Official Bio

Michael Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1957, and studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. Prior to joining Pentagram in 1990 as a partner in the firm’s New York office, he worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates, ultimately as vice president of graphic design.

Michael’s clients at Pentagram have included the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., the Walt Disney Company, Mohawk Paper Mills, Motorola, the Toy Industry Association, Princeton University, Yale School of Architecture, New York University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Minnesota Children’s Museum and the Library of Congress. His projects have ranged from the design of “I Want to Take You Higher,” an exhibition on the psychedelic era for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, to serving as design consultant to United Airlines, a task that has included the naming and identity for the airline’s new low cost carrier, Ted.

Michael’s recent activities have included creating a new branding strategy for NFL team the New York Jets, developing a graphic identity and publications for New York’s Museum of Sex, designing signage for the renovation of the modern Park Avenue landmark Lever House, creating a graphic identity for Tadao Ando’s new Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and consulting with the Alliance for Downtown New York on wayfinding issues around the World Trade Center site.

He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, all in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany; and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal. He has served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is president emeritus of AIGA National. He currently serves as a director of the Architectural League of New York and of New Yorkers for Parks. In 1989, Michael was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and in 2003 he was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame.

Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art. He is co-editor of the anthology series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, published by Allworth Press, and in 1998 he co-edited and designed the monograph Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist. He is a co-founder of the weblog DesignObserver.com, and his commentaries about graphic design in everyday life can be heard nationally on the Public Radio International program “Studio 360.”

Pentagram
Design Observer

Studio 360