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Rhode Island School of Design — better known as RIZ-dee (for the acronym RISD) — has earned an international reputation as the leading college of art and design in the US. Approximately 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students from throughout the world study at our campus in Providence, RI. RISD offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a choice of 19 studio majors and is known for a studio-based approach to learning — one in which critical thinking informs making works by hand.
Bachelor’s D
egree Programs:
Apparel D
esign. Architecture. C
eramics.
Film/A
nimation/V
ideo. Furniture Design.
Glass. G
raphic Design. Illustration.
Industrial Design. Interior Studies.
Jewelry +
Metalsm
ithing. Painting. Photography. Printm
aking. Sculpture. Textiles.
front cover: Welcome to the office—actually known as The Box Office (boxoffice460.com) — the innovative office/studio complex RISD architects Peter Gill Case [MArch 97] and Joe Haskett [MArch 02] designed and built using 32 recycled shipping containers. Since opening in 2010, the building has become the creative home to a dozen studios and small businesses — many run by RISD alumni — on a strip of abandoned property in Providence, RI.
PHOTO BY NAT REA
“Working with a team that’s committed to making some of the most beautiful and sustainable fabrics in the industry is really rewarding. But the fact that we’re also working to find solutions to global problems—by developing effective mosquito netting to prevent the spread of malaria, for instance—makes coming to work every day truly inspiring.”Mary Murphy MAE 86 / Art Education Vice President of Design, Maharam
M O R E O N L I N E : V I M E O . C O M / T R E C A R T I N
Deep, immersive learning enables RISD artists to develop
strong vision and a point of view uniquely their own.
D IZZ YI N G R I S E
Within five years of graduation, Ryan Trecartin had
landed a trio of major awards, racking up more than
$200,000 in art prizes. And it all started with his RISD
senior degree project. After completing a 41-minute
film called A Family Finds Entertainment, Ryan posted
portions of it online, hoping someone would watch
it. When artist Sue de Beer saw the film, she alerted a
curator at the New Museum in Manhattan, who immedi-
ately offered him an exhibition.
Ryan’s frenetic experimental films explore concepts of
identity, narrative, language, consumerism and popular
culture in a way never quite seen before. Shot in Miami
in collaboration with Lizzie Fitch, the videos in his
Any Ever series feature an odd mix of friends, artists,
child actors and reality TV performers. When shown in
museums, they are presented as a film cycle installed
in seven distinct environments — galleries filled with
couches, conference tables, gym paraphernalia, book-
cases, ladders and other props that appear in the films
themselves.
“At the risk of oversimplification, [Trecartin’s] art could
be said to combine the retinal extravagance of much
1980s art with the political awareness of the ’90s
and the inclusiveness and technological savvy of the
post-millennium,” noted art critic Roberta Smith in
her New York Times review of his 2011 show at MoMA
PS1. “This exhibition shreds the false dichotomies and
mutually demonizing oppositions that have plagued the
art world for decades — between the political and the
aesthetic, the conceptual and the formal, high and low,
art and entertainment, outsider and insider, irony and
sincerity, gay and straight.”
“Ryan has a great love of costume, of letting go and
of becoming another — whether that other is a little
godlike or a body seeking the androgynous middle,”
says RISD Professor Dennis Hlynsky. “At times when
I watch his work I imagine myself in a large chat room
or engaged in an accelerated channel-switching. . . I
see Ryan’s work as a reminder that if we are to join
our interconnected world we must jump in and engage
without bias.”
A natural collaborator, Ryan chose RISD because of its
intensely creative community. “I went to RISD intend-
ing to major in video,” he says, “but I ended up being
friends with all the painting and sculpture kids. I began
to realize that the content I was interested in was being
talked about more in the art world than in the film
world. The way I naturally put together ideas — the way
I articulate them — just makes more sense to artists.”
Now based in Los Angeles, Ryan is represented by
Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York City and after exhib-
iting in the 2013 Venice Biennale, has had recent shows
at galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles,
Melbourne, Berlin, London and Paris. Peter Schjeldahl,
the art critic for The New Yorker, may have said it best
when he summed up Ryan’s extraordinary early suc-
cess by proclaiming him “the most consequential artist
to have emerged since the 1980s.”
