Denise Gonzales Crisp
I am bi-located in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Los Angeles, California. I am a designer, writer, educator, curator, and advocate of Graphic Design: The Discipline. I am primarily affiliated with the Department of Graphic and Industrial Design, College of Design, North Carolina State University, as a full professor, and serve as the Director of the Master of Graphic Design (MGD) program. I arrived at NC State in 2002 to assume the Chair of the Graphic Design Department. Prior to this appointment, I was the Senior Designer for Art Center College of Design and principal of the design studio SúperStové!.
Throughout my career as a designer I have taught design graduate and undergraduate courses at Art Center (Saturday High, Art Center at Night, and the Graphic Design and Media Design programs), California Institute of the Arts, Otis Art Institute, and UCLA (extension program). I have also served as external advisor for graduate students at RISD and Otis Art Institute.
My work and writing are widely published in European publications including Eye Magazine, Items, Book 2.0 Journal, Communication Design Journal, and in US publications including Emigré, Design Observer, Print, Design and Culture Journal, and Metropolis. My essays and design work are also included in some books: Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design, 1936-1986; Design Research: Methods and Perspectives; The Designer as Author, Producer, Activist, Entrepreneur, Curator, and Collaborator; Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1983–2011); Design Dictionary; All Access: The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers — to name a few. My own book, Graphic Design in Context: Typography, was published in 2012 by Thames & Hudson, UK, and is available here.
I have presented, given keynote addresses, or conducted workshops at Unfrozen (SZ) FastForward (IR), Spaces of Learning (CN), TypoSF (US), ATypI (MX), SoTA TypeCon, Walker Art Center (InSights speaker series, US), GraficEurope (DE), ArtCity (CN), and at many national AIGA conferences as well as educational institutions across the US and abroad including Cranbrook Academy, Michigan State University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and California College of Art.
My expertise and interests in design education, typography and typographic tools, and graphic design are fodder for my writing. The DecoRational (a term I coined) was the basis for the exhibition Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, co-curated with Susan Yelavich.
I sit on the editorial board of Design and Culture journal, and am a working member on the board of DesignInquiry, a non-profit organization devoted to researching design issues in intensive team-based gatherings.
I hold a BFA from Art Center College of Design and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. For fun I cook, practice drums, and am learning to perform improv performance.
Address: Brooks Hall Box 7701
Raleigh, NC 27695
Throughout my career as a designer I have taught design graduate and undergraduate courses at Art Center (Saturday High, Art Center at Night, and the Graphic Design and Media Design programs), California Institute of the Arts, Otis Art Institute, and UCLA (extension program). I have also served as external advisor for graduate students at RISD and Otis Art Institute.
My work and writing are widely published in European publications including Eye Magazine, Items, Book 2.0 Journal, Communication Design Journal, and in US publications including Emigré, Design Observer, Print, Design and Culture Journal, and Metropolis. My essays and design work are also included in some books: Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design, 1936-1986; Design Research: Methods and Perspectives; The Designer as Author, Producer, Activist, Entrepreneur, Curator, and Collaborator; Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1983–2011); Design Dictionary; All Access: The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers — to name a few. My own book, Graphic Design in Context: Typography, was published in 2012 by Thames & Hudson, UK, and is available here.
I have presented, given keynote addresses, or conducted workshops at Unfrozen (SZ) FastForward (IR), Spaces of Learning (CN), TypoSF (US), ATypI (MX), SoTA TypeCon, Walker Art Center (InSights speaker series, US), GraficEurope (DE), ArtCity (CN), and at many national AIGA conferences as well as educational institutions across the US and abroad including Cranbrook Academy, Michigan State University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and California College of Art.
My expertise and interests in design education, typography and typographic tools, and graphic design are fodder for my writing. The DecoRational (a term I coined) was the basis for the exhibition Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, co-curated with Susan Yelavich.
I sit on the editorial board of Design and Culture journal, and am a working member on the board of DesignInquiry, a non-profit organization devoted to researching design issues in intensive team-based gatherings.
