2020 Faculty Biennial Profile: Erik Brandt

Meet the artists of the 2020 MCAD Faculty Biennial.

These forms are very dear to me. They came to life in a moment of deep despair, when I felt I had reached a point where I could no longer comment on current events as I had through my Ficciones Typografika and Typografika Politika projects—the pace and extent of daily horrors in our current political and social climate made it seem almost impossible to say anything at all. These forms find their root in an observation and then a reinterpretation of flattened packaging. While this formal process is endlessly enjoyable and revealing in itself, I discovered that I could lend a voice to their form by creating drawings of three individuals, on the surface identical but on closer examination, idiosyncratic. After enlarging these drawings and wheatpasting them, I have started explaining them consistently as three friends engaged in some common activity—this activity is invariably related to current events, though the expression is more subtle and less direct, but somehow, in my view, even more emotional and aspirational. They are after all, three friends.

About Erik Brandt

Erik Brandt is a graphic designer and educator who has been active since 1994. He is currently Chair of the Design Department and Professor of Graphic Design at MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Estados Unidos). He was elected a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) in 2012 and curated Ficciones Typografika, a project dedicated to typographic exploration in a public space. Educated internationally, his career began as a cartoonist in Japan in 1994, and has since found focus largely in print media. He maintains a small graphic design studio, Typografika (Visual Communication und Konditorei), and his work has been published and exhibited internationally.