With social geography joining ranks with social media, and infographics becoming essential to getting your news, a new exhibition about graphic designers in New York gets the GPS on 78 top firms.

Image of the Studio: A Portrait of New York City Graphic Design, on view through October 26^th at Cooper Union’s Gallery 41, puts a face on New York design studios, and links studio-created material with data points about the working life of its population through an array of fun infographics, beautifully executed in pink and indigo, and scalable cubes representing population size.

"We took mapping as an inspiration or a launching point," says Alexander Tochilovsky, of the Herb LubalinStudy Center of Design and Typography, and co-curator of the exhibition. Matt Owens, the other co-curator and a founding member of Athletics design studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, came to Mr.Tochilovsky with the idea of an exhibition looking at current graphic design studios in New York City, the world's hub for the industry.

This merged seamlessly with a long-standing idea that Mr. Tochilovskyhad been considering. "You look at the studio presences online and there is not that much photographed. You don't really know what the main principals look like. So I always fantasized about having their portraits: these are the people that make graphic design."

 

So Tochilovsky and Owens came up with a list of every New York studio they could think of and solicited them to provide both a portrait of the staff and representative work that would fit inside a 30-by-30-inch space. "They could do whatever they wanted within those dimensions," Tochilovsky says.

"We created an online questionnaire," he continued. "Every studio filled it out with as much information as they were willing to share. There was a range of very comprehensive questions including where they are located, how many employees they have, the square footage of their studio, the ratio of male to female staff, what they like to do socially, and whether they have any design rituals. And we used that information to create infographics. That's the 'mapping.'"

The show reveals interesting narratives about studio life, which is often a mystery to design students. Tochilovsky says, "They wonder, 'How does a graphic design studio operate? What does it entail? Can I start something off right out of school?'” But the show will appeal to non-designers as well—people who often wonder where all the visual information they are constantly digesting comes from—and who makes it.

Image of the Studio: A Portrait of New York City Graphic Design. 41 Cooper Gallery, Cooper Union. On view through October 26^th. Mon-Fri, 10-am-6pm. Sat-Sun, noon-5 pm. Website.

Panel Discussion, Monday, October 28, 6:30-8:30pm. Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Square, NY, NY. Directions. Photos: Peggy Roalf.