Michael Bierut (born 1957) is a
graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...
, design critic and educator, who has been a partner at design firm
Pentagram
A pentagram (sometimes known as a pentalpha, pentangle, or star pentagon) is a regular five-pointed star polygon, formed from the diagonal line segments of a convex (or simple, or non-self-intersecting) regular pentagon. Drawing a circle aroun ...
since 1990. He designed the logo for
Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
Early life and education
Michael Bierut was born in 1957 in
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
.
His family lived in
Garfield Heights
Garfield Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. It is a suburb of Cleveland. The population was 28,849 at the time of the 2010 census.
Geography
Garfield Heights is located at (41.421423, -81.602682).
According to the Uni ...
and he attended Saturday morning classes at the
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...
where he developed his drawing skills.
The family moved to the suburb
Parma
Parma (; egl, Pärma, ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, Giuseppe Verdi, music, art, prosciutto (ham), Parmigiano-Reggiano, cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,292 ...
in 1967 and he attended
Normandy High School, graduating in 1975.
In the ninth grade, Bierut created his first poster for a school play and wanted to create things with purpose.
He also enjoyed album cover art and discovered the book ''Graphic Design Manual'' by
Armin Hofmann
Armin Hofmann ( HonRDI) (29 June 1920 – 18 December 2020) was a Swiss graphic designer.
He began his career in 1947 as a teacher at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Crafts at the age of twenty-six. Hofmann followed Emil Ru ...
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.
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
Massimo Vignelli (; January 10, 1931 – May 27, 2014) 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 ...
.
Career
Vignelli
After graduation, Bierut began working for
Vignelli Associates
Vignelli Associates was a design firm co-founded and run by Massimo and Lella Vignelli in New York City, from 1971 until 2014. They worked firmly within the modernist tradition, stressing simplicity by using basic geometric shapes and a limited ...
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.
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.
Pentagram
In 1990, Bierut became a partner in the New York office of
Pentagram
A pentagram (sometimes known as a pentalpha, pentangle, or star pentagon) is a regular five-pointed star polygon, formed from the diagonal line segments of a convex (or simple, or non-self-intersecting) regular pentagon. Drawing a circle aroun ...
after a discussion with partner
Woody Pirtle
Woody may refer to:
Biology
* Pertaining to wood, a plant tissue and material
* Woody plant, a plant with a rigid stem containing wood
* Pertaining to woodland, land covered with trees
* Woody, slang for a penile erection
People and fictional ch ...
.
At Pentagram, he has championed the democratization of design to make his design work easily digestable to the viewer.
At Pentagram, Bierut has had numerous clients such as Alliance for Downtown New York,
Benetton, the
Council of Fashion Designers of America
The Council of Fashion Designers of America, Inc. (CFDA), founded in 1962 by publicist Eleanor Lambert, and headquartered in Manhattan, is a not-for-profit trade association comprising a membership of over 450 American fashion and accessory d ...
,
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
, the
Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
, Mohawk Paper Mills,
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...
,
MillerCoors
MillerCoors was a beer brewing company in the United States. MillerCoors was formed in 2008 as a joint venture between SABMiller and Molson Coors to combine their brewing, marketing and sales operations in the United States. The company was acqui ...
, the
Toy Industry Association
The Toy Association is an American trade association
A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a s ...
,
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
,
Yale School of Architecture
The Yale School of Architecture (YSOA) is one of the constituent professional schools of Yale University, and is generally considered to be one of the best architecture schools in the United States. The School awards the degrees of Master of Arc ...
,
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
, the
Fashion Institute of Technology
The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is a public college in New York City. It is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) and focuses on art, business, design, mass communication, and technology connected to the fashion industry. It ...
, the
Brooklyn Academy of Music
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in ...
, the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
, the
Museum of Sex
The Museum of Sex, also known as MoSex, is a sex museum located at 233 Fifth Avenue at the corner of East 27th Street in Manhattan, New York City. It opened on October 5, 2002.
History
Founder Daniel Gluck wanted to start a museum dedicated t ...
, and the
New York Jets
The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The J ...
. 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
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and othe ...
, and has served as a design consultant to
United Airlines
United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois. . 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
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' building, designed for
Phillip Johnson's Glass House
The Glass House, or Johnson house, is a historic house museum on Ponus Ridge Road in New Canaan, Connecticut built in 1948–49. It was designed by architect Philip Johnson as his own residence. It has been called his "signature work".
The Glas ...
, and redesigned the magazine ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
''. 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
Saks Fifth Avenue (originally Saks & Company; Colloquialism, colloquially Saks) is an American Luxury goods, luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street and ...
.
[Pentagram Profile]
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.
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
''Obergefell v. Hodges'', ( ), is a landmark LGBT rights case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protect ...
'' it was swathed in rainbow colors.
He later recommended former student
Jennifer Kinon
Jennifer Kinon is an American graphic designer.
Biography
Kinon attended the University of Michigan where she received a dual degree in graphic design and English. After undergrad, she enrolled in the masters program Design/Designer as Author + ...
as the campaign's design director.
Design commentary
In 1993, he became a lecturer in graphic design at the
Yale School of Art
The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...
and was later appointed senior critic. In 2016, he joined the
Yale School of Management
The Yale School of Management (also known as Yale SOM) is the graduate business school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. The school awards the Master of Business Administration (MBA), MBA for Executives ...
to integrate
design thinking
Design thinking refers to the set of Cognition, cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of Design, designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with des ...
into the program.
