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| Following Unimark, McCoy worked for a year in the corporate identity offices of the Chrysler Corporation, then joined the Boston design firm Omnigraphics, where she worked on several projects for the MIT Press with ].<ref name=wild /> Next she joined Designers & Partners, the Detroit advertising design studio where she met the designer - illustrator - cartoonist ]. Here, McCoy was involved in a much different setting then that of MIT Press, where she was able to use her typography skills she learned at Unimark. Designers and Partners focused solely on working with advertising agencies and harnessed a staff that included all sorts of graphic arts |
Following Unimark, McCoy worked for a year in the corporate identity offices of the Chrysler Corporation, then joined the Boston design firm Omnigraphics, where she worked on several projects for the MIT Press with ].<ref name=wild /> Next she joined Designers & Partners, the Detroit advertising design studio where she met the designer - illustrator - cartoonist ]. Here, McCoy was involved in a much different setting then that of MIT Press, where she was able to use her typography skills she learned at Unimark. Designers and Partners focused solely on working with advertising agencies and harnessed a staff that included all sorts of graphic arts “professionals”, including illustrators, cartoonists, and “lettering men” as well as graphic designers. Although McCoy was not particularly fond of working with ad agencies, the opportunities she was given and connections she made allow partially for her success today. <ref>http://www.aiga.org/medalist-katherinemccoy/</ref> She also worked with other professional practices including graphic design for MIT Press, Xerox Education Group, and major advertising agencies. <ref>http://www.highgrounddesign.com/mccoy/kmframe.htm</ref> | ||
| ==Career in design education== | ==Career in design education== | ||
Revision as of 07:02, 17 November 2011
| Katherine McCoy | |
|---|---|
| Born | Katherine Jane Braden (1945-10-12)October 12, 1945 Decatur, Illinois, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Michigan State University, Industrial design |
| Known for | Graphic designer |
| Awards | Design Minds, Smithsonian Institute; IDSA Education Award; Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design |
Katherine McCoy (born Katherine Jane Braden in Decatur, Illinois, October 12, 1945) is an American graphic designer and educator, best known for her work as the co-chair of the graduate Design program for Cranbrook Academy of Art.
During her extensive career spanning education and professional practice, McCoy worked with groundbreaking design firm Unimark, Chrysler Corporation, and with Muriel Cooper in the early days of MIT Press while at the Boston design firm Omnigraphics. McCoy's career in education was similarly broad, teaching at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design, and the Royal College of Art, London. She is also the co-founder of High Ground Designers, a workshop firm created for professional designers in their studios.
Early career
McCoy's discovery of the Bauhaus and industrial design was at the Museum of Modern Art while on a family trip to the New York World's Fair. As a student, McCoy studied Industrial Design at Michigan State University, where she graduated in 1967.
Shortly after graduation, McCoy joined Unimark International, a design firm led by many key figures in American Modernist graphic design, including Massimo Vignelli, Ralph Eckerstrom of Container Corporation, Jay Doblin and Herbert Bayer. It was at the interdisciplinary Unimark offices where McCoy was exposed to the strict Swiss typographic and design approaches which came to permeate much of American corporate communications through the late 1960s and 70s.
Following Unimark, McCoy worked for a year in the corporate identity offices of the Chrysler Corporation, then joined the Boston design firm Omnigraphics, where she worked on several projects for the MIT Press with Muriel Cooper. Next she joined Designers & Partners, the Detroit advertising design studio where she met the designer - illustrator - cartoonist Edward Fella. Here, McCoy was involved in a much different setting then that of MIT Press, where she was able to use her typography skills she learned at Unimark. Designers and Partners focused solely on working with advertising agencies and harnessed a staff that included all sorts of graphic arts “professionals”, including illustrators, cartoonists, and “lettering men” as well as graphic designers. Although McCoy was not particularly fond of working with ad agencies, the opportunities she was given and connections she made allow partially for her success today. She also worked with other professional practices including graphic design for MIT Press, Xerox Education Group, and major advertising agencies.
Career in design education
In 1971 McCoy began her career in design education when she was appointed co-chair of the Cranbrook Academy of Art graduate design program with her husband Michael McCoy. While McCoy led the graphic design program, and Michael McCoy led the industrial design program, both 2D and 3D design students shared studios, and explored interdisciplinary approaches towards designing. Early conceptual influences on the Cranbrook design approach were Robert Venturi's book Learning from Las Vegas, Richard Saul Wurman's publishing on the man-made environment, and McCoy's own interest in social design and design vernacular. The commercial vernacular collages of Edward Fella, the Basel experiments of Wolfgang Weingart and a Yale project by Dan Friedman were visual design influences. Later sources included semiotics, post-structuralism, literary theory and deconstruction; both the students' and McCoy's work experimented with applications of these ideas to communications design.
Reinvented by the McCoys, the program was organized around experimentation in the studio, with minimal structure or assignments; there were no courses and the final thesis show was the only official deadline. Each student was encouraged to develop a personal voice in a broad mix of radical experiments and practical projects that applied experimental ideas and forms, sometimes in collaboration with McCoy. While McCoy's program was at times labeled controversial, the McCoys' 24-year tenure at Cranbrook graduated many notable figures in American graphic design professional practice and design education, including Lorraine Wild, Edward Fella, Nancy Skolos and Tom Wedell, P. Scott Makela, Andrew Blauvelt, Lucille Tenazas, Meredith Davis and Patrick Whitney. After McCoy left Cranbrook in 1995, she held several other teaching positions, most notably with Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design, from 1995–2003, and the Royal College of Art in London.
Later Career
McCoy now consults in communications design, design curricula planning at Kansas City Art Institute and post-professional design education as a partner of McCoy & McCoy, and High Ground Tools and Strategies for Design. High Ground Design is a series of workshops created by Katherine and her husband, Michael McCoy for other professional designers to work in their studio. High Ground is dedicated to expanding design skills and methods, as well as opening up to the vision of design, questioning assumptions and redefining the nature of design.
See also
References
- ^ Wild, Lorraine. "Katherine McCoy: Expanding Boundaries". Retrieved 30 Jul 2009.
- Harper, Laurel (October 1, 1999). Radical graphics/graphic radicals. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. pp. 62–63. ISBN 081181680X.
- http://www.aiga.org/medalist-katherinemccoy/
- http://www.highgrounddesign.com/mccoy/kmframe.htm
- http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/medalist-katherinemccoy
- http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=47&fid=56
- http://powerofdesign.aiga.org/content.cfm/mccoy_categ
- http://www.highgrounddesign.com/about/about.htm