Universityโ€"where he taught from 1962 to 2001, and where currently he is professor emeritusโ€"and set up his own architectural practice. Since 1964, Michael Graves & Associates has undertaken a wide variety of architectural projects worldwide, including multi-use urban developments, corporate headquarters, hotels, libraries, theaters, museums, academic buildings, healthcare facilities, sports and recreational facilities, and housing and private residences. Located in two former houses across the street from one another, the architectural practice takes place in one and the product design division, established in 1991, in the other. In 1994, he opened his own store to display and sell his products. In 2003, the Michael Graves Design Group became an independent company within the larger practice.
Graves' first major public commission was the Portland Office Building in 1982. This was followed by the Humana Building in Louisville, Kentucky (1982), the Team Disney Building in Burbank, California (1986), the Walt Disney World Dolphin and Swan Hotels in Lake Buena Vista, Florida (1987), and the Denver Central Library (1991).
Recent honors include the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Clinton in 1999, and the A.I.A. (American Institute of Architects) Gold Medal in 2001. About the A.I.A. award, Robert Ivy, Editor in Chief of Architectural Record, wrote, โ€œFor Michael Graves, an architect, teacher, and industrial designer, selection as the Gold Medallist brought peer recognition to a man who has elevated the visibility of architecture and architects around the world. His wildly successful foray into product design has proved that design intelligence can breed value for the larger culture.โ€
Graves' award-winning work for Target was showcased in the exhibit US Design 1975-2000 at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York in 2003.
ABOUT PHIL PATTON
Phil Patton is the author of BUG: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile, DREAMLAND: Travels Inside Roswell and Area 51, MADE IN USA: The Secret Histories of the Things that Made America, OPEN ROAD: A Celebration of the American Highway, and the recently reissued VOYAGER, the official story of the world's first around-the-world un-refueled airplane flight.
He writes regularly for the โ€œDesign Notebook,โ€ โ€œPublic Eye,โ€ and automotive columns of The New York Times and is a contributing editor of ID magazine, Wired, and Esquire, for which he writes on design and automobiles. He also has written for The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Artforum, Vogue, and many other publications.
He has contributed to catalogs and developed exhibitions at museums around the United States, notably Different Roads: Automobiles for the Next Century, the landmark 1999 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art for which he was curatorial consultant, and On The Job: Design and the American Office at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. He has served as a commentator for CBS News, the History Channel, and several public television series.
He has taught and lectured at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York, Montclair State University in New Jersey, California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has spoken at the Aspen Design Conference, the IDSA (Industrial Design Society of America) national conference, American Center for Design's โ€œLiving Surfacesโ€ conference, the Design Institute at the University of Minnesota, the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and other venues.
ABOUT PENTAGRAM
Pentagram is an award-winning multi-disciplinary design firm with offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Austin, and Berlin. One of the world's most respected and prestigious firms, Pentagram's range of clients includes multi-national corporations and museums, book and magazine publishers, restaurants, and airlines, among others. They work on design graphics, exhibitions, products, packaging, environments, buildings, and communications programs.
ABOUT MELCHER MEDIA
Founded in 1994 by Charles Melcher and based in New York, Melcher Media is a content producer and packager with more than 40 titles and 4.5 million books in print. With a reputation for extending the craft of bookmaking and pushing the genres of traditional publishing, Melcher Media combines innovative ideas with exceptional design.
Melcher Media has created successful books for a variety of companies and institutions, such as HBO, MTV, Comedy Central, VH-1, National Geographic, the Smithsonian Institution, Lexus, and Nike for a range of publishers, including Broadway Books, Crown, HarperCollins, Penguin Putnam, Pocket Books, St. Martin's Press, Virgin Publishing, Miramax Books, William-Morrow & Company, Alfred A. Knopf, and Chronicle.
In 2003, Melcher Media produced two hugely popular books, in collaboration with two of today's most successful and favorite magazines: SECRETS OF STYLE: InStyle's Complete Guide to Dressing Your Best Every Day and THE LUCKY SHOPPING MANUAL: Building and Improving Your Wardrobe Piece by Piece, which appeared on The New York Times bestseller list. Another recent top seller was 100 YEARS OF HARLEY-DAVIDSON, part of a larger publishing program Melcher Media developed exclusively for the iconic motor company. And the most playfully perverse genre-bending titles to date, THE POP-UP BOOK OF PHOBIAS and THE POP-UP BOOK OF NIGHTMARES, have become cult classics.
MICHAEL GRAVES DESIGNS: The Art of the Everyday Object is the first book to be published solely under the Melcher Media imprint. In fall 2004, the company will launch a new list of original titles.