Obsessive Design, Obsessive Consumption

Passionate designers tend to get the incurable need to design everything down to the smallest detail. This past Friday I met a fellow designer who is turning that obsession into art. Kate Bingaman-Burt is a graphic design instructor by day and a obsessive documenter of commerce by night. Her show Obsessive Consumption, currently running at Jen Bekman’s Spring Street Gallery from September 21st-October 27th, features a daily diary illustrating one thing she purchased that day as well as cleverly redesigned credit card statements using pink, yellow, and orange markers. I had to marvel, wouldn’t life be more fun if receiving your credit card statement came in such fun colors? The piece de resistance are two dresses hand embroidered with the amount of every purchase she made for one month and another with her credit card balances and APRs. Kate’s attention to detail — in every piece down to the little hooks she has selected to hang these works on the wall — are truly the mark of an obsessed designer.