Creative Mornings with Scott Reinhard from the MCA

CreativeMornings is a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types that Doejo had the pleasure of hosting last month. We had so much fun hosting the event and couldn’t wait to attend Scott Reinhard’s talk last week. 

Scott is a Senior Designer at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. During his talk, Scott gave the audience a behind-the-scenes look at what it is like to design for the MCA. He kept the focus on designing for spaces, specifically creating the title walls that lead visitors into the exhibit that is currently on display.

Scott says the best part of design is learning and researching the content you are working with. For him, learning about the artists’ work and pulling inspiration from it is a major part of the design process. Because the MCA works with living artists he often has the chance to interact with the artists and get direct feedback on his designs.

Creating these title walls is a delicate task: “We walk a fine line of being interesting but not overshadowing the art work,” he said. His goal is to create designs that give clues to visitors and compliment the work they are about to see. This process results in work that is subtle and quiet, never overbearing. Scott likes it this way: to him the mark of success is visitors thinking about the designs subconsciously. He strives to enhance, not disrupt, their viewing experience. 

Listening to Scott speak you can feel his passion for designing spaces. He explained that his work involves playing with scale and thinking about spaces in 3D. “Graphic design is so broad you don’t have to limit yourself to just words on the page,” he said.