Andrew Blauvelt, Walker Art Center design curator. Star Tribune photo by Tom Wallace

Walker Art Center's "Insights 2015 Design Lecture Series" will feature talks by top talent from Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam and Liverpool, running March 3 through March 31. The opening talk March 3, by the Walker's own design guru Andrew Blauvelt, is sold out but will be available for viewing as an archived webcast on the Walker Channel. Later talks will also be available on the Walker Channel.

Cosponsored by AIGA Minnesota, the series is augmented with an exhibition"MGDA/AIGA Minnesota: A History Exhibit about the history of the AIGA Minnesota chapter on the occasion of the AIGA's centennial.

Lectures 7 p.m. Tuesdays, March 3, 10, 17, 24, 31. Tickets for individual lectures are $24; a series ticket providing admission to all five talks is $100. Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Av., Minneapolis. For ticket information call 612-375-7600 or go to www.walkerart.org.

Lectures and events will showcase:

March 3: "Minnesota Design: A Celebration" : Andrew Blauvelt, Senior Curator of Design, Research, and Publishing at Walker Art Center will discuss the history of innovative design in Minnesota which ranges from the Honeycrisp apple to the sticky note and the Prince logo. Blauvelt will introduce the Walker's new web-based virtual Minnesota design collection.

March 10: "Technology and Art": Los Angeles-based April Greiman will address "2-D thinking in a 3-D world." A pioneer in desk-top publishing and design, artist-designer Greiman has a long association with the Walker starting with her production of a 1986 issue of the center's influential "Design Quarterly." Known for her early embrace of digital technology, she was art director with Jayme Odgers of Wet Magazine, and brought postmodernist sass to a stripped-down sans-serif world.

March 17: "K-HOLE": A five-member New York based collective, K-HOLE seems to be all-things to all design-savvy people. A shape-shifting entity, it does consulting and web development, makes art, turns out a publication, has a hand in fashion, dabbles in advertising or mock advertising, and appropriates the lingo of trend-forecasting. It's been credited with the invention of such terms as "Youth Mode," "Brand Anxiety Matrix," and "Normcore." Plus the K-HOLE crowd has consulted for private equity and generated its own line of deodorant. Why not?

March 24: Bart de Baets, Amsterdam: Described as a "fierce formalist" and "unrelenting experimenter," this Netherlandish talent works in art, music, performance and film including clubs, fanzines, posters and political statements. Plus he teaches graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, and the Royal Academy of Arts, the Hague.

March 31: "Design Fiction" : Liverpool designer James Langdon will go back to basics and focus on the storytelling and emotional pull that are essential to the success of design.