GAUGE Speaker Event: Kali Nikitas

On Thursday February 16, 2012 at 7:00pm in King Hall Lecture Hall 1, I attend the GAUGE event for Kali Nikitas, graphic designer and educator for Otis College of Arts and Design in Los Angeles, CA.  The evening proved to be an interesting and entertaining as Kali Nikitas presented herself as very witty, funny, smart and knowledgeable person who loves arts and who loves to design. Some of the things that I enjoyed about that evening were the interactive part which started at the beginning of the lecture.  All the students were given cards and envelopes to write down words or/and sentences to what we wanted globally, professionally and personally and send a message through twitter and Facebook.  It was an insightful way for Nikitas to interact with the students.  I have attend these GAUGE events before and most speakers don't really interact with people in the beginning of the lecture.  That time is reserved toward the end for questions and comments.  I was most interesting in some of the responses for sending a message across twitter and Facebook.  One of the sentiments was funny: seeing first lesbian president.  I kind wish we sent that across or something funnier like "panda for president." (Although, great success for  panda habitat preservation was still pretty good.)

Another part I liked was when she show us her website at www.kalinikitas.com.  I really like the way this website was made.  For starters, the little rectangles boxes can be moved anywhere around the site by clicking and dragging the content tabs. I think I like that more than anything else because that one little thing makes this site so different from others because somebody sought to think outside the realm of how a site should operated. It impressed me. The site also feature work by Nikitas and students. All the design work display is truly incredible, amazing and very creative.  It speaks volumes about the tremendous talent both Nikitas and students at Otis College seem to have in order to create such fantastic works.

All in all, I thought Kali Nikitas was a great lady who presented herself well.  I really enjoyed her presentation.