For young artists and designers seeking advice and inspiration, the Distinguished Alumnus Lecture Series at the School of Visual Arts offers plenty of both. Last night at the SVA Theater, Julia Hoffman, creative director of advertising and graphic design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, discusses her life and career. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Hoffmann earned her BFA in Graphic Design in 2002 from the School of Visual Arts, where she now teaches.

At The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Julia Hoffmann oversees brand identity and design for exhibition graphics, advertising, signage and collateral projects for all of MoMA's exhibitions and programs. She leads a creative team to develop design solutions that enhance MoMA's brand in New York City and around the world. She started her career working for Stephen Doyle and later for Paula Scher at Pentagram in New York, designing identities, branding systems, packaging and publication design for the Public Theater, Time magazine and the Metropolitan Opera. Prior to taking her post at MoMA, Hoffman was interactive art director for the Colorado-based advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, where her clients included Burger King, Microsoft and Volkswagen.

Hoffman talked about how her four years at SVA prepared her for the real world, including Richard Wilde’s two-point grading system, for concept and execution. As she charted her career path retrospective, she showed how the balance of power shifted between designing and thinking as she climbed the ladder.

As a young designer at Doyle Partners, she said, all the thinking was done before she was assigned to a project; all she had to do was design, design, design. At Pentagram, she had evolved to the stage where her job was to manage the studio team of Paula Scher. At Crispin Porter + Bogusky, she was primarily involved in what the agency termed “concepting.” For any given campaign, she generally came up with 25 different approaches. Hoffman said that after working 14-hour days all week for a year without seeing much of Colorado, she was ready for a change. When the MoMA post came up, it seemed like a match made in heaven, with a more equal balance between thinking and designing.

At MoMA, she leads a team of 6 designers plus copywriters, production specialists and a small support staff: together they produce complete identities for 12 special exhibitions per year. Because the workload is so intense, she wanted to come up with design templates, in addition to that created by her former mentor, Paula Scher. Hoffman came up with something radical that is nearly invisible because it succeeds so well: except for the exhibition’s identity, all type throughout the museum is the same font. That includes wall text, labels, information, website, advertising, and wayfinding. She went with MoMA Gothic, cut by Matthew Carter and based on Franklin Gothic. By eliminating what was formerly a large portion of design and decision-making, she freed up her team to focus on the exhibition I.D. and brand promotion. (Below: screen shot from MoMA website)

Another project that Hoffman presented was a recent membership promotion program, for which the word “join” was replaced with the word “belong.” “Belong to something engrossing, gripping, captivating and cool.” Etc. Placards and posters printed in the brilliant MoMA hues with black backgrounds were placed throughout the museum in out of the way places, where there’s usually nothing else to look at, including elevators and restrooms, on the sides of desks in the lobby, and in the restaurants. After reading these messages multiple times, a visitor might act on the idea of "belonging."

In the Q&A that followed, Hoffman covered the bases, including the difference between working for an agency or an in-house design team; transitioning from one level of experience to the next; the differences between designing 3-D and interactive versus print media; what she looks for in hiring a new member of the design team; and where she gets her inspiration.

This was the final Distinguished Alum lecture of the year. Previous talks have been given by Elizabeth Peyton (BFA 1987 Fine Arts), Reed + Rader (Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader, both BFA 2007 Photography) and Dash Shaw (BFA 2005 Illustration) among others. Information. SVA lectures, panels, film programs, exhibitions and more continue throughout the academic year. Tonight, The New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Holland Cotter takes the podium at the SVA Theater. Information.