   Thank you to the Department of Art and Architecture at the New York Public Library for inviting me to speak about John Vassos last week! Over 70 people attended the talk in the gorgeous Celeste auditorium. I met with collectors of John Vassos books and radios and got some great leads for an exhibition of John Vassos. The audience asked hard questions - like how would John Vassos have designed the iPhone? I thought he would do it in a similar way to Jonathan Ives given Vassos's affinity for the Bauhaus School and for simple, clean design. Vassos's products are notable and recognizable for their simplicity of design, frequent use of geometric shapes, squares and circles and deep attention t the user. He always kept the user in mind especially when thinking about the user interface and touch, these are elements which has made Apple so successful in the design of their products. My next talk will be at the Bowie Library on July 16. If you are in the Maryland/DC area, please come! It will be followed by a tour of the National Capital Television and Radio Museum.
0 Comments
 I was so honored that John Vassos's great niece Jayne attended my talk at the New York Public Library on Tuesday, June 14. She has been a great support for this project lending me images and materials from her personal collection and telling me amazing stories of her famous Uncle John who she was close to as a young woman. Thank you Jayne!!!
"I really enjoyed reading Danielle Shapiro's excellent book John Vassos: Industrial Design for Modern Life. In it, Shapiro makes a convincing case for Vassos's formerly unheralded, but highly significant, early contributions to the field now known as user interface (UI) design. I found the chapters about Vassos's design of knobs, dials, displays, and casings for RCA radios and studio recording machinery especially illuminating. Furthermore, the book is beautifully written; the illustrations are aptly chosen and almost all are "new"; and the footnotes are a rich source of information not only about Vassos but also about twentieth-century design, generally. It's a great book! CARMA GORMAN, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Assistant Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas, Austin. Thank you Professor Gorman! Professor Gorman is the author of many books on industrial design including the excellent The Industrial Design Reader (2003) and the associate editor of the journal Design and Culture.
 Don't want to brag but an article by Eve M. Kahn about my book and upcoming lecture at the New York Public Library on June 14 is featured in tomorrow's (June 3) New York Times in the Antiques and Design Section (scroll down, it is the second article). How wonderful!! Thanks to Ms. Kahn for a stimulating interview and for helping spread the word about the talk. University of Minnesota PressSmithsonian's Archives of American ArtNYPL The New York Public LibraryBooks on Call NYC, Inc.
|
AuthorDanielle Shapiro, is a writer and author of the first biography of John Vassos, modernist Greek-American industrial designer - John Vassos: Industrial Design for Modern Life. Categories |
RSS Feed