Owner at Self: Everything Studio

Jessica Green and Tom Griffiths of Everything Studio are the fifth speakers in AIGA/NY’s series in collaboration with the Museum of Arts and Design, Owner at Self: Adaptive and Innovative Design Practices. They first met at Pratt Institute in 2000 when they were graphic design students. In 2004 Tom went on to receive an MFA at Yale, while Jessica started a design company in New York. In 2007 they partnered and began designing under the name Everything Studio.

Working within the art and culture sector, their multidisciplinary practice focuses on publications, custom typography, graphic identities, and websites. Recent clients include BOMB magazine, Cabinet magazine, Studio Voltaire, Studio Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Verso Books, and Futurepoem. In 2012, ‘Curiosity and Method: Ten Years of Cabinet Magazine’ was featured in book and cover categories of Design Observer’s 50 Books / 50 Covers. Tom currently teaches a Senior Thesis class at Parsons, The New School.

OWNER AT SELF: ADAPTIVE AND INNOVATIVE DESIGN PRACTICES

Economic and technological upheavals of the last few years have challenged traditional notions of the design office. The Great Recession has made overhead a liability and long-term contracts less accessible; social media and the proliferation of image blogs allow designers to gain sizable followings overnight; and the desire to create meaningful and self-directed work has encouraged designers to look beyond billable hours to other forms of recompense.

In addition to showing their work, the designers featured in Owner at Self will share the adaptive and innovative strategies they’ve developed that allow them to make the work they want to make. Some initiate their own projects while others form geographically dispersed partnerships; some seek out alternative funding sources while others adapt their professional lives to their personal ones; all are taking the entrepreneurial risk to build practices that new conditions require.