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Kelli Anderson
Artist Kelli Anderson in front of a row of colorful books
BornFebruary 23rd, 1981 (age 43)
New Orleans, LA
NationalityAmerican
EducationBFA, MFA, MS
Alma materPratt Institute
Notable workThis Book is a Camera, This Book is a Planetarium
StyleConceptual Art, Graphic Design
Websitehttps://kellianderson.com

Kelli Anderson (born February 23, 1981) is a graphic artist and paper engineer who works with a wide range of mediums including infographics, branding design, pop up books and risograph animations. She is known for her TED talk on disruptive art,[1] and has published 3 books.[2] Her work has been published by NPR,[3] MoMA, Chronicle Books, and The New Yorker.[4]

Early Life

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Kelli Anderson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she grew up. Half of her family is from Brooklyn and half is from New Orleans.[5] Anderson’s biggest influences are Marjorie Welish, a art history professor and Linda Francis, a painting teacher at the Pratt Institute of New York.[5]

Education

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Anderson received a BFA at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, followed by an MFA and MS at the Pratt Institute of New York. She wrote her master's thesis on nuclear waste markers.[6][7]

Career

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Artistic

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Kelli Anderson spent five years working as a collections photographer at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. There, she spent time digitizing their glass plate negatives and rare natural science books.[8] Early in her career, Anderson spent four months at a digital agency. However, she states that this experience helped her discover that a traditional, full-time job wasn’t the right fit for her.[5]

Anderson collaborated as a graphic designer with The Yes Men on a counterfeit New York Times newspaper. The hoax involved blanketing New York City with fake editions of the paper completely rewritten with articles describing a utopian present reality.[9] Anderson also designed for publications related to Occupy Wall Street.[10]

Anderson began gaining wider recognition for her interactive paper work, beginning with “Paper Record Player”, a wedding invitation that plays music. In 2013 Anderson illustrated, paper engineered and animated The Human Body,[11] a children's app by Tinybop Inc.[12] In the same year, she created the installation Book Covers, Re-imagined in Paper, a 100% paper installation done for the New York City Public Library with Maria Popova.[13] In 2015, Anderson was granted the Adobe Creative Residency[14] which included being a keynote speaker at Adobe Max,[15] and in 2019, she was an Osher Fellow at Exploratorium.

Anderson's work spans a broad range of digital and tangible mediums, and from the playful to the political or a mix of both.[7] Her infographics include Buying a Gun in America for Mayors Against Illegal Guns,[16] which addressed the ease with which a gun can be obtained. She is also known for her books "This Book Is a Planetarium" and "This Book is a Camera" which was published by the MoMA.[17][18]

There is a strong theme of bringing the 2 dimensional to life in Anderson's work, exemplified in her sculptural paper pieces and pop-ups. This theme is also evident in her animation work where a handcrafted quality is often present such as in her work for NPR's video "Talking While Female"[3] or her music video for They Might be Giants which used a combination of stop motion and compositing techniques.[19] Even when working with the purely digital, such as creating interactive anatomy for the Tinybop Human Body app, Anderson's work retains a quality of texture and tangibility.[20][21]

Recently, she has been a featured speaker at MIT Media Lab[22] and animated in collaboration with Yo Yo Ma on a series of Richard Feynman poems.[23]

In 2024, Anderson announced her new book Alphabet in Motion, a pop-up book of the alphabet, from A to Z. Anderson alone researched, wrote designed and paper engineered the novel, which explains how typography works.[24] The book, built on years of research drawn from global design archives, visually and tangibly explores the technologies and perspectives that have influenced letterforms throughout history. Anderson describes her upcoming project as more than just an alphabet book: “It illustrates how shifts in technology and culture influence the appearance of type.” With this project, she aims to contribute her own chapter to the narrative of letterforms.[25]

Design

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Anderson has designed for Russ n' Daughters and Momofuku, and Munchery.[26]

Scholarly

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Anderson has developed curricula and taught in graduate programs at NYU, ITP, Parsons,[27] the School for Poetic Computation, The New School in New York City, as well as art history at the Pratt Institute and paper engineering, typography and risograph animation at Cooper Union.[24] In 2021, Anderson was a project fellow at New York University. [28]

Works

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The Human Body

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Published by Tinybop Inc. in 2003,[1] Kelli Anderson designed more than 200 drawings for The Human Body, a children's app where users can deep dive and interact with the body’s vital systems. [29]

The Yes Men

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In 2008, Anderson teamed up with The Yes Men and other activist groups to carry out a collaborative hoax, inundating New York City with a fake edition of the New York Times that presented “news” from a utopian future.[30] The activists made 500,000 copies, picked them up in U-Haul vans, and stationed the vans in eight different locations around Manhattan. Anderson, alongside volunteers showed up at 5am to grab the papers and pass them out.[5] She explains that their aim was to demonstrate the incredible potential of the world if the public actively pressured their elected officials to genuinely represent their interests and needs. This project ultimately won the Arts Electronica Prix and was featured at the Brooklyn Museum.[9]

