Meet Our Panelists!

For this year’s Out of the Vault program, MEET MORT & MILLIE, we’ve gathered an exciting batch of people to help shed light on the industrial films of Goldsoll Design & Film Associates.

But before we get to our panelists, let’s first meet our moderator– Amy Beste! Amy recently authored a chapter on the Goldsholls in Chicago Makes Modern: How Creative Minds Changed Society, and deserves a ton of credit for spearheading our effort in what we like to call “Goldsholl outreach,” or re-introducing audiences to the work and films of Goldsoll Design & Film Associates. Amy is a recent PhD graduate of Northwestern University and the current director of public programming for the department of Film, Video & New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she organizes the visiting artist series ‘Conversations at the Edge’ at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

And now for our panelists (in no particular order). First up, Susan Keig.

Susan Keig (from Communication Arts, 1971)

Susan Jackson Keig is an internationally recognized art designer in private practice, who at the current age of 94 (!), still manages her Chicago-based design practice. Susan once headed the Design Department at Goldsholl Design & Film Associates. Here, Susan worked for such clients as Lyons & Canahan, Scotts Foresman and Company, Evanston Hospital, Chicago Children’s Memorial Hospital and Simpson Lee Paper Company, among others. Some of her design projects include an LP record and album for Buckminster Fuller, a medallion from the Free Congress Foundation for Margaret Thatcher, and the Clare Booth Luce medallion from the Heritage Foundation for Ronald Reagan. Along with her more commercially-oriented clients, she also worked with Audiobon wildlife sanctuary and with the restoration at Shakertown at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky in exploring the environment by design that was a lifestyle for Shakers (she’s also a leading authority on Shakers!).

Susan Keig designed Album cover for a recording of Buckminster Fuller’s address to the Society of Typographic Arts

Susan is a Fellow and past-president of the Society of Typographic Arts/American Center for Design, and has lectured at Yale University, Heritage of the Arts SUNY and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She taught at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, has had one-woman exhibits in Louisville and New York, and is a Distinguished Alumna of the UK College of Fine Arts.

Next up is panelist Wayne Boyer. Wayne attended the Illinois Institute of Design both as a bachelor and graduate student and is now a Professor Emeritus at University of Illinois at Chicago. Boyer states that when he arrived at the ID in 1955, “all of the film equipment was in storage and there was no one to teach it. But that was OK because of the experimental nature of the curriculum, where you were encouraged to combine media. This is what stimulated us.”

For many years, Boyer worked at Goldsholl Design & Film Associates where he worked closely with former ID classmate Larry Janiak (not sure why he’s not pictured above?!). The two were encouraged to apply their ID experimentation of Bahaus ethos to the firm’s advertising and industrial films. At Goldsholl & Associates, Wayne worked with clients such as Kimberly Clark, Chicago & North Western Railway, Champion Papers, Karolton Envelope Company and Inland Steel Company, among others. Boyer is also known for his 1975 film The Building: Chicago Stock Exchange (1975), which we screened during our 2007 BIG PICTURE series.

LEFT: Karolton Envelope Company “Envelope Jive” RIGHT: Kimberly-Clark Corporation “Kleenex X-Periments: Sneeze”

Our third and final panelist is Victor Margolin. Victor is Professor Emeritus of Design History at University of Illinois at Chicago and the first person in the United States to receive a PhD in design history. He began teaching Art & Design History at UIC in 1982 and soon after joined with small group of colleagues to found the academic design journal, Design Issues. Victor has written numerous articles on local design history, including an insightful look at African-American designer Tom Miller, who worked at Goldsholl Design & Film Associates for over thirty years (“African-American Designers in Chicago: Some Preliminary Findings,” AIGA Journal of Graphic Design 10 no. 1 (2000)). A wealth of his academic writings and personal musings can be found over on Victor’s website.