Knowledge Friday With Ginny Edwards

Graphic designer and Wainscott resident Ginny Edwards will be the next guest at The Church’s Knowledge Friday series. On Friday, November 1, at 6 p.m. join Edwards for an evening of stories as she shares her perspective of why “design matters.” After the discussion, the audience is invited to a Q&A with the speaker. Gain perspective as she shares how she was “taught to see” by her drawing tutor David Hockney. Learn about her solo pitch to Steve Jobs and John Sculley when she worked at Apple. Discover how this designer found herself smuggling banned art and political cartoons out of Russia.

Edwards’s career working with companies like Apple, Estee Lauder and her own business in India and Hong Kong has led her all over the world. This international experience has deepened her perspective on the art and importance of design. Graphic design is all around us. Her story is about training your eyes to see how design can be used altruistically, shaping the world and how we interact with one another. For Edwards, corporate clients paid the bills and allowed her to do pro bono work for nonprofits, where she hoped to raise awareness and support causes she cared about.

Raised outside Chicago, Edwards thought she’d be a photographer or a master printmaker, maybe an architect. However, after getting her BFA in London, she realized she was more curious about solving visual problems rather than pursuing her own artistic ideas. So, she returned to the U.S. and studied graphic design/typography at California College of Art in San Francisco. Work followed — at Esprit and Banana Republic, as well as a company she founded that designed rugs in India and Hong Kong. Hired by Apple to design a magazine — which led her to move to New York City — she opened her own design studio and worked for various design firms, including the Arnell Group, Prescriptives/Estee Lauder, Kirschenbaum & Bond, Brioni, Tattinger Champagne and Martha Stewart. Her last corporate job was as director of creative services for Coach and Mark Cross simultaneously. Her corporate jobs allowed her to work for nonprofits she championed — DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS), Planned Parenthood NYC and Hudson Peconic, The Native American College Fund.

Wanting to find a way to not have a boss or client, and move to the East End full-time, Edwards renovated four homes in East Hampton. She moved to Wainscott full time in 2015 with her daughter, Sophie, now 23, and never looked back.

Tickets for Knowledge Friday are $10 (members free with RSVP) at thechurchsagharbor.org. The Church is at 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor.