Michael Bierut | |
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| Born | 1957 |
| Education | University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning |
| Occupation | Graphic designer |
| Employer | Pentagram |
| Spouse | Dorothy Kresz |
Michael Bierut (born 1957) is a graphic designer, design critic and educator, who has been a partner at design firm Pentagram since 1990. He designed the logo for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
Michael Bierut was born in 1957 in Cleveland, Ohio. [1] His family lived in Garfield Heights and he attended Saturday morning classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art where he developed his drawing skills. [2] The family moved to the suburb Parma in 1967, and he attended Normandy High School, graduating in 1975. [3] [4] [5]
In the ninth grade, Bierut created his first poster for a school play and wanted to create things with purpose. [2] He also enjoyed album cover art and discovered the book Graphic Design Manual by Armin Hofmann and Milton Glaser: Graphic Design. He studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) as a result of these influences. While in school, he interned for Chris Pullman, an AIGA medalist, at a Boston public television station, WGBH. [1] Michael Bierut graduated in 1980 from DAAP with a bachelors of science in graphic design and moved to New York City to work for Massimo Vignelli. [6] [2]
After graduation, Bierut began working for Vignelli Associates in New York. The studio at that time didn't have a computer or fax machine and Bierut was responsible for hand creating mechanical boards. He credits his youthful exuberance in staying up late for the progress he made as a designer while working for Vignelli. [6] He also learned that people don't always read a company's printed materials and strives to create engaging work that people want to read. He worked at the studio for 10 years, eventually becoming vice president. [1]
In 1990, Bierut became a partner in the New York office of Pentagram after a discussion with partner Woody Pirtle. [7] [2] At Pentagram, he has championed the democratization of design to make his design work easily digestable to the viewer. [1] Bierut's frequent incorporation of the Helvetica font, known for its legibility and ubiquity, has become a symbol of his projects at Pentagram.
At Pentagram, Bierut has had numerous clients such as Alliance for Downtown New York, Benetton, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Alfred A. Knopf, the Walt Disney Company, Mohawk Paper Mills, MillerCoors, the Toy Industry Association, Princeton University, Yale School of Architecture, New York University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Museum of Sex, and the New York Jets. Michael Bierut has done projects like I Want To Take You Higher, an exhibition on the psychedelic era for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and has served as a design consultant to United Airlines. In 2006, he developed a new signage and identity for the expanded Morgan Library Museum. He has also developed the environmental graphics for the New York Times building, designed for Phillip Johnson's Glass House, and redesigned the magazine The Atlantic . Along with that, he has created marketing strategies for William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and developed a new brand strategy and packaging for Saks Fifth Avenue. [8]
Prior to the 2016 Presidential election, he worked with two Pentagram designers to create the logo for Hillary Clinton's campaign, emphasizing its simplicity and boldness to make it memorable. [9] [10] Upon the release of the design, many designers, journalists, and constituents were critical of it but as the campaign released its customizable aspects it was better received, like after the landmark LGBT civil rights case Obergefell v. Hodges it was swathed in rainbow colors. [10] He later recommended former student Jennifer Kinon as the campaign's design director. [11]
In 1993, he became a lecturer in graphic design at the Yale School of Art and was later appointed senior critic. [12] In 2016, he joined the Yale School of Management to integrate design thinking into the program. [13]
In 2003, Bierut co-founded Design Observer with Jessica Helfand, Rick Poynor, and William Drenttel, an online publication featuring news, features, and essays on design, urbanism, innovation and pop culture. [13] His influence extends beyond design circles and his commentary can be found on public radio, appearing on “Studio 360” with Kurt Andersen. Dwell also works with him for design book recommendations and Fast Company asks for his opinions on corporate branding, and he writes articles on design for the New York Times. [1]
Bierut also has a long-running history with Design Indaba where he spoke at 2005, 2010 and 2015 conference. [14]
Bierut's work is in permanent collections in around the world the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA); the Denver Art Museum; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Germany; and the Museum of Design, Zürich, Switzerland." [15]
From 1988 to 1990, Michael Bierut served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) [16] and was president of AIGA National from 1998 to 2001. He is presently serving as director of both Architectural League of New York and New Yorkers for Parks. Bierut in 1989 was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and in 2003, he was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. He received highest honor in the profession in 2006, the AIGA medal, which recognizes his illustrious achievements and contributions to the field. [1] In 2008, he received the Design Mind Award that was presented by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. [8] In 2015, he was awarded Masters Series Award by the School of Visual Arts and received his first comprehensive retrospective of his work. [17]
Tobias Frere-Jones is an American type designer who works in New York City. He operates the company Frere-Jones Type and teaches typeface design at the Yale School of Art MFA program.
Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter and art educator in design. She also served as the first female principal at Pentagram, which she joined in 1991.
Pentagram is a design firm. It was founded in 1972, by Alan Fletcher, Theo Crosby, Colin Forbes, Kenneth Grange, and Mervyn Kurlansky at Needham Road, Notting Hill, London. The company has offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Berlin and Austin, Texas. In addition to its influential work, the firm is known for its unusual structure, in which a hierarchically flat group of partners own and manage the firm, often working collaboratively, and share in profits and decisionmaking.
April Greiman is an American designer widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European New Wave design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s." According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design training with West Coast postmodernism.
Massimo Vignelli was an Italian designer who worked in a number of areas including packaging, houseware, furniture, public signage, and showroom design. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his wife, Lella. His motto was, "If you can design one thing, you can design everything," which the broad range of his work reflects.
Rick Poynor is an English writer on design, graphic design, typography, and visual culture.
J. Abbott Miller or Abbott Miller is an American graphic designer and writer, and a partner at Pentagram, which he joined in 1999.
Jessica Helfand is a designer, author, and educator. She is a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, and founding editor of the website Design Observer. She is Senior Critic at Yale School of Art since 1994, a lecturer in Yale College, and Artist-in-Residence at Yale’s Institute for Network Science. Named the first Henry Wolf Resident in design at the American Academy in Rome in 2010, she is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.
William Drenttel was a designer, author, publisher, social entrepreneur and foundation executive. In 2012, he was the president of Winterhouse Institute, vice president of communications and design for Teach For All, co-director of the Transform Symposium at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, and the recipient of Rockefeller Foundation support to develop models for design and social change. He was president emeritus of AIGA, a fellow of NYU Institute of the Humanities, a senior faculty fellow and social enterprise fellow at Yale School of Management, and the publisher and editorial director of Design Observer, a website covering design, social innovation, urbanism and visual culture. In 2010, Drenttel was elected to the Art Directors Hall of Fame and the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and was the first Henry Wolf Resident in Graphic Design at the American Academy in Rome. He lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad.
Lorraine Wild is a Canadian-born American graphic designer, writer, art historian, and teacher. She is an AIGA Medalist and principal of Green Dragon Office, a design firm that focuses on collaborative work with artists, architects, curators, editors and publishers. Wild is based in Los Angeles, California.
Design Observer is a website devoted to a range of design topics including graphic design, social innovation, urbanism, popular culture, and criticism. The content of the site includes essays, articles, reviews, blog posts, and peer reviewed scholarship. It is the host of the architecture and urban design publication Places and the podcast Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
Alexander Isley is an American graphic designer and educator.
Lella Vignelli was an Italian architect, designer, and businesswomen. She collaborated closely throughout much of her life with her husband Massimo Vignelli, with whom she founded Vignelli Associates in 1971.
Michael Gericke is an American graphic designer.
Paul Shaw is an American designer, calligrapher and historian of design who lives in New York City. He has written a book on the history of the design of the New York City Subway system, Helvetica and the New York Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story, on the work of William Addison Dwiggins, and for Print magazine. His book on the New York subway is known as one of the best modern design books. He received the annual SoTA Typography Award of 2019. Paul Shaw is Editor-in-Chief of Codex, Journal of Letterforms and The Eternal Letter Design. His work has won awards from the AIGA Directors Club and the Art Directors Club of New York.
Jennifer Kinon is an American graphic designer.
Michael Manwaring is an American designer and artist, he was the Principal at The Office of Michael Manwaring design firm. He was based in San Francisco for more than 40 years and was one of the founders of the San Francisco Bay Area postmodern movement in graphic design, that later became known as the "Pacific Wave". He is currently located in Portland, Oregon.
Michael Mabry is an American graphic designer, illustrator, and educator, he is the Principal at Michael Mabry Design. He was one of the founders of the San Francisco Bay Area postmodern movement in graphic design, that later became known as the "Pacific Wave".
Vignelli Associates was a design firm co-founded and run by Massimo and Lella Vignelli in New York City, from 1971 to 2014. They worked firmly within the modernist tradition, stressing simplicity by using basic geometric shapes and a limited range of typefaces. Their design work, encompassing graphic design, branding and corporate identity, architecture and interiors, and industrial design is considered among the most influential of the 20th century.
Pablo Martín is a creative director and graphic designer who is known for producing brand identities, typography, signage and packaging and for his contribution to newspaper and magazine design.
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