The exhibition Course highlights 50 successful careers from UQAM’s many design programs to celebrate the School of Design’s five decades.
The exhibition Course is revealed in the form of comparisons, putting school work and the most influential graduates’ drafts side by side. We observe the trajectory of certain people and the approach that led them to their current environment of expertise.
A majority of the works exhibited are accompanied by anecdotes, stories about an inspiring professor, academic worries and ordeals overcome. For the event, 50 routes were meticulously selected. Marc H. Choko, Éric Daoust and Patrick Evans, emblematic figures of design, are the curators behind the exhibition.
From 1974 to tomorrow
We see an obvious link between certain projects of the time and the current designs of the same designer. Nicolas Ménard is an example of perfecting the same discipline; his project is an animation with hundreds of wax pencil drawings, produced in just one week.
Initially, it was a challenge launched by one of his teachers which he accomplished with flying colors. His work was even published on Disney’s YouTube channel “Mickey Mouse”, which approached him as part of a search for animation for children. Mr. Ménard today produces large-scale animations, in drawing or in three dimensions.
Earlier in the exhibition, a half-moon magazine written by Philippe Lamarre, the founder of Urbania, presents notions of graphic design. Its dynamic and colorful pages are covered with American football elements.
Philippe Lamarre produced this booklet at the end of his Bachelor of Graphic Designwhich he completed in 2000. Three years later, he founded the magazine Urbania.
This sketch recalls theUrbania diverse and trendy today. The presentation and the unique tone, the football elements which contrast with the seriousness of the paragraphs.
Like the German progressives
Several big names in design have left the doors of UQAM, including Alain Carle, icon of residential architecture, Ying Gao, fashion designer, Philippe Lamarre and Nicolas Ménard.
The success of graduates comes from their dedication and that of professors to their discipline for which their expertise is recognized. “We are talking about a general program where students from different disciplines come together. They inspire each other […]the idea being that the division of the daily living environment is not a good thing, they must understand it as the same whole,” says Marc H. Choko, professor emeritus and former director of the Design Center.
According to him, UQAM still brings its touch to its vision of design, inspired by that of the Bauhaus, the famous modern German design school closed by the Nazis in 1933. For Mr. Choko, UQAM has an ideology of common design. Whether in fashion or environmental design, all disciplines under a more homogeneous umbrella are everyday “objects”, which must be inspired by the same values.
Because it is true that the trace of the designer can be subtle, but that deep down each object, piece, garment, place, parasol and other little dessert spoon comes from an idea, from a precise objective, from ‘a design.