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D O H O S U H / F I N E AR TI ST
When Do Ho [BFA 94/Painting] first left Korea to study at
RISD, he didn’t initially realize the experience would inspire an
ongoing body of work focused on questions of cultural and
personal identity. Now, the artist divides his time between
New York, London and Seoul, creating profound site-specific
installations that are in high demand throughout the world.
His work is included in almost every major museum collec-
tion, from the Whitney, the Guggenheim and MoMA in New
York City to the Tate Modern in London to Artsonje Center in
Seoul and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.
LIZ GOULET DUBOI S / DESIGNER / ILLU STR ATOR
A senior designer for the successful FRED line of home goods,
Liz [BFA 89/Illustration] is involved in all aspects of product
development for the quirky company — from sketching new
concepts to writing the sassy copy that goes with them.
She also writes and creates illustrations for children’s books
and magazines, and runs a successful design studio in rural
Rhode Island with her husband, fellow RISD grad Eric Dubois.
In addition, Liz has designed toys for Club Earth and has the
pleasure of working with clients ranging from Scholastic and
Golden Books to Kimberly-Clark, K-Mart, Paramount Cards
and Dream Apparel.
S OAI B G R E WAL / S O C IAL E NTR E PR E N E U R
Given that more than a billion people worldwide lack access
to clean drinking water, Soaib [BFA 11 / Industrial Design],
teamed up with several Brown students to launch WaterWalla.
Their mission? To bring clean water to India’s slums. Soaib
relocated to India right after graduation to head WaterWalla’s
Mumbai office. He’s now a managing partner at a design con-
sultancy in Delhi called BOLD, which is dedicated to helping
startups and fostering a design eco-system in his native
country capable of making a real impact on people in need.
DEBOR AH BERKE / ARCHITECT / PROFESSOR
Known for her economy of form and function, Deborah
[BArch 77] has built her New York firm based on a commit-
ment to community and sustainability. “For me being an
architect means creating things of lasting meaning,” she
says. “It means being part of a broader discourse about the
greater good.” In addition to running her practice, Deborah
has taught at Yale since 1987 and in July 2016 will become
the first female dean of the Yale School of Architecture. In
2012 she earned the first-ever Berkeley-Rupp Architecture
Professorship and Prize — a $100,000 award and teaching
appointment at the University of California, Berkeley’s
College of Environmental Design.
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DAVI D W I E S N E R / P I CTU R E B O O K AUTH O R
Constantly drawing as a kid, David [BFA 78/Illustration]
knew early on that he wanted to be an artist. But it wasn’t
until he got to RISD that he figured out he wanted to tell sto-
ries solely through images, without words. When his debut
effort Free Fall earned a Caldecott Honor award in 1988, it
set the stage for his lifelong success in publishing. Of the 10
books Houghton Mifflin has since published, two have won
Caldecott Honors and three — Tuesday (1991), The Three
Pigs (2001) and Flotsam (2006) — have won Caldecott
Medals, making David the second person ever to win the top
prize in illustration three times.
JAC I N DA C H E W / AR T D I R ECTO R
“RISD was the place that really called me,” says this Los
Angeles native and scholarship recipient. “It was just elec-
tric and infectious.” It also prepared Jacinda [BFA 99/Illus-
tration] to move up the ladder at Insomniac Games, where
she’s now the art director responsible for overseeing char-
acter modelers, concept artists and environment artists
who create the company’s blockbuster video games.
“The biggest thing they teach you at RISD is how to think,”
Jacinda says. “Because I had such a broad and expansive
education, I’m able to art direct a really diverse group of
creative people.”
K ATI E GALL AG H E R / FAS H I O N D E S I G N E R
By the time she was a senior at RISD, Katie [BFA 09/Apparel
Design] had gained the confidence to follow her own instincts
in creating a totally black degree project collection — despite
warnings that people prefer color. Now, The New York Times
calls her “magnificent,” New York magazine says she’s among
Manhattan’s top six designers and R29 pronounces her
the “quirky cool darling of the fashion world.” Katie designs
clothing for women using a process she picked up at RISD,
where art and design often merge: she starts at the easel,
painting futuristic worlds and scenes that she later translates
into fabulous fashion.
