Steven Heller | |
|---|---|
 Steven Heller | |
| Born | July 7, 1950 New York City |
| Occupation(s) | Writer and design historian |
| Spouse | Louise Fili |
Steven Heller (born July 7, 1950) [1] is an American art director, journalist, critic, author, and editor who specializes in topics related to graphic design.
Steven Heller was born July 7, 1950, in New York City to Bernice and Milton Heller. He attended the Walden School, a progressive prep school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, as well as military school. [2] [3] [4] In 1968, he enrolled at New York University with a major in English, later transferring to the School of Visual Arts illustration and cartoon program but not graduating from either.
In 1968, he became the art director of the New York Free Press without formal education or credentials because of his leftist leanings, later attending some New York University lectures utilizing his press pass. He met illustrator Brad Holland, who convinced him page layouts and type choices mattered, of which Heller was previously unconcerned. After the Free Press, he moved on to various publications, including the pornography tabloid Screw . [2] [3] [4]
In 1974, Heller became the youngest art director for The New York Times Op-Ed page, replacing Jean-Claude Suares. [2] [5] His interest in illustration employed on the Op-Ed page led him to publish collections on the subject. [2] He became the art director of The New York Times Book Review in 1977. [3] [4]
In the 1980s, he became interested in design through friendships with Seymour Chwast and Louise Fili, who he later married, as well as becoming the editor of the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design. Under his lead, the Journal became a place of scrutinized design writing, inviting authors from a variety of professions and supporting the careers of fledgling critics, who documented design writing. [2]
In 2007, he began a transition from his 30-year career at the New York Times. The changes created a lot of stress, and his Parkinson's disease was either triggered or exacerbated. [4]
In the late 1960s, after leaving SVA, Heller was hired to teach a newspaper design class. [5]
In 1984, he helped create the master's program for illustration at the School of Visual Arts. [4] In 1998, Heller and Lita Talarico co-founded the MFA Design Program, the school's first graduate program in design. In 2008, Heller co-founded SVA's MFA in Design Criticism program (D-Crit) with Alice Twemlow. The program was intended to help non-designers find a place in the design field. [4]
As of 2019, he served on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts(SVA) as co-chair of the MFA Design Department, special assistant to the president, and co-founder of the MFA Design Criticism, MPS Branding, MFA Interaction Design, MFA Products of Design programs. [6] Heller's pupils have included Deborah Adler. [7]
In 2024, he and Talarico retired as co-chairs of SVA's MFA Design Program, succeeded by Randy J. Hunt.
In 1996, he was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. [3] In 1999, Heller received an AIGA Medal for what designer Paula Scher described as "lifetime achievement that comes from a workday existing roughly between 4:30 and 8:45 A.M. before a full workday at the New York Times Book Review." [2] The Society of Illustrators honored Heller with the Richard Gangel Art Director Award in 2005. [8] In 2017, the AIGA named an award, the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary, in his honor, citing his three decades of contributions to cultural discourse on design. [9] In 2011, was awarded the Design Mind Award by the National Design Museum. [10]
Heller has said he writes so that he "can further discover and share what I've learned with others" and as a way to study topics he is curious about, notably the emergence of right- and left-wing tyrannies and pre-World War II totalitarianism. The subjects he writes about are seen through the lens of graphic design and are motivated by not being able to sleep and how design manipulates and communicates. [5]
Heller is author and co-author of many works on the history of illustration, typography, and many subjects related to graphic design. He has published more than eighty titles and written articles for magazines including Affiche, Baseline , Creation, Design, Design Issues, Design Observer , Eye , Graphis, How, I.D., Oxymoron, Mother Jones , The New York Times Book Review , Print , Speak, and U&lc magazine. For thirty-three years Heller was a senior art director of U&lc magazine, a publication devoted to typography. [2]
Heller has written, co-authored, and/or edited more than 130 books about design and popular culture. He worked with Seymour Chwast to create Push Pin Editions and more than 20 books for Chronicle Books with his wife, Louise Fili. [11]
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(December 2010) |
Seymour Chwast is an American graphic designer, illustrator, and type designer.
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Push Pin Studios is a graphic design and illustration studio founded by the influential graphic designers Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast in New York City in 1954. The firm's work, and distinctive illustration style, featuring "bulgy" three-dimensional "interpretations of historical styles ,"made their mark by departing from what the firm refers to as the "numbing rigidity of modernism, and the rote sentimental realism of commercial illustration." Eye magazine contextualized the results in a 1995 article for their "Reputations" column:
In an era dominated by Swiss rationalism, the Push Pin style celebrated the eclectic and eccentric design of the passé past while it introduced a distinctly contemporary design vocabulary, with a wide range of work that included record sleeves, books, posters, corporate logotypes, font design and magazine formats.
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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.
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Lita Talarico is a co-founder and co-chair of the School of Visual Arts MFA Design Program in New York City. She also co-founded the SVA Masters Workshop in Italy, an ongoing summer program. She also teaches and lectures on design entrepreneurism around the world.
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George Tscherny was a Hungarian-born American graphic designer and educator. Tscherny received the highest honors among graphic designers. He was awarded the AIGA Medal in 1988, celebrated in the annual Masters Series in 1992 at the School of Visual Arts, and inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1997. He worked in a number of areas ranging from U.S. postage to identity programs for large corporations and institutions.
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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.
Anne Quito is a design reporter and architecture critic based in New York City. A former reporter at Quartz, she is also the founding director of Design Lab, the in-house design team for Family Health International (FHI). In 2017, Quito won the inaugural Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA). In 2018, a story she co-authored received a silver medal in the Malofiej Infographic Awards.
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