Maeda

PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island School of Design will inaugurate its new president tonight in a ceremony as unassuming and unusual as the person it honors.

John Maeda, 42, a world-renowned graphic designer, artist and computer scientist, will be installed as RISD’s 16th president with a low-key celebration scheduled to last just 3½ hours. As president, Maeda asks everyone to call him John, wears T-shirts instead of suits, blogs daily about his experience and is making his office smaller, because, he says, he doesn’t really need all that space.

“I’m into very simple,” said Maeda, author of The Laws of Simplicity, a 127-page book that has been translated into 14 languages.

Yet Maeda, whose work in digital media design belongs to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and who has won several of the world’s highest design awards, also wants the event to highlight the 131-year-old art and design school’s prominent position as a national and international center for creativity.

“We really wanted to have a mix of things that ran the gamut between RISD’s handcrafted tradition and all the new technology John brings to the table,” said Liz O’Neil, chairwoman of the 15-member inaugural committee, which organized the celebration.

Therefore, thousands of handmade muslin squares, 15 inches by 15 inches, decorated in recent weeks by students, faculty, staff and alumni, will flutter from the rafters at the First Baptist Church in America, where the ceremony begins at 5:30 this evening. The squares are modeled after nautical flags, to honor Rhode Island’s rich maritime history, and Tibetan prayer cloths, “as a metaphor for sending John off with well wishes for his presidency,” said O’Neil. The flags — some painted, some hand-woven, some stitched — will also be strung along the riverfront at the campus-wide community block party that follows, from 7 to 9 p.m. Well wishers can send messages via an online guest book that will be projected against RISD’s new $43-million Chace Center, designed by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo.

When Roger Mandle was inaugurated as RISD’s 15th president in 1994, seven events spanned three days, including public lectures and symposiums, private panel discussions and a student art sale.

Tonight’s ceremony, in contrast, has been scheduled and planned “to have the least impact on class time or conflict with the schedules of faculty and staff,” O’Neil said. As Maeda says, “my focus is really scholarship and academic excellence, so we did not want to have an overdone event, but sufficient, so we can focus on academic passion.”

The 90-minute ceremony begins at 5:30 at the First Baptist Church, on North Main Street, and will feature a slate of speakers: RISD Board of Trustees Chair Merill Sherman; Director of RISD Museum of Art Hope Alswang; U.S. Sen. Jack Reed; Governor Carcieri; Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline; Brown University President Ruth Simmons; RISD Provost Jessie Shefrin; and Maeda, whose wife and five daughters will be in the audience.

Nicholas Negroponte, cofounder of the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Maeda worked as associate director of research, and a pioneer of computer-aided design will deliver the keynote address. Maeda, who held MIT’s E. Rudge and Nancy Allen Professorship of Media Arts and Sciences for 12 years before agreeing in June to take the helm at RISD, calls Negroponte a mentor. Negroponte, currently on leave from MIT, is the founder of the One Laptop per Child initiative, which seeks to provide millions of needy children throughout the world with educational opportunity by giving them low-cost laptop computers.

The ceremony will be followed at 7 p.m. by a two-hour campus-wide block party along Canal Walk at Market Square. Musical groups include Triangle Forest and the Awesome Brothers, the menu includes chowder and clam cakes and guests will be invited to make T-shirts to commemorate the occasion.

“All institutions have a history and moments in time, just as human beings do, and I think what John brings to this particular moment is a comprehensive way that he views the world and lives in the world,” said RISD Provost Jessie Shefrin. “He has a very varied background, as a graphic designer, visual artist, computer scientist, researcher and teacher, and while he has worked with industry he has not been in industry. So I think he brings a 360-degree perspective to all the things that RISD values.”

As for Maeda’s unconventional approach to leading the art school, which includes helping freshmen move into their dorms last week, jogging with students on College Hill and flipping pancakes in the cafeteria, Shefrin says his method is consistent what that of an artist willing to take risks.

“He understands first-hand experience,” Shefrin said. “He’s approaching the presidency like someone might make a piece of art or design, which is to know what it is from the inside out.”

jjordan@projo.com