Michael Bierut has been a graphic designer for over fifty years. His first job after graduating from the University of Cincinnati was for Massimo Vignelli where he worked for a decade. He then became a partner in the New York office of Pentagram, where he is celebrating his 33th anniversary.

Along the way, he was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale (1989), installed in the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame (2003), and awarded the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal (2006). In 2008, he was named winner in the Design Mind category of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards.

As a teacher, he has been senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art and lecturer at the Yale School of Management. Michael is co-editor of the five-volume series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design and co-founded Design Observer, a blog of design and cultural criticism which now features podcasts on design, popular culture, and business. His books, which include 79 Short Essays on Design (2007), How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry and (every once in a while) change the world (2015) and Now You See It and Other Essays on Design (2018), have been translated into German, French, Korean, Chinese, Polish and Russian. He is still married to the first girl he ever kissed and has three children and two grandchildren. (Copy: Creative Mornings website)