Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by UnkleFester (talk | contribs) at 20:49, 30 November 2009 (moved User:UnkleFester/Katherine McCoy to Katherine McCoy: preliminary page work completed). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Katherine McCoy (born in Decatur, Illinois, 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.

Early career

McCoy's first recollection of appreciation of design was on a family trip, while visiting the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As a student, McCoy studied Industrial Design at Michigan State University, where she graduated in 1967.

Shortly after graduation in 1967, McCoy joined Unimark International; a design firm which employed many key figures in American Modernist graphic design, Massimo Vignelli, Ralph Eckerstrom of Container Corporation 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 in-house 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.

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, the studios were regularly convened, and explored interdisciplinary approaches towards designing. Particularly influential on the Cranbrook design approach was Robert Venturi's book Learning from Las Vegas, and McCoy's own interest in social design and design vernacular. Reinvented by the McCoys, the program had no requirements, deadlines or assignments other than a final thesis show, and the students' work was a broad mix of radical experiments and practical projects, sometimes in collaboration with McCoy. While McCoy's program was at times labeled contoversial, the graduates of the McCoy's 20 year tenure at the Cranbrook program have included many notable figures in American design and design education including Lorraine Wild, Louise Sandhaus, P. Scott Makela, Andrew Blauvelt.

See also

• List of AIGA medalists

References

1. ^ Wild, Lorraine. "Katherine McCoy: Expanding Boundaries". Retrieved 30 Jul 2009.
2. Harper, Laurel (October 1, 1999). Radical graphics/graphic radicals. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. pp. 62–63. ISBN 081181680X.
3. http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/medalist-katherinemccoy
4. http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=47&fid=56