GDUSA moved to Brooklyn earlier this year, seven miles — and a million miles — from its longtime Fifth Avenue Manhattan NYC home. Publisher Gordon Kaye has a few thoughts.
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FEELING AT HOME IN THE ‘LAND OF ETERNAL IRONY’
Forbes recently referred to gentrifying Brooklyn as an exemplar of urban rebirth and “the land of eternal irony” for its abundance of “hipsters, artists, punks and poets.” GDUSA has moved to the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, after 60 years of publishing on or within feet of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
In the spirit of our new home, I am seeing a dual irony in all of this.
First, though we have been physically present forever with a few block perimeter in Manhattan, our hearts and minds have often been elsewhere. It was a founding editorial principle of GDUSA that great creative is done all around the country rather than just a few coastal enclaves — and that this work deserves recognition and respect. Today this is obvious to (almost) everyone but it was edgy and out-of-the-box thinking for most of our existence — and we remain fierce in our commitment to it.
Indeed, the 2024 package design awards showcase underscores the truth: winners represent more than 30 states and, while California and New York top the list, we are graced with substantial entries from Minnesota and Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, Ohio and Oklahoma, Connecticut and Colorado, Texas and Tennessee, North Carolina and New Jersey, Arizona and Arkansas, Nevada and New Mexico. I could go on. And on.
The second “irony” is more personal. My immigrant ancestors landed in Brooklyn more than a century ago, raised families and built lives in a tough but tolerant new land — and then could not wait to flee the borough or encourage their progeny to leave to pursue a more secular and less urban American dream. For good or ill, moving away from Brooklyn was their singular mid-20th century sign of success and belonging.
So how ironic is it that their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren want back in as Brooklyn is reborn as a vibrant center of growth and innovation and aspiration. Or maybe that’s not irony at all; maybe it’s just the cycle of life or the rhyming of history.
Either way, we have returned to Brooklyn and, so far, it feels like just the right place for GDUSA to begin its seventh decade.
— GK
Gordon Kaye has been editor and publisher of GDUSA (Graphic Design USA) for more than three decades. He is a graduate of Hamilton College, Princeton University’s SPIA, and Columbia Law School… and a Prospect Heights resident. This comment first appeared in our April 2024 print and digital magazines. He is shown here with Website Editor Sasha Kaye-Walsh, herself a Hamilton graduate with an MFA from Rutgers University… and a lovely apartment in Park Slope.
