Michael Bierut

Michael Bierut (Born in 1957) is a graphic designer, design critic and educator. Bierut served as the national president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts from 1998 to 2001. Bierut is a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art.

Michael Bierut was born in 1957 in Cleveland, Ohio. During his time in Ohio, graphic design was not promoted to young adults. His love of fine art, music, and drawing that united in the form of album covers led him to the only two books in the library at the time on design, the Graphic Design Manual by Armin Hofman and Milton Glaser: Graphic Design. He did not need any more convincing and studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.[6] While in school, he did an internship that allowed him to study under Chris Pullman, another AIGA medalist. They worked together at a Boston public television station, WGBH. Michael Bierut graduated in 1980 from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. Before becoming partners with Pentagram in 1990 he worked ten years Vignelli Associates, as a vice president. When he was working for Vignelli Associates he had serious industry clout but it also implanted a keystone principle of his career. "Probably the most interesting thing I learned is that a lot of the things about design that tend to get designers really interested aren't that important," Bierut once said to Steven Heller. Bierut acknowledges that people might not actually read the annual reports and corporate brochures that designers make. So he strives to make things that people are able to read and want to read. Pullman has stated that, "He has a quality that I have much respect for in the kind of work that we do" and "He's a person who's very easy to understand, both when you talk to him and when he's doing his work. He's accessible, humane, funny when it's appropriate, and witty almost all of the time. And that's a very important quality for someone who wants to be a communicator."

Bierut was vice president of graphic design at Vignelli Associates. Since 1990 he has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram. According to his Pentagram online biography: Bierut "is responsible for leading a team of graphic designers who create identity design, environmental graphic design 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 and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Denver Art Museum; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Germany; and the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich, Switzerland."

Recently he has developed a new signage and identity for the expanded Morgan Library Museum. He has also developed the environmental graphics for the New York Times building, as well as designed for Phillip Johnson's Glass House and redesigned the magazine The Atlantic. 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.

With over a 100 awards won his work is in permanent collections in various museums in New York, Washington D.C., Germany, and Montreal. From 1988 to 1990 Michael Bierut served as president emeritus of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and is president of AIGA national. He is presently serving as director of both Architectural League of New York and New Yorkers for Parks. Bierut in 1989 was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and in 2003 he was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. 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.

He has published a book called Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design, which was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2007. Bierut is a senior critic at the Yale School of Art in Graphic Design and co-edits the anthology series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, published by Allworth Press. Bierut is the co-founder of the blog Design Observer and his commentaries about graphic design can be heard nationally on the Public Radio International program Studio 360. In 1998 he co-edited and designed a monograph Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist. His signage that he created has helped millions of tourists navigate the streets of Lower Manhattan.
http://hisour.com/artist/michael-bierut/