In 2003, Bierut co-founded
Design Observer
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 scho ...
with
Jessica Helfand
Jessica Helfand (born 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 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. S ...
,
Rick Poynor
Rick Poynor is a British writer on design, graphic design, typography, and visual culture.
Career
He began as a general visual arts journalist, working on ''Blueprint'' magazine in London. After founding Eye (magazine), ''Eye'' magazine, which he ...
, and
William Drenttel, an online publication featuring news, features, and essays on design, urbanism, innovation and pop culture.
His influence extends beyond design circles and his commentary can be found on public radio, appearing on “
Studio 360
''Studio 360'' was an American weekly public radio program about the arts and culture hosted by novelist Kurt Andersen and produced by Public Radio Exchange (PRX) and ''Slate'' in New York City. The program's stated goal was to "Get inside the ...
” with
Kurt Andersen
Kurt Andersen (born August 22, 1954) is an American writer and was the host of the Peabody-winning public radio program ''Studio 360'', a production of Public Radio International, ''Slate'', and WNYC.
Early life and education
Andersen was bo ...
. ''
Dwell
Dwell may refer to:
* ''Dwell'' (album), a 2020 album by Recondite
* ''Dwell'' (magazine), a monthly American publication focused on modern architecture and design
* Dwell (retailer), a leading UK furniture and accessories company
* "Dwell" (s ...
'' also works with him for design book recommendations and ''
Fast Company
''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year.
History
''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...
'' asks for his opinions on corporate branding, and he writes articles on design for the ''New York Times''.
Bierut also has a long-running history with
Design Indaba
Design Indaba is a trademark and brand founded and run by Interactive Africa in 1995 with a focus on design and under the slogan "A better world through creativity". Consisting of an online publication and a series of events and creative projects, ...
where he spoke at 2005, 2010 and 2015 conference.
Awards and achievements
Bierut's work is in permanent collections in around the world the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
(MoMA) and the
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum housed within the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 museums that fall under the wing of the Smithsonian Inst ...
in New York; the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
in
Washington, DC
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...
; the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
(SFMOMA); the
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between t ...
; the
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (''Museum of Art and Design Hamburg'') is a museum of fine, applied and decorative arts in Hamburg, Germany. It is located centrally, near the Hauptbahnhof.
History
The museum was founded in 1874, foll ...
, Germany; and the
Museum of Design, Zürich
The Museum of Design, Zürich (German: ''Museum für Gestaltung Zürich'') is a museum for industrial design, visual communication, architecture, and craft in Zurich, Switzerland.
Overview
The museum is part of the Department of Cultural An ...
, Switzerland."
From 1988 to 1990 Michael Bierut served as president of the New York Chapter of the
American Institute of Graphic Arts
The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) is a professional organization for design. Its members practice all forms of communication design, including graphic design, typography, interaction design, user experience, branding and identity. T ...
(AIGA) and was president of AIGA National from 1998 to 2001. He is presently serving as director of both
Architectural League of New York
The Architectural League of New York is a non-profit organization "for creative and intellectual work in architecture, urbanism, and related disciplines".
The league dates from 1881, when Cass Gilbert organized meetings at the Salmagundi Club for ...
and New Yorkers for Parks. Bierut in 1989 was elected to the
Alliance Graphique Internationale
Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) is a club of the world's leading graphic artists and designers. There are 527 members from 43 countries. Its members have been collectively responsible for the identity design of most of the world's top co ...
, and in 2003 he was named to the
Art Directors Club Hall of Fame The Art Directors Club Hall of Fame was established in 1971, by the Art Directors Club of New York, a professional organization in the design and creative industries. The Art Directors Club selects its honorees from those "who have made significant ...
. He received highest honor in the profession in 2006, the AIGA medal, which recognizes his illustrious achievements and contributions to the field.
In 2008 he received the
Design Mind Award that was presented by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
In 2015, he was awarded Masters Series Award by the
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
History
This school was started by ...
and received his first comprehensive retrospective of his work.
Books
*''Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design'' (2007,
Princeton Architectural Press
Princeton Architectural Press is a small press publisher, specializing in books on architecture, design, photography, landscape, and visual culture, with over 1,000 titles on its backlist. In 2013, it added a line of stationery products, including ...
; )
* ''How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (Every Once in a While) Change the World'' (2015, Harper Design; )
*''Now You See It and Other Essays on Design'' (2017,
Princeton Architectural Press
Princeton Architectural Press is a small press publisher, specializing in books on architecture, design, photography, landscape, and visual culture, with over 1,000 titles on its backlist. In 2013, it added a line of stationery products, including ...
; )
See also
*
List of AIGA medalists
Following is a list of AIGA medalists who have been awarded the American Institute of Graphic Arts medal.
On its website, AIGA says "The medal of the AIGA, the most distinguished in the field, is awarded to individuals in recognition of their exc ...
*
Art Directors Club Hall of Fame The Art Directors Club Hall of Fame was established in 1971, by the Art Directors Club of New York, a professional organization in the design and creative industries. The Art Directors Club selects its honorees from those "who have made significant ...
References
External links
Design Observer blogwith biography available on homepage
AIGA biographyYale online biographyArt Directors Club biography and images of work
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bierut, Michael
AIGA medalists
American graphic designers
Design writers
Logo designers
Artists from Cleveland
Living people
Design educators
1957 births
Pentagram partners (past and present)