To celebrate its annual Masters of Design issue on Wednesday, Fast Company brought some of its featured designers to the new home of the Museum of Arts and Design to chat about their work and how it translates to the world of business. Approximately 300 designers, Fast Company advertisers, and members of the magazine's editorial team filled seven floors of the Columbus Circle museum for discussions, private gallery viewings, and food and drink. The three-hour cocktail reception and party was planned by the magazine's executive marketing director, Tara Mitchell, and its events marketing director, Tracey Vitale.
In the auditorium on the lower level, Fast Company began the evening by placing senior writer Linda Tischler onstage with two of the designers she interviewed for the magazine's feature package—Dutch artist, industrial designer, and Moooi founder Marcel Wanders, and John Maeda, former associate research director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, new president of the Rhode Island School of Design, and noted graphic design artist. The provocative discussion of whether design can transform mass marketing or if commerce will corrupt design sought to identify the connection between design and business and, ergo, the underlying focus of the magazine.
Fast Company also brought in Valerie Casey, founder of the Designers Accord—a project that brings the creative and business communities together to affect positive (environmental and ethical) behavior—and head of global practice at IDEO, an international design consultancy based in California. Casey addressed a standing crowd amidst the artwork on the fifth floor.
Rockport, one of the evening's sponsors, announced the winner of its second student design competition. Jihad Lahham, a senior at the Ringling College of Art and Design, beat out others from Parsons the New School for Design, the Pratt Institute, and the Rhode Island School of Design, for his innovative point-of-sale structure to display products with the shoe company's Walk Dry technology.
Guests also mingled in the lobby and the seventh floor's event space with cocktails and nibbles, and browsed the galleries on the second through fifth floors. Ark Parties and Catering, which will also operates the restaurant on the ninth floor, served a menu that included bites like fig crostini with Maytag blue cheese, dates stuffed with goat cheese and balsamic nectar, and blue crab salad on cucumber rounds.
Each attendee took home the October issue of Fast Company, a copy of the photography and architecture book Manhattan Skyscrapers, a can of Guru energy drink, and a variety of literature from the night's sponsors.
