Art Inspired by Design

As we’ve been going through memorabilia in preparation for O+A’s 30-year anniversary party in November, we’ve been looking again at what our designers produced outside the parameters of workplace. Holiday cards, videos, e-blasts, zines, books—O+A was never only an interiors firm.

One of our favorite examples grew out of this impatience with conventional boundaries. The original idea for the Artist Series was first, to give artists on O+A’s staff (of which there are and always have been many) a platform for showing what they could do; and second, to reach out to clients, colleagues, and friends with something more original than a postcard. It was during a discussion in 2013 about how to promote O+A’s design for Cisco Meraki’s new office that graphic designer Olivia Ward suggested a call for submissions from our makers and artists. Instead of a brochure, why not a piece of original art?

Artist Series #1: Cisco

Several staffers stepped up and, in typical O+A fashion, our in-house judges couldn’t decide on a winning entry. So, Artist Series #1 featured three: Olivia’s gouache painting of creatures in a treehouse, a geometric sculpture by Verda Alexander, and Chris Lindes’s watercolor of tillandsia plants—all printed as a poster with photographs of Meraki by Jasper Sanidad.

Artist Series #4: Uber

Over time, the judging became more disciplined, but the art continued to be wide-ranging. For Artist Series #4, Alma Lopez gave weaving a try. Inspired by the hand-woven Kastall rugs in lounge areas at Uber, Alma’s winning submission surprised everyone by veering away from her usual preference for bright colors to favor, instead, a subdued, autumnal palette. That’s always been a function of the series—to encourage our people to try new forms, head off in new directions.

Artist Series #12: You Are What You Read

For Artist Series #12 to mark O+A’s remodel of the library at The Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, Sarah Hotchin conducted a survey of her colleague’s favorite reading. Sarah asked O+A staffers to recall their best-loved books from high school and turned the answers into an extraordinary, multi-page illustration that she bound into an accordion-style chapbook. Her flowing line drawing evoked the classic illustrators of the Victorian age while remaining as modern as a digital capture of a lost fresco—a real comment on how libraries (and art) have changed.