Andrew blauvelt biography

Last month, AIGA announced three recipients of this year’s AIGA medal, an award the organization has been distributing since 1920 for exceptional achievements in the field of design: Andrew Blauvelt, Emily Oberman, and Louise Sandhaus. I was honored to be asked to write the official biography for winner Andrew Blauvelt, which is now online both at AIGA.org and on Eye On Design.

Here’s how my essay opens:

“Graphic design must be seen as a discipline capable of generating meaning on its own terms without undue reliance on commissions, prescriptive social functions, or specific media or styles,” wrote designer, curator, and writer Andrew Satake Blauvelt in 2003. His influential essay “Towards Critical Autonomy or Can Graphic Design Save Itself?” was published in Emigre magazine alongside a body of other writing on the notion of “design authorship.” It was an idea that gained prominence in the 1990s when Blauvelt, along with a small but engaged group of other designe About the Director - Cranbrook Art Museum ZAS