The South: home to numerous design talents, both emerging and seasoned. The Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) presented The South’s Next Wave: Design Challenge. Part exhibition, part competition, designers of interior spaces were paired with object designers who together created imaginative vignettes throughout the museum.

Curators David Goodrowe and Tim Hobby co-founders of Aesthetic Identity Design™ firm Goodrowe | Hobby™ directed the work of set /interior designers and of object designers in fields from furniture to fashion who exemplified the myriad new directions the Southern aesthetic has taken.

Set/interior designers were paired with object designers to create original vignettes.  “We envision each vignette as a distinct environment with many layers,” says curator Hobby. Each vignette was technologically enabled with the Skovr app, allowing viewers to access facts and video about the designers while in the galleries or from their own homes.

The South’s Next Wave: Design Challenge ran through November 11, 2012 – March 31, 2013.

Skate It or Hang It!? was held at the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) between June 16, 2012 to October 28, 2012.

The exhibition, curated by W. Todd Vaught, examined the visual aspects skateboarding, a sport important to contemporary youth culture since the 1970s, by presenting a broad range of styles, imagery, and visual expression in skateboard art.

With a broad focus on skateboard graphics—in particular the styles and methods used to embellish skateboard decks—the exhibition appealed to a broad range of skateboarders, designers, artists and to Atlanta’s youth in general.

Skate It Tower Display

Skate it or Hang It Archive

Outdoor Skate Demo

Skate it or Hang it Archive

MODA Lobby

Skate it or Hang it Archive

Graphic Intervention presents a comprehensive overview of the diverse visual strategies employed by government agencies, community activists, grassroots organizations and motivated citizens to educate the local population.

From Papua New Guinea to Denmark to Venezuela to Morocco, these posters demonstrate the different approaches used for discussion of a socially complex subject. The messages in Graphic Intervention deftly champion pertinent sociopolitical issues – disease research and eradication, world health, international relations, sexual education, social prejudices and discrimination – in a remarkable way.

Curated by Elizabeth Resnick, Professor and Chair of Graphic Design at MassArt and Javier Cortes, Partner and Creative Director at Korn Design, Boston. Posters included in the exhibition are from the collections of the James Lapides International Poster Gallery and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

This spring, the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), in partnership with Portfolio Center, presents an exhibition honoring history and design through the medium of the chair. Stories in Form: Chair Design by the Portfolio Center runs February 5 through June 3, 2012.

The works featured in Stories in Form are created as part of Portfolio Center’s nationally acclaimed course “Modernism: History, Criticism and Theory,” which explores design history as a catalyst for new design ideas. While learning about Modernism, the history of design and the development of critical thinking skills, students in the course create chairs by means of a design process that combines inspiration from a historical period with personal experience.  This exercise in design is recognized nationwide for the challenge it presents to students, for it compels students to go beyond perfunctory design solutions and to balance old and new, conservative and eccentric, safe and dangerous as they design chairs that re-imagine their personal histories as three-dimensional objects.

Portfolio Center’s groundbreaking class has also been featured in the new book Design School Confidential: Extraordinary Class Projects From the International Design Schools, Colleges, and Institutes by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico. This book features fifty real-world class assignments from top design programs at universities around the world, and examines the resulting student projects.

Each chair on display at MODA will be accompanied by the story of its creation. In addition to demonstrating the step-by-step design process that brings these chairs into being, the exhibition will highlight the ways in which design objects tell stories of design history and personal experience.

In partnership with AIA Atlanta and the Young Architects Forum Atlanta, MODA presented Emerging Voices 11, an exhibition dedicated to celebrating the work and talent of Atlanta’s young architecture community.

Honored in the exhibition were Ryan Gravel of Perkins+Will for his visionary work which led to the Atlanta Beltline and Tristan Al-Haddad for his research and experimentation at the Georgia Institute of Technology and as a founder of Formations Studio.

For more information and reviews of the exhibition, click here.

With The Opulent Object in Wood, Metal, and Fiber: Richard Mafong, Mike Harrison and Jon Riis, MODA will stage an exhibit filled with metal, wood, and tapestry works by Atlanta artists. Enhanced by opulent colors, rich textures, and complex forms, the works of these artists reference myths, beliefs, and ideals of past cultures and examine issues of identity, life, and the human condition.

Founded in 1987, The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a poignant memorial, a powerful tool for use in preventing new HIV infections, and the largest ongoing community arts project in the world.  Each “block” (or section) of The AIDS Memorial Quilt measures approximately twelve feet square, and a typical block consists of eight individual three foot by six foot panels sewn together. Virtually every one of the more than 40,000 colorful panels that make up the Quilt memorializes the life of a person lost to AIDS.  Blocks of the quilt will be on display at MODA from October 2, 2011 – January 1, 2012.  The blocks on display will be changed out each month.

As the inaugural exhibition in its new Midtown location, The Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), in association with the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, presented Passione Italiana: Design of the Italian Motorcycle – an examination of the astonishing design passion and technological advancement behind the most desired motorcycles in the world.

This exhibition showcased eleven masterpieces of Italian motorcycle design spanning the last five decades including motorcycles by MV Agusta, Ducati, Bimota and Moto – Morini.

The Museum of Design Atlanta brings to life WaterDream: the Art of Bathroom Design. Prepare to be taken on a journey through the evolution of bathroom design – past, present and future – while experiencing the profound visions of some of world’s most famous Architects and Designers, who have shaped today’s bathroom visions.

From bathroom designed by superstars like Philippe Starck, Jean-Marie Massaud, Patricia Urquiola and Erwan Bouroullec, this exhibit will leave you with inspiration and a new appreciation of how concepts resonate into realities and dreams do come true.

The exhibit was on show from June 26- September 17, 2011.

Following the success of the wearable electronics exhibition ON YOU, Clint Zeagler and Thad Starner have curated a second exhibition entitled ON YOU 2 which looks specifically at conductive thread embroidered and fabric manipulation interfaces. Garments design by Clint Zeagler and Tiffany Teague will be on display along side garments designed by students showcasing Clint Zeagler and Thad Starner’s Georgia Tech research in wearable technology.