I hold a BFA from Art Center College of Design and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. For fun I cook, practice drums, and am learning to perform improv performance.
Address: Brooks Hall Box 7701
Raleigh, NC 27695
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Talks by Denise Gonzales Crisp
in conjunction with the exhibition "Made Up" (01.22–3.20/2011) at Art Center College of Design Wind Tunnel Gallery, Pasadena, CA.
How can we embrace and build discourse that is inclusive of this “typogyroscopic” nature? I have written a book that rethinks the rules of typography in light of contemporary affordances and inclinations. One principle underpins my discussion: to master typography is to be conscious of and employ intersecting systems — forces that create the contexts within which we produce and interpret typography.
I will present and show examples of concepts such as The Azif Factor, Maximus Facillium: Genres, Transformation and Replication Style, Real Deal and Token Materiality (to name a few), which together strive to capture The Full Typographic Terrain.
Exhibitions by Denise Gonzales Crisp
the fields of graphic design, industrial design, fashion, furnishings, architecture, and digital media—speaks to the
pervasiveness and relevance of pattern and ornament today. Its hybrid languages are the aesthetic equivalent of the fastpaced and complex exchanges of our
contemporary world. Each of the designers in Deep Surface approaches ornament and pattern with a deep sense of purpose and through a particular point of view. Their perspectives and approaches are revealed in the exhibition’s six themes: Amplification, The Everyday, Kit-of-Parts, Inheritances, Elaboration, and Fantasy.
Conference Presentations by Denise Gonzales Crisp
These shifts require revisions to design pedagogy within studio contexts that foster student acceptance of change and comfort with uncertainty. Improvisation, ad hoc practices, creative use (and misuse) of theory, are ways of cultivating flexibility, responsiveness, emergent, and divergent thinking and making. I and colleagues have developed such practices for the classroom, testing and refining methods that include " improv critique, " " I wish critique, " and many others. I will identify a panel of design educators and practitioners who, 1) have found that arranging post-it notes is not the only means of understanding complexity, and 2) who are also devising innovative, relational methods that utilize naturalized, design-oriented skills in problem solving. I will incorporate the contributions into a book, tentatively entitled " Situational Methods for Design " (2019).
in conjunction with the exhibition "Made Up" (01.22–3.20/2011) at Art Center College of Design Wind Tunnel Gallery, Pasadena, CA.
How can we embrace and build discourse that is inclusive of this “typogyroscopic” nature? I have written a book that rethinks the rules of typography in light of contemporary affordances and inclinations. One principle underpins my discussion: to master typography is to be conscious of and employ intersecting systems — forces that create the contexts within which we produce and interpret typography.
I will present and show examples of concepts such as The Azif Factor, Maximus Facillium: Genres, Transformation and Replication Style, Real Deal and Token Materiality (to name a few), which together strive to capture The Full Typographic Terrain.
the fields of graphic design, industrial design, fashion, furnishings, architecture, and digital media—speaks to the
pervasiveness and relevance of pattern and ornament today. Its hybrid languages are the aesthetic equivalent of the fastpaced and complex exchanges of our
contemporary world. Each of the designers in Deep Surface approaches ornament and pattern with a deep sense of purpose and through a particular point of view. Their perspectives and approaches are revealed in the exhibition’s six themes: Amplification, The Everyday, Kit-of-Parts, Inheritances, Elaboration, and Fantasy.
These shifts require revisions to design pedagogy within studio contexts that foster student acceptance of change and comfort with uncertainty. Improvisation, ad hoc practices, creative use (and misuse) of theory, are ways of cultivating flexibility, responsiveness, emergent, and divergent thinking and making. I and colleagues have developed such practices for the classroom, testing and refining methods that include " improv critique, " " I wish critique, " and many others. I will identify a panel of design educators and practitioners who, 1) have found that arranging post-it notes is not the only means of understanding complexity, and 2) who are also devising innovative, relational methods that utilize naturalized, design-oriented skills in problem solving. I will incorporate the contributions into a book, tentatively entitled " Situational Methods for Design " (2019).