Alumna Creates Book Series on Design Disciplines
DAAP alumna Pam Pease is creating a series of books to teach children about design. Contributors to the project include noted graphic designer and DAAP alumnus Michael Bierut.
Pam Pease hopes her current design project will make a distinct difference for today's youth.
The fashion design graduate from the University of Cincinnati's internationally ranked College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), is currently creating and will soon publish a series of interactive books related to a variety of design disciplines. The purpose of the books is to introduce children and youths, from ages 9-14, to the different design disciplines.
Contributing to that project are a number of prestigious design practitioners and educators. These include noted graphic designer and fellow DAAP graduate Michael Bierut, as well as Paul Warwick Thompson, director of the Smithsonian Institute's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. Bierut, Thompson and other leaders in the field of design have contributed forewords to books in the series.
The series exams the following design disciplines:
- Animation
- Architecture
- Book art
- Environmental design
- Fashion design
- Film and theater
- Graphic design
- Interior design
- Product design
- A general-topic book titled "World of Design"
Pease, originally from Dayton, Ohio, and now living in Chapel Hill, N.C., is author, designer and publisher of these and other books. She came to her current graphic design vocation by way of a fashion design career begun after graduating from DAAP's fashion design program in 1974.
After graduating, she worked as a designer in California's sportswear industry before finally beginning her own firm in the mid-1980s. She ran her own swimwear and sportswear firm, Oliver Pease, for 12 years in California before her husband's career (he is also a DAAP alumnus, a 1975 graduate of DAAP's top-ranked architecture program) took the family to Buffalo, N.Y.
Recalls Pease jokingly, "There's not a lot of call for swimwear in Buffalo."
So, it was time for change in design direction - to a focus on graphic design.
"When I entered DAAP, I loved both graphic design and fashion design. It was really a flip of the coin at the last minute that prompted me to opt for fashion design at the end of my sophomore year. So, now I was ready to explore the other side of that coin," she explains.
Her first major book project came after another move to Chapel Hill.
There, Pease moved into a neighborhood where two sisters - both avid gardeners - had lived since the 1940s. These neighbors had developed the custom of creating an impressive garden each year.
Says Pease, "They worked on it all year long, and it was perfection for two weeks out of the year. During those two weeks, hundreds of us in the neighborhood would visit the garden when the owners posted a sign that stated 'The Garden is Open.'"
"As a designer, I appreciated their effort, their creativity and how it expressed itself in working with plants and landscaping. I wanted to do something equal to their effort that paid homage to it," she remembers.
That led to her first book, a pop-up work that she wrote and designed titled, appropriately enough, "The Garden is Open."
Pease gave this first book to all the neighbors...and suddenly, she was a publisher: "Barnes and Noble ordered 200 copies. A local paper used the book cover for an illustration, and that led to other orders as well. Suddenly, I was printing and binding 500 books in my home studio."
That was in the year 2000. And Pease's newest company, Paintbox Press, was born.
Other books followed, including a pop-up book focusing on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. "Macy's On Parade" features rows of marching band members; elaborate floats led by Tom Turkey; the Radio City Rockettes and hundreds of Macy's employees as clowns, mimes and Keystone Kops.
In 2005, "Derby Day" celebrated the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. Adds Pease, "That book project brought back memories of when I was a UC student, and we would go down in person to watch the derby from the infield."
And just out in 2009 is a coffee table book, printed in both French and English, celebrating the Tour de France. One perk from that project is that Pease will ride in a chase car for one day at the next Tour de France to be held in July.
And then she'll get back to pedaling as fast and hard as she can to finish her upcoming project: the 10-book series for children and youth regarding design's different disciplines.
"The idea for the series came from my visits to schools where I would talk about design and leave behinds samples of design work. For many kids, they really don't know what design is, much less the specialties. These books introduce these specialties in interactive and accessible ways while also introducing basic principles like color, balance and composition. Project ideas are included, and steps that will guide readers in setting up mini-studios in a corner of their bedrooms," she says.
The books will be released in pairs, starting with fashion design and graphic design at the end of September 2009. Next will come architecture and interior design at the end of 2009. The series will be available in museum shops as well as public and school libraries.
Pease credits her success in design to her training at DAAP.
She states, "UC's design programs were award winning even when I was in school here. I had great co-op work experiences, including co-op quarters in London. But, most important, I was taught to use both sides of my brain at DAAP, to be both creative and a business person."
In fact, Pease learned that lesson so well that she's now literally ready to write the book (or even 10 books) on the subject.
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