PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY

Steven McCarthy has an MFA in design from Stanford University (a joint program of the departments of art and mechanical engineering), and a BFA in sculpture and drawing from Bradley University. From 1998 to 2020 he was a professor of graphic design at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus. For nine years prior, he was on the faculty of Northern Kentucky University.

Steven has published in Design Issues, AIGA Dialectic, Ico-D Communication Design, Eye, Visible Language, The Design Journal, Design and Culture, Convergence, Visual Design Scholarship, The Poster, Visual Communication, Message and She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics and Innovation.

He is known internationally for his contributions to developing a theory of design authorship. His book on the topic, The Designer As... Author, Producer, Activist, Entrepreneur, Curator and Collaborator: New Models for Communicating was published in 2013 by BIS, Amsterdam.

Steven’s graphic design work has been published in Graphis Poster, the American Institute of Graphic Arts annual, HOW, Page and in Provocative Graphics: The Power of the Unexpected in Graphic Design, among others. His creative work has been in over one hundred and thirty-five juried and invitational exhibitions.

His artist’s books are in some prestigious collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert, the Banff Centre in Canada, the Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry, and libraries at Yale University, Stanford University, UCLA, University of Washington, Columbia University and Harvard University, among many others.

Steven served a three year term on the board of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

In 2017 he was awarded the Minnesota Bok Artist Award.

In 2016, Steven chaired the inaugural Communication Design Educators Awards competition jury for Design Incubation, and did so again in 2017. Steven conceived of the award some years earlier and advocated for its worthiness to graphic design education.

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Drawings selelcted from Year in Self-Portrait series – one a week for the years 1984, 1996, 2007 & 2019 (February 1, 1996 drawing by his daughter Alice, now a graphic designer.)