Culture Vulture
Heartfelt
Whip-smart
Creative Project Director, Design Writer & Researcher with over a decade leading complex design and brand identity work across strategy, voice, and design, working with
cross‐functional teams for top‐tier agencies including Pentagram, Huge, Collins, Morcos Key, and United Talent Agency. Published contributor to It's Nice That, The Dieline, and Print Magazine, with a parallel career in higher education as a design professor.
MFA‐trained in Design Criticism with a fine art and art history background. Adept at translating complex ideas into impactful creative narratives. Experienced at research mapping in architectural spaces. Geared to provide cultural strategy and storytelling for exhibitions, preservation projects, and grant proposals for historically important buildings and sites.
Services
Design Writing + Research
Design essays & articles, exhibition essays, typography reports, journalism, features, ghostwriting, classic research methods, AI course-trained research methods, curation research, research assistance for authors & preservationists.
Creative Project Direction
C-Suite level project scoping, budget estimations, resourcing, client management, timelines, presentations, on time deliverables, managing
cross-functional teams, complex project streams. The works.
Cultural Strategy + Storytelling
Cultural strategy & storytelling for institutions, exhibitions, higher education, museums, preservation projects. Agency & brand consulting.
Purpose
My curiosity for design started unconsciously. Around 1988, I spotted Starting Lineup figurines by Kenner toys, designed in my hometown Cincinnati. It was the St. Louis Cardinals' uniform design, not the Reds, that hooked me. Five years later, I took a class trip to colonial Williamsburg, VA and wrote a multi-chapter analysis of the architecture, gardens, and the design of colonization. These are my roots in design writing and research.
As I grew more serious about our designed world, I completed the Design Criticism Masters Program at SVA in New York. Surrounded by professors who defined the field, my scholarship was shaped by observing the entirety of our designed world. Object lessons in beauty and absurdity followed.
Turns out, it's all on the table. I explored Brooklyn's waterfront development, the dish wand, the poison symbol, Albert Frey's Aluminaire House, and how we preserve our modern design heritage. In this spirit of contextualizing and exploring design outcomes, I continue to share my criticism practice in many forms: writing, researching, lecturing, consulting, and managing design projects.
Education
MFA Design Criticism
School of Visual Arts
BFA Art History
BFA Printmaking
Massachussetts College of Art