This Book is a Planetarium

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Published by Chronicle Books in 2017,[31] this book offers an in-depth exploration of the scientific principles behind everyday items.[32] It features six interactive pop-up devices. Among these creations are a planetarium that projects stars, a strummable instrument, a geometric drawing tool, a perpetual calendar, a message encryption and decryption device, and a sound-amplifying speaker. By transforming these familiar devices into paper forms, the book demonstrates the endless achievements possible with minimal resources.[32]

This Book is a Camera

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Published by MoMA in 2018,[33] the book illustrates—and actively demonstrates—how something as simple as a folded piece of paper can harness the fundamental properties of light to create a photograph.[17] Anderson has a deep appreciation for paper, and she manipulates it as other designers would manipulate digital pixels to achieve remarkable results. Through a combination of folds, cuts, and tucks, she creates a working pinhole camera. This simple device captures images using just a fine beam of light, Ilford photo paper, and developing fluid. To take a photo, you place a sheet of photo paper inside the camera, frame your shot, and manually control the shutter.[17]

Awards

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  • Nominated for the Cooper Hewitt / Smithsonian National Design Award (in Communication Design), 2023
  • Ars Electronica Award of Distinction, 2009[34]

References

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  1. ^ a b Anderson, Kelli (2012-03-10), Design to challenge reality, retrieved 2024-02-09
  2. ^ "Kelli Anderson: books, biography, latest update". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
  3. ^ a b Talking While Female | Shots | NPR, 24 October 2014, retrieved 2024-03-12
  4. ^ Lepore, Jill (2023-03-27). "The Data Delusion". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  5. ^ a b c d "Kelli Anderson on The Great Discontent (TGD)". The Great Discontent (TGD). 2014-07-01. Retrieved 2024-10-30.
  6. ^ Anderson, Kelli "DESIGNING FOR DEEP TIME: How art history is used to mark nuclear waste". Pratt Institute, 2005. Retrieved from: https://www.kellianderson.com/MSthesis.pdf
  7. ^ a b "Yes Ma\'am: Artist Kelli Anderson On Designing For The Yes Men | Brooklyn The Borough". 2009-11-30. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  8. ^ "Kelli Anderson". OFFSET. Retrieved 2024-11-26.
  9. ^ a b "Kelli Anderson". OFFSET. Retrieved 2024-02-23.
  10. ^ Popova, Maria (2011-12-19). "Occupy Scales of Wealth: Income Inequality Visualized as NYC Map". The Marginalian. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  11. ^ Brownlee, John (2013-08-21). "As Beautiful As A Golden Age Picture Book, An Anatomy App for Kids". FastCompany Design. Archived from the original on 2020-08-11. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  12. ^ Vanhemert, Kyle. "Gorgeous Anatomy App Gives Kids What They Want: Farts". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  13. ^ "Iconic Book Covers Re-Imagined In Paper - Design & Paper". 2013-08-20. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  14. ^ Cowles, Dan (2015). "Going Deep: Designer Kelli Anderson". creativecloud.adobe.com. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  15. ^ "Designing to Challenge Reality — A Conceptual Toolkit". www.adobe.com. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  16. ^ "Buying a Gun in America : Kelli Anderson". Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  17. ^ a b c Rhodes, Margaret. ""This Book is a Camera" is exactly what it sounds like: A pop-up book that is also a working camera". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  18. ^ "Kelli Anderson - This Book is a Camera". Printed Matter. Retrieved 2024-02-28.
  19. ^ They Might Be Giants - Long White Beard (Dial-A-Song Week 50), retrieved 2024-03-12
  20. ^ Tinybop (20 November 2022). "The Human Body". Tinybop. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
  21. ^ Vanhemert, Kyle. "Gorgeous Anatomy App Gives Kids What They Want: Farts". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
  22. ^ "Kelli Anderson Seminar". MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  23. ^ Popova, Maria (2022-04-22). "Atoms with Consciousness: Yo-Yo Ma Performs Richard Feynman's Ode to the Wonder of Life, Animated". The Marginalian. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  24. ^ a b "Alphabet in Motion: How Letters Get Their Shape". Letterform Archive. Retrieved 2024-10-30.
  25. ^ "Kelli Anderson Transforms Paper Into Tech One Fold At a Time". Art of Play. Retrieved 2024-10-30.
  26. ^ Gordon, Chloe (2021-08-05). "Russ & Daughter's Caviar Packaging From Kelli Anderson is Guided By History". PRINT Magazine. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  27. ^ "Kelli Anderson | Morningside Academy for Design". design.mit.edu. Retrieved 2024-11-26.
  28. ^ "Fellowship Alumni". tisch.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2024-11-26.
  29. ^ "Illustrating Tinybop's 1st App : Kelli Anderson". Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  30. ^ Penny Stamps | The Hidden Talents of Everyday Things with Kelli Anderson | Season 2024 | PBS. Retrieved 2024-10-30 – via www.pbs.org.
  31. ^ "This Book Is a Planetarium". Chronicle Books. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
  32. ^ a b "Kelli Anderson - This Book is a Planetarium". kellianderson.com. Retrieved 2024-10-30.
  33. ^ "Kelli Anderson - This Book is a Camera". Printed Matter. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
  34. ^ "Kelli Anderson, 2/15/2024". U-M Stamps. Retrieved 2024-02-23.
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