Abbott Miller

Graphic Designer / United States / Pentagram

www.pentagram.com

Abbott Miller was born in Indiana and studied design at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. In 1989 he founded the multidisciplinary studio Design/Writing/Research where, in collaboration with Ellen Lupton, he pioneered the concept of “designer as author” undertaking projects in which content and form are developed in a symbiotic relationship. He joined Pentagram’s New York office as a partner in 1999.

Miller’s projects are often concerned with the cultural role of design and the public life of the written word. At Pentagram he leads a team designing identities, exhibitions, environmental graphics, books, magazines, and web and interactive projects.

Miller has received numerous design honors, including medals from the Society for Publication Designers, the Art Directors Club, and the AIGA. In 1994, Abbott Miller—together with Ellen Lupton—was awarded the first annual Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. He is also the recipient of the Augustus St. Gaudens Award from Cooper Union.

He is a visiting critic in the Graduate Design Program at MICA, the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. His work is represented in the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Bibliothèque National de France. His work and critical writing has appeared in Eye, Print, I.D., and other publications, and he is the co-author of four books, including the classic Design/Writing/Research: Writing on Graphic Design. A survey of his design work will be published by Princeton Architectural Press in Fall 2013.

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