Visiting Artists 2020–2021

Gaby Hernandez

Gaby Hernandez is a social designer, design researcher, and Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Florida. She has worked extensively with marginalized groups and indigenous communities in Mexico and Costa Rica. Her current work focuses on integrating heritage and diversity in the classroom and exploring decolonial design theories and practices. She has an MFA in Graphic Design and a Certificate in Latin American Studies from the University of Florida and a BA in Mass Communication from the University of Costa Rica.

Hadiya Williams

Hadiya Williams is an art director, designer, and entrepreneur working in Washington, DC. Her store Black Pepper Paperie creates wearable ceramic art, home decor, paper goods, and apparel. She holds a degree in computer science from Bowie State University and a BFA in graphic design from Columbia College Chicago. After a wide-ranging graphic design career, she transitioned to designing her own products and building a personal, culturally-based design language grounded in form and materials. Her outstanding work in ceramics was recently featured in Print Magazine.

 

Martin Venezky

Martin Venezky is a photographer, artist, and designer. The San Francisco Museum of Modern art honored Venezky with a 2001 solo exhibition, and his monograph, It Is Beautiful…Then Gone, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2007. Over the course of his career, he has produced an astonishing body of experimental work that has made a unique contribution to graphic design. His recent work focuses on photography as a generative tool. He holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA in Visual Studies from Dartmouth College.

Xiao Mei, Little Mountain Press

Little Mountain Press is a design and narrative independent press based in New York City and Shenzhen, China, co-founded by Xiao Mei and Mountain Dog. Little Mountain Press publishes zines and prints in risograph. We love bright colors and are not afraid to express our sexuality and our Chinese identity. Our mission is to transform boredom into joy and challenge people’s perception through print media.

 

Be Oakley, GenderFail

GenderFail was founded in 2015 by Be Oakley. This imperfect publishing platform looks at various forms of failure—from personal, public, and political perspectives—as a boundless form of creative potential. GenderFail is fueled by the messiness of collaboration, education, and community to continue to push our goals of failing forward. GenderFai has published work by 30 artists including Jesse Harrod, Sable Elyse Smith, Anthony Icacono, Liz Barr, Lex Brown, Alok Vaid-Menon, American Artist, Demian Dineyazhi and many others.

Shiva Nallaperumal

Shiva Nallaperumal is a Graphic Designer, Type Designer and Art Director from India and co-founder of the plural design practice November with Juhi Vishnani. November works at the intersection of culture, design and typography with a wide variety of clients from the Art, Film, Fashion, News and Publishing industries creating Identities, Printed Matter, Interactive Media and Custom Typefaces. Shiva has worked with or published typefaces with Typotheque, Bold Monday, Sharp Type and Lost Type Co-Op. In 2017 he became the first Graphic Designer to be included in the Forbes India 30 Under 30 list and in 2019 November was inducted into the coveted Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI). He holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, USA.

 

Tina Smith

Tina Smith is a graphic designer and art director focused on typography. Born and raised in a rural Montana town, she has a BFA in graphic design from Montana State University. After moving to New York in 2015, she has worked at the branding studio Partners & Spade, The New York Times Magazine, and Google Creative Lab. She also has an independent practice of lettering and type design with education from the Type@Cooper program. In 2020, she was named a Young Guns 18 finalist.

Rachel Willey

Rachel Willey is an art director and designer in New York City. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts, she began her career as a designer in book publishing, working with Penguin Random House, ABRAMS, FSG, and Simon & Schuster. She currently works at The New York Times Magazine, a weekly publication that's won numerous awards including Magazine of the Year from the Society of Publication Designers and Design Team of the Year from the ADC.

 

Morcos Key

In 2018, Jon Key and Wael Morcos launched Morcos Key, an award-winning Brooklyn-based graphic design studio with a hybrid practice operating between social impact, pedagogy, and creative form. The studio collaborates with arts & cultural institutions, non-profits, and commercial enterprises in North America and the Middle East. Their investment in queer and diasporic identities has guided them in developing a process rooted in community-building within multicultural contexts. To facilitate understanding while avoiding oversimplification, they leverage design choices as guideposts between the injustices of the past and a more equitable future. With a strong emphasis on language and letter design, Morcos Key translates clients’ stories and missions into visual identity, print, and digital systems. Much of the work produced by the studio is premised on the interplay of text, language, heritage, and function.

Anastasiia Raina

Anastasiia Raina is a USSR-born designer, researcher, and an Assistant Professor at Rhode Island School of Design. She graduated from the Yale School of Art with an MFA in Graphic Design. Prior to earning her MFA, she worked as a commercial graphic designer and an art director in Los Angeles. In her research-based practice, Raina is interested in exploring the aesthetics of technologically mediated natures through machine vision, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and the incorporation of biomaterials into the artistic vernacular. She draws upon scientific inquiry and collaborations with scientists as a means for generating new methodologies and forms in design. In addition to teaching, she consults and collaborates with various international firms, including the Hyundai Motor Group and has delivered lectures at conferences on posthumanist aesthetics and pedagogy as a way to engage with a wide range of scholars from a variety of disciplines.

 

Renald Louissaint

Renald Louissaint is a Brooklyn-based designer and illustrator. His illustration focuses on introspection and self and is expressed through a minimalist touch, while his design work is lush and detailed. He recently graduated from the University of Connecticut. He is a brand designer at Medium.

Noah Baker

Noah Baker is a graphic designer based in New York City, currently working at Medium. He maintains an active freelance practice focused on typographic and process-driven work for clients in the cultural and corporate spheres including publications, websites, posters and identities