'Four Square' displays angles of graphic design

Each square is made up of four sides. The four professors of graphic design in IU's Hope School of Fine Arts have collaborated in a new exhibit entitled "Four Square" that will have its opening reception 7-9 p.m. tomorrow at the SoFA gallery.\nProfessor James Reidhaar is one of the sides of that square. \n"We work together very well," he said. "Art is often a very personal and private investigation. Graphic design is very labor intensive. No one does it all themselves."\nReidhaar teaches new media and graphic design, as well as the history of graphic design. Filling in the other three sides of the square are Paul Brown, the interim director of SoFA, David Wolske, who teaches production for graphic designers and Jenny El-Shamy, a faculty member who art directs many student projects.\nReidhaar explained that their work can be seen all around town and campus. He created the logo for the Bloomington Recycling Center which can be seen in the windows of many local businesses. Wolske designs promotional material for University events, including the posters for the "Four Square" exhibit.\n"We selected things that don't normally get seen for the show," Reidhaar said.\nReidhaar said he is especially interested in the fine line between traditional design and new media. He puns that he "spearheaded" a series of Shakespearean posters. He also created a series of prints about his family history. \n"I am a historian at heart," he said. "Even though my projects involve new processes, they always look like old processes."\nWolske has displayed some examples from his new line of greeting cards. He has started producing some of his cards as limited edition pieces and describes them as "little pieces of art."\nEl-Shamy is the youngest member of the faculty exhibition. "Many of my pieces in the show are college level textbooks," she said in an e-mail. "I also have several announcement style pieces, invitations, birth announcements and holiday cards."\nAll four designers are currently working on projects. Reidhaar is creating a Web site for one of his classes and notes that even though the Internet is his media, he still utilizes an old woodcut-style font. Wolske said he is currently working on posters for the IU Art History lecture series. El-Shamy is busy making book designs for McGraw-Hill Publishing, marketing materials for the IU Kelley School of Business and the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and designing advertisements for Nickelodeon Magazine. Brown is trying to conceptualize a scene from Richard Brautigan's novel, "Trout Fishing in America."\nBrown's mantra is "limitations galvanize the imagination." He enjoys the challenges of using the type, media and press he has on hand versus digital technology. Several of his pieces are miniature fable books that he created with Reidhaar. The pair wrote and printed the books themselves.\nMost of the projects in the exhibition are the work of two or more of the featured designers. \n"Collaboration is exciting," Brown said. "You never really know what is going to happen"