Dave Salanitro
| Dave Salanitro | |
|---|---|
| File:Dave Salanitro.jpgDave Salanitro.jpg Graphic Designer and Product Designer; Founder Oh Boy A Design Company and Oh Boy Artifacts | |
| Born | 16 November 1963 San Francisco, California |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for | Founder and Designer of Oh Boy Artifacts (retail line), and Oh Boy, A Design Company (graphic design firm) |
| 👴 👵 Parent(s) | Father; Sebastian Salanitro; Mother: Nela Salanitro |
Dave Salanitro (born November 16, 1963, in San Francisco, California) is an American graphic designer and educator with roots in architecture, the fine arts, and publishing. He founded and was Chief Creative Officer of San Francisco design firm Oh Boy, A Design Company, and created Oh Boy Artifacts, a line of notebooks, gift wrap, and other paper products.[1][2][3]
Education[edit]
Salanitro attended California State University, Fresno and Fresno Pacific University.
Career[edit]
Art and Architecture[edit]
Salanitro finished his sixth semester at Fresno State University and continued working for his father, drafting construction drawings for restaurant interiors. In 1987, he parlayed an internship with the Fresno Art Museum into a full-time position as Preprator; within a year he was promoted to the rank of Designer of Exhibitions and given governance over the galleries, collaborating with the executive director when the museum curated unique exhibitions. It was in this capacity that Salanitro designed his first book, The DEJUNA Set, which accompanied a June Wayne retrospective of more than one hundred of the prominent Los Angeles artist’s tapestries, paintings, and lithographs curated by the museum.[4]
In 1989, San Francisco's Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) office hired Salanitro to work on the renovation of the landmark Palace Hotel. He worked as an architect in San Francisco for four years before turning to graphic design.[5]
Designer[edit]
Salanitro officially started his career as a graphic designer first learning the basics working in production Publish magazine. It made sense. He was promoted to designer at Publish only to be fired for a “lack of sound understanding of graphic design.”[2][6]
Oh Boy, A Design Company[edit]
Salanitro founded Oh Boy, A Design Company in June 1994.[7] Its first self-promotion, sent to a list of about 650 prospects who knew the firm nor Salanitro at all, returned 106 requests for proposals and ultimately 47 projects;[8] the firm grossed just shy of $300,000 in its first full year of business.[2]
The firm rapidly outgrew Salanitro’s living room. He took up proper office space and added three full-time employees in October 1995.[7]
By December 1997, the firm ha moved again, expanded its staff to 10, and grossed more than $2 million dollars. HOW magaized profiled Salanitro and remarked that the firm had moved into the "big leagues of the competitive San Francisco design market.”[2]
Salanitro had become a popular speaker at industry-related events. He was often invited to speak at regional AIGA chapters and spoke at three successive HOW Design Conferences.[9][10] He lectured at University of San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley, among other academic venues advocating a broader academic curriculum for graphic designers, and was frequently asked to adjudicate for respected award shows.[11]
Steven Heller interviewed Salanitro for his book, The Education of a Design Entrepreneur,[12] in which Salanitro laments the demise of the designer as tastemaker and says he is reclaiming the designation with his new venture, Oh Boy Artifacts.
Oh Boy Artifacts[edit]
Oh Boy Artifacts is an American brand of notebooks, journals, gift wrap, and other, sometimes unusual, paper products designed by Salanitro with Ted Bluey and Ryan Mahar. A spin-off of the design agency. Salanitro formally incorporated Artifacts in 2000[12]. Its first collection (Spring 2001) was manufactured in America and China; its Fall 2002 collection was printed in its entirety in the US.
In December 1999, Appleton Paper came to Oh Boy, A Design Company looking to team up on a holiday promotion. The result was an oversized, bound book of gift wrap.[13] The promotion sparked in founder and chief creative officer Dave Salanitro and creative director Ted Bluey the same notion. They had both wanted the opportunity to design artifacts for themselves and see how their ideas fared in the marketplace.[12] Oh Boy Artifacts was born.
"Creating Artifacts is a deep dive into utility and beauty, neither holds a higher station because both are interdependent. The form factors are each in some way unique, paired down to suit their primary function and each essentially appointed. One item features perforated sheets of double-faced gift wrap finely bound in a coffee table book that’s as much for show as it is for storage. Six patterns alternate throughout the book.[14] Thick, toothy vellum stock is printed on one side and French-folded into a book of greeting cards; again, tear at the perforation and write a greeting on the hidden blank side. The books have dust jackets adding yet another layer of pattern. “The whole thing is much less about matching and more about pattern on pattern,” said Salanitro in the San Francisco Chronicle.[15]
“It’s a whole system—You can mix and match any parts of the system and it works,” AIGA Medalist Kit Hinrichs said, speaking in his capacity as a judge for HOW’s International Design Competition in which Oh Boy Artifacts had been singled out as an outstanding achievement. “This is one of the few times where the designer has put his money where his mouth is. So many times, we [designers] talk about how a job should be produced, but these guys have invested in it.”[16]
Artifacts premiered its 64 SKUs divided among 9 form-factors, each offered in as many as 6 unique patterns and 6 solid colors at the San Francisco International Gift Fair in February 2001.
That same year at the New York International Gift Fair, they were further distinguished as the first-ever freshman to be awarded the Best in Show prize.[17] Two weeks later, Salanitro premiered Oh Boy in London to similar effect, Top Drawer U.K. recognized new comer Artifacts with the two Best in Show awards one for its product and the other for product display. At 6 months 250 retailers carried the line; the company swiftly recouped costs and netted nearly $600,000. An additional 39 SKUs were introduced 12 months later. In fewer than two years, the company increased its inventory by 150 percent and extended its reach to include 350 retailers throughout America and Europe.
