Photo by Francine Fleischer
Tickets
General Ticket: $10
Members: Free, RSVP Required
Welcome Ginny Edwards, graphic designer, to our Knowledge Friday series. Join us for a remarkable evening of stories as Ginny shares her perspective of why “design matters.” After the discussion, the audience is invited to a Q&A with the speaker. Gain perspective as she shares how she was “taught to see” by her drawing tutor David Hockney. Learn about her solo pitch to Steve Jobs and John Sculley when she worked at Apple. Discover how this designer found herself smuggling banned art and political cartoons out of Russia. Ginny’s career working with companies like Apple, Estee Lauder, and her own business in India and Hong Kong has led her all over the world.
This international experience has deepened her perspective on the art and importance of design. Graphic Design is all around us. Her story is bound to leave you inspired to train your eyes to see how design can be used altruistically, shaping our world and how we interact with one another. For Ginny, corporate clients paid the bills and allowed her to do pro bono work for nonprofits, where she hoped to raise awareness and support causes she cared about.
Knowledge Fridays, held the first Friday of each month, highlight outstanding East End locals with various backgrounds and careers. The program allows the audience to meet and learn about dynamic, inspiring, and fascinating East Enders. It is a monthly program open to the public and free to our members.
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Graphic design is all around us all the time and Ginny Edwards believes the best design is often invisible. Yet, alluring and pulls us in. Logos, websites, that book jacket that makes you want to see what’s inside. Design that showcases an art exhibit, promotes nonprofits, creates a corporate identity, a personal brand, or makes us want to buy something; signage that gets us from A to B, or offers an important piece of information we need to read. It’s everywhere. Because design matters.
Raised outside Chicago, Ginny thought she’d be a photographer, or a master printmaker, maybe an architect. However, after getting her BFA in London, she realized she was more curious about solving visual problems rather than pursuing her own artistic ideas. So, she returned to the United States and studied graphic design/typography at California College of Art in San Francisco. Work followed -- at Esprit and Banana Republic, as well as a company she founded that designed rugs in India and Hong Kong. Hired by Apple to design a magazine — which led her to move to NYC — she opened her own design studio and worked for various design firms –the Arnell Group, Prescriptives/Estee Lauder, Kirschenbaum & Bond, Brioni, Tattinger Champagne and Martha Stewart. Her last corporate job was as Director of Creative Services for Coach and Mark Cross simultaneously. Her corporate jobs allowed her to work for nonprofits she championed- DIFFA,Planned Parenthood NYC and Hudson Peconic, The Native American College Fund.
Wanting to find a way to not have a boss or client, and move to the East End full-time, Ginny renovated four homes in East Hampton. She moved to Wainscott full time in 2015 with her daughter Sophie, now 23, and never looked back.