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Senior Faculty Fellow

Michael Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1957, and studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. Prior to joining Pentagram in 1990 as a partner in the firm’s New York office, he worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates, ultimately as vice president of graphic design.

His clients at Pentagram have included Swarthmore College, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Council of Fashion Designers of America, Harley-Davidson, The Minnesota Children’s Museum, The Walt Disney Company, Mohawk Paper Mills, the New York Jets, Princeton University, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Morgan Library and Museum.

He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal. He has served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is president emeritus of AIGA National. He also serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York, Brooklyn Academy of Music Local Development Corporation, and New Yorkers for Parks. Bierut was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1989, to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 2003, and was awarded the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in 2006.

Bierut is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art, where he has taught for ten years. He writes frequently about design and is the co-editor of the five-volume series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, published by Allworth Press. His commentaries about graphic design in everyday life have been heard nationally on the Public Radio International program “Studio 360.” Bierut is a co-founder of the weblog DesignObserver.com, and the author of 79 Short Essays on Design, published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Education
BS University of Cincinnati, 1980