Where the elite meet to beat the heat! Join Aldrena Corder (’16), Todd Hilgert (’17), and Laura Rossi García (’16) for presentations and a conversation on their design practices since their time at VCFA on March 14 at 6:30PM ET.
RSVP for this special meeting of the minds here: https://vcfa.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkc-CvrDwiG9RLoYdoVz4B7YxpB7TR9pgB
Aldrena Corder
Aldrena Corder (she/her/hers) is the owner of Aldrena Corder, LLC and This Little Brown Girl a company that promotes positive images of Black women and girls through art and design. She is the chair of the art department at Columbia College of South Carolina. Aldrena earned her MFA in graphic design from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her thesis work Little Brown Girl: Essays on the Influence of Black Womanhood is featured in Print Magazine’s 2017 Regional Design Annual. Her most recent work, Unraveled. Ms. Taylor’s Portrait, is the cover artwork for the August 2020 edition of Louisville Magazine. Aldrena lives in South Carolina with her family.
Todd Hilgert
Todd Hilgert is a multifaceted designer with a background in print and digital media, product design, packaging design, and illustration. He is a senior designer at Burness, a communications firm that prides itself on promoting ideas that inspire and drive social change worldwide. He works with clients on a wide range of projects including print design, social campaigns, branding, web design, and short animation.
Todd holds a BFA in Industrial Design from The University of Kansas. As a product and packaging designer, he created and developed children’s products including furniture and toys for consumer product companies. A highlight of his product design career was his work for Hallmark producing licensed products for Disney/Pixar and Star Wars. His designs are still available at stores across the country.
Todd holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Vermont College of Fine Arts. At VCFA, his research interests were in queer aesthetics and developing a framework for understanding and decoding queer design. His three-book thesis Gay and Tired was honored by the VCFA faculty with a showing at the AIGA Fresh Grads in New York in 2018. Prior to coming to Burness, Todd was a graphic artist for one of the top regional theaters in the United States where he helped provide design support, art direction, and branding for all departments.
Laura Rossi García
Laura Rossi García is a Puerto Rican designer and educator whose practice lies at the intersections of design, culture, history, theory, criticism, anthropology, and feminism. Rossi has a BFA in Art History & Studio Art from Goucher College (Baltimore, MD) and an MFA in Graphic Design from Vermont College of Fine Arts (Montpelier, VT).
Her research is centered around the work of women in the design and typography fields and around uncovering those histories that have not made it into our official canon (be that due to race, gender, or colonialism). She is currently a Professional Lecturer in the School of Design at DePaul University (Chicago, IL) and the founder of Downstairs, a design studio that specializes in publications, art direction, editorial design, and custom typography.
RSVP here!: https://vcfa.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkc-CvrDwiG9RLoYdoVz4B7YxpB7TR9pgB
