It’s curious how the arc of one life can shape the arc of another. In the blink of an eye. And so it happened with Malcolm Grear’s design career and his influence on mine.

As a sophomore graphic design student at RISD, I was fascinated with Malcolm’s teaching and his professional work. I grew to deeply respect the big-hearted, sharp-witted, gregarious Kentuckian that he was. He could tell a story that could stay with somebody for a lifetime.

Which is what he did the day he gave our class a presentation on his corporate identity work. One image remains vivid in my memory: brightly colored banners sweeping across a brilliant blue sky, moored to the top of poles graced with similar geometric shapes. Malcolm enchanted us with the environmental design his studio had recently completed in 1972 for Oakwood Center, a residential mental health facility for children coming from rural Kentucky.

The main entrance was astonishingly, not a clinically sterile sign, but a capricious sculpture of three parts created by artist Hugh Townley, bold enough to tame the bureaucratic state officials into approving it. Everything was imaginative, kinesthetic, uplifting, and most of all designed to comfort and heal the kids. There were vegetable gardens, and terrariums with little creatures and plants from a small swamp nearby to be cared for; play structures built from hand-hewn logs to explore; and painted tractor seats to sit on awhile. Even the creatures sculpted by cartoonist, Ed Koren, were named by the children, who I envisioned became best friends with the dogs and frogs and snakes.