M is for Miami

Last week I was in Miami with Mike and Regine (from my office) for a site visit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. We were helping to put on an event for a client there next November and we had meetings to work out details of how we will work with the hotel and with the other companies putting on the event. These meetings were extremely helpful as we discussed issues that would not have come up otherwise. The Mandarin Oriental is an amazing hotel.

While here, I also visited Maggy Cuesta and Yasmine Samimy that I have worked with for years on national AIGA (the professional association for design) projects. Yasmin is the president of the AIGA Miami Chapter and Maggy sits on the board of the AIGA Center for Cross-Cultural Design with me. Maggy is also the dean of visual arts for the New World School for the Arts. They took Mike and me to Tap Tap, a Haitian restaurant and then on a tour of Miami Beach to see all the art deco hotels. Lucky for us it was raining so the streets were actually passable. Here are some photos.




Maggy Cuesta, Dean of Visual Arts, New World School for the Arts (below)

Adding a bit more detail about the New World School for the Arts after the initial post. This is one place top on my list for cool schools that I would want my kids to go to. The number one reason for that is that Maggy takes care of the students like no other dean at any other school. The school has both a high school and a university. Entrance to both is based on your portfolio and a 2-hour drawing session--that's it. To get entrance to the high school, the student must live in the Miami Dade School District, but nearly every graduate leaves with full scholarships to some of the best art schools in the country. On a university level, the students are a close knit group and they get a good arts education. Their degree comes from the Univeristy of Florida--one of the hardest schools in the country to get into. Duuring the summer, some of Maggy's students are traveling thru South America and other places. She makes them send e-mails or text messages on a weekly basis to make sure they are all right. What other dean does that?






Mike and C at Tap Tap (Haitian Restarurant)



Yasmin, president of the AIGA Miami Chapter, and Mike at Tap Tap. The food was excellent.



Regine, Mike and John, the event planner.