By Adam DeLucia

While commuting from TriBeCa to the University via the Long Island Rail Road, Tom Klinkowstein, associate professor of Fine Arts, Graphic Design and Graduate Humanities, prepares class assignments on his laptop and enjoys a cup of coffee.

“I’ve had a laptop since they came out in the mid 1980s,” Klinkowstein said.

His morning routine is the same even when he is not teaching.

“Design is a thread that connects all of the professions I have had,” Klinkowstein said.

Design is a process of simplification that is not trivial. Clarification and connections of numerous events from past experiences become involved in solving the problems of design.

“Design is like a blueprint and structure that holds up the building of my life,” Klinkowstein said. “It creates discipline.”

Klinkowstein’s experience in the field of graphic design stretches back over 30 years. He received his Bachelor’s of Science in photography, minoring in graphic design and completed his Masters of Science degree at Syracuse University in video and television.

During his education, he always tried to create projects and involve himself on projects stretching the boundaries of the medium, viewing design as self-expression as opposed to traditional business communication. The same can be said of his career.

Klinkowstein is the president of Media A, a design firm specializing in visual, information and interaction design as well as strategy, consulting and creative management, according to the company Web site.

Many prestigious corporations and cultural groups employed the work of his design firm including Morgan Stanley, Nissan, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Ford Foundation.

“We do a big variety of projects,” Klinkowstein said. “The most recent one was a gallery show that we also made original videos for and original Web sites for.”

The show was called “Designing Networking.” It was an overview of new media design, especially new media designers who use the network as a means to do what they do.

Klinkowstein reedited the works of many of the designers featured at the exhibit including Core 77 and Doors of Perception so their art appeared correct to visitors in a gallery setting.

Klinkowstein with the aid of two writers also designed a diagram showcased along a wall at the gallery show. The diagram incorporated hundreds of elements from a fictional female designer’s life and portrayed networks with which she became involved.

Networking is one of Klinkowstein’s themes.

“Starbucks are great places to network and meet people,” he said. “Networks are a legitimate way to entire the world. I literally have gotten millions of dollars of projects by talking to people at Starbucks over the past 15 years.”

At the University, Klinkowstein encourages students to network and set guides such as “go early and stay late” and “follow up on your contacts.”

“People remember that as much as the specific projects you worked on,” Klinkowstein said. “Lingering, which some people hate to do, is one of the secrets of success.”

He taught at the University for the past three and a half years while simultaneously instructing graduate courses as an adjunct at Pratt Institute.

“[The University] is a full time position, which means I get to make a difference in a way that I can’t at a part time position,” Klinkowstein said.

He participates actively on University committees including the Student Exhibition Committee, Academic Planning and Curriculum and University Re-Imaging and New Web site Committee.

Klinkowstein said working with the Re-Imaging Committee offers him the greatest satisfaction of all the committees.

“I can see that there will be a recurring effect from [the re-imaging project],” Klinkowstein said.

The goal of the project is to refigure how the University presents itself to the larger public.

Klinkowstein’s experience with Media A, which includes re-imaging, aided his work on the committee.

His knowledge helped him to raise a meaningful voice about the intentions of the University to companies and select the company closest to these intentions.

The University sought a partner to work with students, faculty, alumni, the administration and community, Klinkowstein said.

He is also involved with mentoring University students who look ahead to their future after graduation.

“I have known [Professor Klinkowstein] for all four years that I have been here at Hofstra,” Nicole Barth, a senior graphic design major and peer teacher, said. “I have taken a lot of classes with him.”

“He has become like a mentor,” Barth said. “He would try to point out my potential and make sure I was working to my fullest. He has given me greater confidence in my work and in myself.”

Klinkowstein is genuine about his sincerity for his students.

“He really cares about his students,” Barth said.

Klinkowstein said Barth and other students alike “come early and stay late.”

For students with numerous obligations and less availabilities, Klinkowstein tries to accommodate by meeting them individually in all of his classes.

At school it is not so much the project completed during class that takes priority, although that is important, Klinkowstein said. With a teacher-student relationship it is what happens many years later.

“I have seen a number of students who have graduated,” Klinkowstein said. “I am in touch with them and they are starting to feel this reward that comes from having done well in my courses and the other professors’ courses.”

Klinkowstein said, “In school you have an audience, after school you have to make your audience. You have to talk to strangers, get business cards and give out a lot of business cards.”

It’s about the network.

“We have an industry saying: The best friend of my friend is probably going to be the one that helps me the most professionally,” Klinkowstein said. “Networking as an accepted professional…way of existing, a style of living and working is not just considered to be overly aggressive.”

For a Houston, Texas project, Media A won the project over two traditional large studios because we could do it at a competitive price and we had better talent, Klinkowstein said.

“One of the [Houston] people I had worked with when she was at another company,” he said. “She preferred working with fresh faces on each project. Networking from a pragmatic point of view and just as an attitude is becoming an advantage.”

Klinkowstein said, “It is a way of living that certainly people of the students’ generation here at [the University] are probably comfortable with now and it will be formally part of their lives, probably for the rest of their professional lives.”