Providence-based graphic designer Malcolm Grear poses near some of the displayed work in his studio.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE

For years, Malcolm Grear began his graphic design classes at the Rhode Island School of Design by asking a simple question: Could anyone in the class draw a maple leaf?

Grear, whose clients have ranged from major art museums and Fortune 500 companies to the Mayo Clinic and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, smiles as he describes what usually happened next.

“Of course, every hand in the room immediately shoots up,” he says. “So, I say, ‘Fine, here’s some paper, now draw me a maple leaf.’ If I’m lucky, out of a class of 20 students, I might get two or three drawings that actually look like a real maple leaf. The rest? Well, they’re basically an insult to the maple.”

According to Grear, the point of the exercise wasn’t to humiliate the students. It was to show them how little they actually knew about the shapes and forms of the world around them.

“It’s about getting people to see, rather than just look,” he says.

A similar sight-tweaking spirit can be found in “Inside/Outside: Design and Process, Malcolm Grear Designers,” a 45-year survey of Grear’s work as a designer of everything from book covers and museum catalogs to corporate logos and letterheads. The show, which highlights Grear’s talents as a teacher and author as well as a working graphic designer, opens Thursday at Rhode Island College’s Bannister Gallery.

“He really is one of the top designers, nationally as well as locally,” says Heemong Kim, the RIC art professor who is organizing the exhibit. “When you start looking at some of the companies and institutions that he’s worked for — places like Vanderbilt University and the National Building Museum, the Saudi royal family, the Olympics — it’s pretty incredible. We’re lucky to have him here in Rhode Island.”

At the same time, Kim notes that even the best graphic designers rarely receive the kind of star treatment given to prominent artists and architects. The reason: graphic designers typically work for someone else — a company looking to market a new brand or product, a museum looking for a way to advertise a new exhibit, a publisher trying to generate buzz for a new book or author. In a sense, good graphic design is the art of making someone else — the client — look good. It’s only when the design is bad that anyone notices who made it.

After hearing Kim’s comments, Grear agreed — up to a point.

“Of course, you want the client to be happy,” he says. “After all, they’re the ones paying your salary. But I really think there’s a larger dimension to what we do. When it’s good, graphic design can actually make you feel better — and not just about yourself, but about the world around you.”

As an example, Grear points to one of his firm’s most high-profile projects — a 1990 commission to create new indoor and outdoor signs for Minnesota’s famous Mayo Clinic. In addition to the signs themselves, Grear and his staff advised the hospital on where to put them and how to guide patients and families through the sprawling Mayo campus quickly and efficiently — a process known as “wayfinding.”

“In that case, the Mayo people weren’t paying us to get noticed,” he says.

“What they wanted was for people to be able to find their way around as quickly and easily as possible. And that’s what I mean when I say that good design makes people feel better. In my experience, people usually feel a lot better when they know where they are than they do when they’re lost.”

Warming to the topic, Grear continues:

“Years ago, a curator friend of mine said something that’s stuck with me ever since. He said that graphic design may be the most important art form, because it touches so many people in so many ways. And I think he’s right. Think of the book you started last night or the newspaper you read at breakfast. Think of the billboards you saw on the way to work. Think of all the Web sites you see on the computer.

“At some point, somebody — probably an underpaid, overworked graphic designer — had to decide how all this stuff should look. It didn’t just happen by accident.”

Hang around Grear long enough, and you’re liable to hear many such stories. Indeed, the 76-year-old designer, who grew up in Kentucky and still speaks with a gravelly twang, is as good with words as he is with images.

According to those who know him, it’s a talent that helps explain at least part of his success.

“He definitely knows how to put people at ease,” says Patricia Appleton, a longtime friend and president of Malcolm Grear Designers. “Of course, it also helps that he’s a great designer. But being able to make a strong presentation and put a roomful of strangers at ease, that’s definitely a plus.”

Appleton says one of the firm’s biggest commissions — creating a visual identity for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta — was awarded after just such a presentation.

“There we were waiting to make our presentation when we see one of the other design teams coming out after their presentation,” Appleton recalls. “And immediately we’re thinking we don’t have a chance. I mean, these people had computers, slide trays, projectors — the whole business. All we had were a few slides and sketches. But you know what, Malcolm went in there and won over the entire committee.”

Initially, the contract covered only a small part of the total design work at the summer games. But Grear’s designs proved to be such a hit that Malcolm Grear Designers would up creating virtually the entire “look of the Games,” from signs and banners to the official Olympic torch and the gold, silver and bronze Olympic medals.

“The more work we did, the more work they gave us,” Grear says. “For a designer, that’s about as good as it gets.”

Not surprisingly, several examples of the firm’s work for the Atlanta Olympics are included in the RIC exhibit. They include designs for the Olympic torch, as well as drawings and models for the 1996 Olympic gold medals. Also included are sketches for the 31 event symbols, known as “pictograms,” that were used to identify the different Olympic sports and which Grear adapted from figures on ancient Greek vases.

The show also features one of the firm’s earliest projects — a 1961 corporate branding campaign for Arkwright Interlaken, a Providence-based maker of book and paper products — and one of its most recent, this year’s “visual identity” campaign for the Colby College Museum of Art, in Waterville, Maine.

Other highlights include Grear’s now-iconic designs for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York City. Using the museum itself as his starting point, Grear created a series of semi-abstract — yet still recognizable — versions of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous corkscrew-shaped rotunda. First designed in 1969, they still appear on dozens of Guggenheim-related products, from tote bags to T-shirts.

The show, which runs through April 24, also highlights another aspect of Grear’s career: his work for, and with, other artists.

Perhaps the most visible signs of this artist-to-artist collaboration are Grear’s posters for artist-friends, such as RISD sculptor Louis Mueller and glassmaker Dale Chihuly. Grear has also designed books and catalogs for photographer Harry Callahan, architect Robert Venturi and the late actor-artist Anthony Quinn.

Though Grear gave up his full-time duties in 1998, he still teaches classes occasionally at RISD as an emeritus professor. He also oversees Malcolm Grear Designers, the firm he founded in 1960 in Providence’s Jewelry District, which currently employs a staff of eight designers.

Asked if he has any plans to retire, Grear laughs.

“I thought this was retirement,” he says.

An opening reception for “Inside/Outside: Design and Process, Malcolm Grear Designers” will be held Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. at Bannister Gallery, Rogers Hall, Rhode Island College, 600 Mount Pleasant Ave., Providence. Regular gallery hours are Mon.-Wed. and Fri. 11-5, and Thurs. noon-9.