Tiya Gordon
A screening at Cannes is often the pinnacle of a career, but for Tiya Gordon, it was just the beginning. She was at the festival showing her experimental film Desert Beautiful, a video combining archival and digitally manipulated materials, which had been her thesis. It was the early days of digital animation, and Gordon wanted to master a visual language through the pioneering curriculum taught by faculty including Anezka Sebek.
Now an alumna of the BFA Illustration program, Gordon is a studio director at Local Projects, a New York–based media design firm. Gordon and her team reimagine the way digital media are integrated into museums such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and the 9/11 Memorial. Local Projects’ work recently earned the firm a National Design Award, given by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Gordon sees herself more as a producer than a creator. “I assemble design teams that turn ideas into reality,” she says. The results include an interface that enables audiences to explore museum collections through gestures—a project that hints at the future of museum experience. “We’re engaging visitors in ways they haven’t been engaged before.”