“Swingline … Swingline … didn’t he study at RISD?”
No, actually, Swingline did not study at RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. Safe to say that no plastic-and-steel stapler has ever been smart enough to study at the elite Providence design school.
But RISD President Roger Mandle was smart enough to spin an unexpected use of the RISD brand name in a magazine advertisement for Swingline Stapler Co. into a new scholarship at the Rhode Island School of Design.
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Last year, Mandle was thumbing through the January 2002 issue of Metropolis Magazine, a glossy journal for design aficionados, when he came across an ad for Swingline staplers. The ad featured a photo of a sleek, graphite-colored stapler, standing upright and resembling a pair of Calvin Klein slacks as much as an office supply.
Above the stapler, the ad’s copy read: “Swingline … Swingline… didn’t he study at RISD?”
Copyright laws prohibit the use of the RISD name without permission, and Mandle was reportedly both surprised to have chanced upon the copyright infringement and tickled by the reverential treatment of a RISD degree. He put in a call to Swingline’s president, Bruce Neapole.
“One of the first questions that crossed (Neapole’s) mind was, ‘uh oh, do we have a lawsuit here?’” said Will Melton, vice president for institutional advancement at RISD. “But Roger told him that he thought the ad was humorous, and that he was pleased that RISD’s name was so highly recognized in the design world. So the next time the president and I were out in Chicago, he and I arranged to meet Mr. Neapole.”
The RISD team walked out of the meeting with a new scholarship under their belt. The Swingline/Gersh Abraham Scholarship Fund, a $3,000 award, will be granted for five years to a RISD industrial design major based on academic excellence and financial need.
“Swingline is pleased to partner with the Rhode Island School of Design to establish the Swingline/Gersh Abraham Scholarship Fund,” said Neapole in a statement announcing the scholarship. “As a company long committed to innovation and quality, Swingline is excited to work with one of the nation’s leading art and design institutions to help support students who will help shape the design industry’s future.”
Evan Clabots, a RISD junior majoring in industrial design, was subsequently named as the first recipient of the scholarship. On Feb. 12, Swingline flew Clabots to its headquarters in suburban Chicago and presented him with the $3,000 grant.
The Scholarship Fund is co-named in honor of Gersh Abraham, a retired Swingline engineer who helped shape Swingline’s manufacturing, engineering and product design efforts for four decades, said Lauren Vidovich, a spokeswoman for the company.
“One of our challenges is to make RISD affordable for students who come from
all different kinds of backgrounds. Swingline is helping us to do that, and
they’re honoring an executive who’d been a design giant for the firm and was
retiring,” said Melton. “So it’s a great connection. That’s the basic story.”
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