Rebeca Méndez (born 1962) is a scholar, artist,and designer of Mexican origin, known for her works at the boundaries between academia, art, and design.
Rebeca Méndez. Photo by Michael D. Powers.
Méndez’s art practice is in photography, film, video, and installation, exploring the nature of perception and representation. She once said “boundaries are like open invitations to me.” Today she is a professor at UCLA Design Media Arts Department and an internationally-renowned multimedia artist.
Grass, 2006. Public art at the University of Cincinnati Rec Center by Rebeca Méndez.
In 2006, Méndez was commissioned to create a public art installation on four cone-like structures at the campus of the University of Cincinnati. For several months, she photographed grass from various points of view and under different weather conditions. This allowed light and wind to create visual differences, revealing the patterns that a blade of grass produces through complex organization. Méndez considers the experience of a journey an artistic process and many of her works are based on travels to unfamiliar or extreme places like Iceland, Patagonia and the Sahara Desert. She uses video and photography to examine the cycles and systems, the forces and cross-rhythmic tensions that make natural phenomena emerge. Committed to a sustainable future, Méndez founded the UCLA CounterForce Lab, a research and fieldwork studio for art, design and environment.
CircumSolar, Migration 2, 2013. Public art at the Pico Rivera Public Library in Los Angeles by Rebeca Méndez.
Poster for UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Lecture Series printed in a plastic trash bag, 1997. Design by Rebeca Méndez.
Zuzana Licko, born in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1961, is a celebrated typeface designer and visual artist best known for co-founding Emigre, a digital type foundry.
Zuzana Licko. Photo courtesy of Emigre.
She moved to the United States and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in graphic communications. After graduation, she and her husband Rudy VanderLans founded Emigre Graphics, a design business that would later become one of the most influential design magazines of its time.
The complete Mr & Mrs Eaves family of fonts. Image courtesy of Emigre.
Licko was a firm believer in technology assisting designers. She was an early adopter of the Macintosh computer, incorporating the possibilities it offered into her works—one of the first digital typefaces out there. Among her most well-known typefaces are Mrs Eaves, Mr Eaves, Matrix, Modula, Filosofia, Lo-Res, and others. Licko has written numerous essays about typefaces and the way they’re perceived by readers. “The most popular typefaces are the easiest to read; their popularity has made them disappear from conscious cognition. It becomes impossible to tell if they are easy to read because they are commonly used, or if they are commonly used because they are easy to read,” she said. Aside from typefaces, Licko is interested in creating ceramic and textile art objects. Her work is in the permanent collections of museums like MoMA NY and MoMA SF among others.
Cones And Arcs #3 by Zuzana Licko. Photo courtesy of Emigre.
Throw blanket by Zuzana Licko. Photo courtesy of Emigre.