Of the Fall 2002 line, the esteemed Mohawk Show recognized Salanitro and Artifacts as one among four honorees whose work reflected "higher thinking in graphic design." Ann Willoughby, a renowned designer and judge, said, “There’s just nothing to say about this but, ‘Oh Boy.’” Petrula Vrontikis, and AIGA Fellow, said, “This is something designers dream about but never quite pull off.”[18]
The line has appeared in more than 50 periodicals, among them: The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (“It’s a Wrap” July 29, 2001); Elle Decoration [ UK ] (December 2001, January 2002, February 2002); Graphis (“The Paper Chase” November/December 2001); Hamptons (May 25, 2001); Homes & Gardens [ UK ] (December 2001); Lucky (May 2001, April 2002); New York (December 2001); Real Simple (September 2001, November 2002); Time Out New York (December 2001); and Wallpaper* (October 2000).
Salanitro, the agency, and Oh Boy Artifacts had achieved international recognition. The agency had opened a second office in Manhattan; revenues were purportedly in excess of $3.5 million-per-annum; its client list was just shy of 100; included among them were Adobe, Baan,[19] Bank of America, BRE Properties, Cadence,[20] Charles Schwab,[21] Gap Inc., Intel, John Hancock,[22] Mohawk Fine Papers,[23] Orgel Wealth Management, Plantronics, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Robertson-Ceco,[20] SFMOMA, Smith & Hawken, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and Wells Fargo, among others.
Inc. magazine published Salanitro’s tell for the health of the economy.[24] Salanitro said he kept an eye on the classifieds, explaining that construction was a major indicator of a recession and when there were no want ads for architects one might start worrying. “There’s still hope,” he said. A month after the magazine hit the newsstands, Oh Boy’s New York office closed. The San Francisco office shut its doors in July 2002.
In 2004, Salanitro granted exclusive license to design and produce Oh Boy Artifacts to Chronicle Books. He returned to commercial design and took on clients freelance, he was briefly an adjunct professor at Academy of Art University's MFA School of Graphic Design; he continued to lecture and mentor grad students regularly.
Awards[edit]
Salanitro holds 245 commendations for design excellence, among them, highest honors in the Mead, Potlatch, and Black Book AR100 annual report shows. He took home five of the seven top commendations at the San Francisco Ad Club’s San Francisco Show in 2000, among them Best in Show, the Gold, and the Silver awards. Salanitro has thrice been named as among the Nation’s Top 50 Designers to Watch by Graphic Design USA.[1] He received the Silver award from the One Show[25] and the National Silver ADDY for Oh Boy Artifacts, for which he was also awarded 10 Best in Show Honors—including Best New Collection at Oh Boy Artifacts' New York debut, and two more at its London debut. His work has been featured in 116 national and international dailies, periodicals, and volumes. It is included in the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum.[3][12][26]
Rights to Oh Boy Artifacts reverted to Salanitro in 2016. The brand is slated to relaunch late in 2017.[26]
External Links[edit]
References[edit]
This article "Dave Salanitro" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "50-Plus Years of GDUSA People to Watch", Graphic Design USA, retrieved July 8, 2017
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Baggerman, Lisa (December 1998), "7 Red-Hot Firms to Watch", HOW, F + W Media, ISSN 0886-0483
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Dave Salanitro". Dave Salanitro. Behance.
- ↑ Wayne Papers (Collection 562)., UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA, Subseries 2: Exhibits 1981-1991, June.
- ↑ Salanitro, David (Spring 1998), "#@$%!—or How I Came to Simply say "Oh Boy"", Architecture California, American Institute of Architects, Construction Council, ISSN 0738-1131
- ↑ Krasne, Alexandra (May 1999), "Designing with Attitude", Micro Publishing News, Cygnus Business Media
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 San Francisco Business Times, American City Business Journals, October 13, 1995.
- ↑ Sykes, Claire (January 17, 2008). "Best Self-Promotions". HOW. ISSN 0886-0483.
- ↑ Micro Publishing News, July 1996
- ↑ Micro Publishing News, September 1998
- ↑ Micro Publishing News, May 2000
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Heller, Steven (2002), Education of a Design Entrepreneur, Allworth Press, ISBN 978-1-58115-221-0
- ↑ Sullivan, Jenny (June 2002), "On the Side", HOW, F + W Media, ISSN 0886-0483
- ↑ Sullivan, Jenny (June 2002), "On the Side", HOW, F + W Media, ISSN 0886-0483
- ↑ Thomas, Laura (May 8, 2001), "Tie me down, wrap me up", San Francisco Chronicle, Hearst, ISSN 1932-8672
- ↑ HOW, F + W Media, April 2002, ISSN 0886-0483
- ↑ Sardar, Zahid (September 30, 2001), "Win Some", SFGATE, Hearst, retrieved July 30, 2017
- ↑ Williams, Pam (September 2003), "5w's", STEP, Dynamic Graphics Group
- ↑ Baggerman, Lisa (May 2001), Design for Interaction, Rockport, ISBN 1-56496-652-6,"
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Neumeier, Marty (Autumn 1999), Critique, Neumeier Design Group, ASIN B000KGV3C8
- ↑ "Celebrating Design: 2000 International Annual", HOW, F + W Media, April 2000, ISSN 0886-0483
- ↑ Henning, Emily (2001), Art Directors Annual 80, RotoVision SA, ISBN 2-88046-680-6
- ↑ 17th Annual Black Book AR100 Award Show, Black Book Marketing Group Inc., 2002, ISBN 0-942454-84-7
- ↑ Hofman, Mike (June 13, 2001), "Signs of the Times", Inc.
- ↑ The One Show, retrieved August 1, 2017
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 Bluey, Ted, Oh Boy Artifacts, retrieved July 11, 2017
