Gail Anderson

Gail Anderson is a New York-based designer, writer, and educator.



From 2002 through 2010, she served as Creative Director of Design at SpotCo, a New York City advertising agency that creates artwork for Broadway and institutional theater. From 1987 to early 2002, she worked at Rolling Stone magazine, serving as designer, deputy art director, and finally, as the magazine’s senior art director. Early in her career, Anderson was a designer at the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and Vintage Books (Random House).



Anderson’s work has received awards from major design organizations, including the Society of Publication Designers, the Type Directors Club, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Art Directors Club, Graphis, Communication Arts, and Print. In addition, it has also been included in the permanent collections of the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Milton Glaser Design Archives at the School of Visual Arts. Anderson’s work has been featured in many publications, including Computer Arts (UK), designNET (Korea), kAk (Russia), STEP Inside Design, and Graphic Design USA.



Gail Anderson is co-author, with Steven Heller, of the forthcoming New Modernist Type, as well as New Ornamental Type, New Vintage Type, Astounding Photoshop Effects, American Type Play, The Savage Mirror, and Graphic Wit. She is a contributor to Imprint and to Uppercase magazine.


Anderson teaches in the School of Visual Arts MFA, undergraduate, and high school design programs, and has served on the advisory boards for Adobe Partners by Design and the Society of Publication Designers. She is the recipient of the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Medal from the AIGA, the 2009 Richard Gangel art direction award from the Society of Illustrators, and has lectured about design (and her bottle cap collection) at organizations and conferences around the world.