Maryland Institute College of Art

This graduate of Minneapolis College of Art and Design is a doer, maker, designer, illustrator, and author. His book Hand Job celebrates the life of hand-lettering in contemporary design. He worked on staff for Urban Outfitters and now runs his own studio in Brooklyn, NY. His work is featured in the exhibition Graphic Design: Now In Production. A frequent visitor to MICA’s GD MFA program, Perry says, “Process is very important. I have always believed in the generating of piles, and I look at the process of ‘making’ like exercise. The more you exercise the stronger you become. Needless to say I do a lot of making for its own sake.”

In this project, designers develop an alternative persona for themselves, one that amplifies, undermines, and rediscovers an element of who they are. After creating a biographical diagram of their alter ego, they produce a new work of design in the mode of that person. Graphic design becomes a visual performance.

• Bethany Heck





• Javier Lopez













• Jason Gottlieb





• Kelcey Towell

Teddy Cruz, co-founder of CUE/Center for Urban Ecologies and Professor of Culture and Urbanism, University of California San Diego, is an architect with a humane vision for metropolitan areas across America whose work breaks down physical and cultural barriers, mixing wealthy and poor, old and new, and public and private. Internationally renowned for his urban research on the Tijuana-San Diego border, his work focuses on traditionally overlooked poor, minority and immigrant communities and spaces, and has transformed border neighborhoods in California and communities in New York by creating affordable, quality housing and public infrastructure.

Congratulations to all the 2011 winners of Sappi Paper’s “Ideas That Matter” grants.

Andrew Shea (GD MFA 2010)
Project for the Children’s Tumor Foundation

Mike Weikert (Director, MICA’s MA in Social Design, GD MFA 2005)
Project for MICA’s Center for Design Practice

Silas Munro (MICA faculty)
Project for Housing Works

Inna Alesina is the creator of a unique design thinking process that has been employed in numerous public programs at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. The museum has created a video and PDF instructions for use by educators.

(Saint Louis University, Missouri) A self-described “after-hours-idea-factory,” Kelcey was formerly a regional Olympic soccer player. She plans to apply her competitive nature and meticulous work ethic toward achieving her MFA. She is devoted to learning, idea-generation, collaboration, and innovation.

(Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia) Sarah brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in branding and package design through her work with Hasbro Toys in Providence, RI. She is especially interested in the role that design plays in the areas of social, educational, community, and environmental issues. She cultivates a love for fine art photography and the formal beauty of design and typography with the desire to achieve a lasting social impact.

(Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Wisconsin) Brian has worked as a designer for a small studio, a major art museum, and currently, for one of the largest art schools in the country (SAIC). He has taught a range of design courses at the college level and aspires to become a full time design educator.

(Catholic University College of Art and Design, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) Interested in pushing the boundaries between art and design, Luiz believes designers must take responsibility for proposing new ways to communicate. With broadly ranging interests in theater, set design, cinema, animation, psychology, economics, engineering, and visual literacy, Luiz always seeks new experiences and connections.

(School of the Art Institute of Chicago) Javier brings a passion for information graphics, an interest and engagement in structural thinking, and a sociological perspective through his work with Gravitytank in Chicago. A native of Ecuador, he studied with and served as a teaching assistant for Stephen Farrell at SAIC, and he hopes to focus his studies at MICA on strategy, research, and design in a collaborative environment.

(Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China) A top scholar at CAFA in Beijing, Qian also studied abroad at Willem de Kooning Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam. She has a particular interest in book design and letterpress, and she wishes to expand her design awareness and her engagement with the global design community by studying in the US.

(Academy of Art and Design Offenbach, Germany) Nico comes to MICA as a Fulbright Scholar. He is interested in marrying his considerable visual skills with conceptual design and intercultural studies, and he is inspired by the controversial and contrasting worlds of urban Baltimore and the cultural arena of MICA.

(Auburn University, Alabama) Solid web skills meet passionate typography interests in Bethany. The daughter of a graphic design professor, Bethany has lived and breathed graphic design for most of her life. She has a special love for the history and practice of letterpress. She is also a natural-born entrepreneur and all-out baseball fan.

(Corcoran College of Art + Design) Jason is an award-winning designer from the DC/Northern Virginia area, and teaches Typography at the Corcoran School of Art. He is a playful and adept writer and a skilled illustrator who infuses much of his work with irony and humor.

(University of Pennsylvania) Equipped with extensive experience in package design and engineering, Nicki also speaks fluent Mandarin and Cantonese, and she seeks to grow her graphic design skills through immersive engagement in design process and research.

(Montclair University, New Jersey) With a love for Borges and Calvino, Young Sun seeks intellectual rigor and interdisciplinary studies. Coming to MICA from a position in New York City as a web and print designer, he is excited to engage his broad interests in graphic design, printmaking, literature, philosophy, science, and art in the GD MFA program.

(Parsons School of Design, New York; Institute of Industrial Art, Kharkov, Ukraine) Inna is a highly accomplished product designer, who has been teaching in MICA’s Environmental Design Department. Raised in the Ukraine, she is the author (with Ellen lupton) of Exploring Materials: Creative Design for Everyday Objects, published by MICA and Princeton Architectural Press. She brings a deep knowledge of 3D design, an interest in sustainable practice, and strong connections to the international design community.

Jonathan Keller Keller is an artist currently living and working in Baltimore, MD. He received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Interactive Multimedia from the Minneapolis College of Art + Design in 1999 and a Masters of Fine Arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2007. Working at the intersection of craft, collection, and computation, Keller seeks to transcend & transform everyday digital elements through obsessive, iterative, and generative processes. His online presence is felt widely throughout the internet, with video views in the millions, features on thousands of websites including NYTimes.com, BoingBoing, and the front page of Yahoo!. JK’s work has been exhibited at Vögele Kultur Zentrum, Pfäffikon, Switzerland; Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD; I space Gallery, Chicago, IL; Australian Centre for Photography, Paddington, Australia; among other international galleries.

Award-winning designer Stephen Farrell creates work that is intricately detailed, avowedly non-commercial,and unabashedly intellectual. Farrell designs experimental fonts and fiction, and he teaches at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago. Projects include the novel VAS, a full-on collaboration with author Steve Tomasula. Farrell’s digital typeface Volgare is based on a 1601 Florentine manuscript written by an anonymous clerk. (Farrell studied the original at Chicago’s Newberry Library.) Volgare includes over 500 distinct glyphs, including ligatures, word endings, and combination characters. Each one is raw and imperfect, erupting on the page like an abrasion or scar.

Rick Valicenti’s graphics bristle with innovation, imagination, curiosity, and craft. He has been a leading presence in design as a practitioner, an educator, and a mentor. In 1988, he founded Thirst, a Chicago-based design collaborative devoted to art, function, and real human presence. The firm has received numerous awards for its self-initiated and commissioned projects. In 2006, Valicenti was honored with the AIGA Medal and was included in Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Triennial: Design Life Now. He is the editor of a monograph on Thirst, Emotion as Promotion, whose suggestive title evokes the wit and passion that invariably animate Valicenti’s work. Rick is the 2011 recipient of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Communication Design.