Michael Bierut is a graphic designer, design critic and educator.

Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

. He studied graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

 at the University of Cincinnati

University of Cincinnati

The University of Cincinnati is a comprehensive public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a part of the University System of Ohio....

’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning

University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

The University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, commonly referred to as DAAP, is a college of the University of Cincinnati. Located in the university's main campus in Cincinnati, Ohio, DAAP is consistently ranked as one of the most prestigious design schools in the...

.

Bierut was vice president of graphic design at Vignelli Associates. Since 1990 he has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram

Pentagram (design studio)

Pentagram is a design studio that was founded in 1972 by Alan Fletcher, Theo Crosby, Colin Forbes, Kenneth Grange and Mervyn Kurlansky in Needham Road, West London, UK...

. Biography at Pentagram

According to his Pentagram online biography: Bierut "is responsible for leading a team of graphic designers who create identity design, environmental graphic design

Environmental graphic design

Environmental graphic design is a design profession embracing many design disciplines including graphic design, architecture, industrial design and landscape architecture...

 and editorial design solutions. He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in several permanent collections including: the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 (MoMA) and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York; the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 in Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

 (SFMOMA); the Denver Art Museum; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe is a museum of fine, applied and decorative arts in Hamburg, Germany. It is located centrally, near the Hauptbahnhof.-History:...

, Germany; and the Museum für Gestaltung

Museum of Design Zürich

The Museum of Design, Zurich is a museum for industrial design, visual communication, architecture, and craft in Zurich, Switzerland.- Overview :...

 in Zürich, Switzerland."

Bierut served as the national president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts

American Institute of Graphic Arts

AIGA is an American professional organization for design. Organized in 1914, AIGA currently has more than 22,000 members throughout 66 chapters and more than 200 student groups nationwide...

 (AIGA

Aiga

‘Aiga is a word in the Samoan language which means 'family.' The aiga is the family unit of Samoan society and differs from the Western sense in that it consists more than just a mother, father and children. The Samoan family, also referred to as an 'extended family' is based on the culture's...

) from 1998 to 2001.

Bierut is a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art

Yale School of Art

The Yale School of Art is one of twelve constituent schools of Yale University. It is a professional art school, granting only Masters of Fine Arts degrees to those completing studies in graphic design, painting/printmaking, photography, or sculpture....

.

Bierut is also the co-editor of three Looking Closer graphic design anthologies. He is also a founding writer of the Design Observer blog with Rick Poynor

Rick Poynor

Rick Poynor is a British writer on design, graphic design, typography and visual culture. He began as a general visual arts journalist, working on Blueprint magazine in London. After founding Eye magazine , which he edited from 1990 to 1997, he focused increasingly on visual communication...

, William Drenttel

William Drenttel

William Drenttel is a graphic designer, editor, a partner in Winterhouse Studios, and President Emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Arts . Drenttel received a BA in European Cultural Studies from Princeton University....

 and Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand is an author, columnist and lecturer on graphic design. She is the partner of William Drenttel of Winterhouse Studios, Winterhouse Editions and Winterhouse Institute located in Falls Village, Connecticut. She is a critic in graphic design at Yale University, where she earned her...

.

Bierut is also known for his involvement in the film Helvetica

Helvetica (film)

Helvetica is an independent feature-length documentary film about typography and graphic design, centered on the typeface of the same name. Directed by Gary Hustwit, it was released in 2007 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the typeface's introduction in 1957 and is considered the first of...

.

Books

• Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design, Princeton Architectural Press, (May 31) 2007. (ISBN 978-1568986999)

Quotes

• "Part of maturing as a designer is discovering what you're good at."

• "Not everything is design. But design is about everything. So do yourself a favor: be ready for anything."

• "Graphic design is the purposeful combination of words, pictures and other visual elements to support the communication of an explicit or implicit message."

External links

• Design Observer blog with biography available on homepage
• AIGA biography
• Yale online biography
• Art Directors Club biography and images of work