Print is thrilled to reveal our 2015 New Visual Artists.
We’ve been publishing the New Visual Artists issue since 1998. Though the effort is vast, the goal of our annual list is simple: We seek to find the most interesting, challenging and provocative young voices working today. To do so, we research designers from all over the world and exhaustively review their work, both online and off. The results reveal a group of creatives very much of the moment and reflective of the times.
The “20 under 30” chosen every year have amounted to a veritable Who’s Who list in the business of design, and include the likes of Eddie Opara (1998, first class, now a Pentagram partner), Alan Dye (2003, now creative director of Apple), Scott Dadich (2005, now editor-in-chief of Wired), Jessica Hische (2009), Frank Chimero (2010), Jessica Walsh (2011) and Caleb Bennett (2012, of Wired and The New York Times Magazine).
This year we decided to shake things up a bit. First, we reduced the number of inductees to 15 in an effort to provide each artist with more space to showcase their talent. Second, rather than run a brief write-up, we asked the creatives to answer a customized “Proust Questionnaire”—a format designed to shed a degree of intimate light onto the personality and individual viewpoint of a subject, popularized by French literary legend Marcel Proust.
And finally, to go a layer deeper into the visual minds of the artists, for the first time in Print’s 75-year history we challenged each of the 15 NVAs to design an original cover for the magazine. We gave everyone the same specs and an open brief, and declared, “Do whatever you want. Show us how brilliant you are.” The results will be arriving in your mailboxes and on newsstands soon, and we believe this issue represents and celebrates the best young designers working today. Let us know what you think—and don’t forget to nominate next year’s NVAs by emailing us with “NVA” in the subject line. —Debbie Millman
The 2015 NVAs:
For profiles of the NVAs, their brilliant work, and 15 covers designed exclusively for Print, grab a copy of the latest issue. It hits stores July 14, and will be available a
t MyDesignShop.com soon.