We’ve all been been re-experiencing the tragic losses of 9/11 for the past few days through the media on the tenth anniversary of the terrorist hi-jackings and crashes. Tragedies this huge emphasize the value of art for bringing us all together. This week I read a post from Steven Heller in Imprint about Alex Steinweiss, the inventor of the album cover who passed away this year. Like many important mid-century modern designers, Steinweiss was a New [...]

This summer I’m teaching my first course entirely online, with 20 students logging in to click and drag their way through my newly-developed art appreciation course. Online teaching and learning offers new opportunities for students and educators, but also brings new challenges.

This week I’ll be presenting my paper Ink on the Brain: Teaching Print in a Post-Print World at the UCDA Design Education Summit hosted by New Jersey City University. The paper examines 15th century book printing, the origin of roman printing types, and their impact in a post-digital design world. In her 1955 introduction to Steinberg’s Five Hundred Years of Printing, graphic design critic Beatrice Ward describes the “cleft” between manuscript and print cultures, [...]

Packaging design is an important focus of producers and brand managers as they position their brand in the market. This fall my ART 430 Package Design course will teach sustainable packaging design to undergraduates in the graphic design program. Here’s a set of packaging from the AIGA Design Archives for Pangea Organics: a great example of a sustainable brand line designed by Marc Woollard and Ian Groulx at IDEO to use sustainable materials and techniques. Its 35 [...]

A week ago when the news came out of Bin Laden’s killing in a raid on his compound in Pakistan, James Victore’s political cartoon in the New York Times really got my attention. Amidst the flag waving celebrations, his partially erased charcoal sketch of Bin Laden’s face said it all, and said it with restraint.