G U S VAN SANT / F I LM D I R ECTO R
Audacity, wit, honesty and an incredible attention to detail
have made Gus [BFA 75/Film/Animation/Video] stand out
as a director in Hollywood. At RISD his first encounters with
avant-garde filmmakers inspired him to change his major
from painting to film. Since then he has carved an interesting
niche for himself, crafting both deeply unconventional inde-
pendent films and mainstream crowd-pleasers. Following
his 1985 directorial debut with the independent film Mala
Noche, Gus has established himself as one of the most vital
directorial voices in the US through films as diverse as My
Own Private Idaho (1991), Good Will Hunting (1997), Finding
Forrester (2000), Milk (2008) and Promised Land (2012).
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Fallen Star Do Ho Suh
WaterWalla Soaib Grewal
Tulip Avenue House Deborah Berke
Calf & Half Liz Goulet Dubois
Spring Summer 2016 Katie Gallagher
S O C IAL V I S I O NARY
The spaces and experiences Michael Maltzan creates
“bring architecture up to speed with the complexities
of contemporary life,” as Architectural Digest puts
it. The recipient of a 2012 American Academy of Arts
& Letters Award, the Los Angeles-based architect
designs homes, art centers, public housing complexes
and landscapes to stimulate and engage users. His
buildings are graceful, minimalist and striking, often
employing evocative curves and friendly, labyrinthine
approaches to entrances, exits and passageways.
Founded in 1995, Michael Maltzan Architecture is an
intensely collaborative studio with a strong sense of
social responsibility — a value that permeates all of
RISD’s programs. Committed to the idea that the poor
should benefit from good design as much as the rich,
he has embraced commissions like the one for LA’s
Inner-City Arts campus as readily as for Michael Ovitz’s
Beverly Hills villa.
In designing stunning housing for the homeless on
LA’s Skid Row, Michael says, “The thing that I was
trying to do…was to create a new type of social space.
If you could do that for a group of constituents who
had pulled themselves away from the community as a
whole, the building might start to help them find ways
to reintroduce themselves to community living. That’s
something that architecture can do.”
In another massive public project, Michael is the
design architect for the Sixth Street Viaduct in LA, a
new bridge and urban park that foresees a multimodal
future for the city and will connect the Boyle Heights,
downtown and Arts District communities. Other cultural
and educational projects — including a performing arts
center at San Francisco State University and MoMA
QNS in Long Island City — reinforce his reputation as a
social visionary who designs large-scale public spaces
that fully resonate with the people who use them.
Named one of Architectural Digest’s 100 top talents
and a Game Changer by Metropolis, Michael began
earning recognition as early as his undergraduate days
at RISD, where he received the Architecture depart-
ment’s top honor: the Henry Adams AIA Scholastic
Gold Medal. Since then his firm has been recognized
with multiple awards from Progressive Architecture,
the American Institute of Architects, the US Green
Building Council and the Gold Medal for Urban Excel-
lence from the Rudy Bruner Foundation. Its projects
have also been exhibited at major museums worldwide,
including the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design
Museum and Los Angeles MoCA, with selected models
and sketches included in MoMA’s permanent collection.
“Buildings shouldn’t be anonymous,” Michael insists. Con-
sider the unique forms of Kidspace Children’s Museum
in Pasadena, CA, a 45,000-sf multilevel exhibition space,
or his intimate design of a Napa Valley residence, aimed
at maximizing the beauty of the surrounding landscape.
“For me, whether it’s a museum, a single-family house
or social housing,” Michael reflects, “my designs are all
ways of describing what contemporary life is in a place
like Los Angeles — and by extension, in many cities
around the world.”
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M O R E O N L I N E : M M A LT Z A N . C O M
With a RISD education, you can go on to do what you love and
make meaningful contributions.
M O R E O N L I N E : F O L K T O L D M E . C O M
Risk-taking becomes so natural here that graduates leave
with the confidence to try just about anything.
STR AD D LI N G T WO WO R LD S
Like a lot of young artists, Jazzmen Lee-Johnson is
figuring out how to get what she wants while navigating
between two different worlds. Her artist’s heart and
musical soul lie in Johannesburg, South Africa, which she
came to love after landing a full-year Thomas J. Watson
Fellowship to study the politics of performance right
after graduation — in part thanks to help from the RISD
Career Center.
South Africa is the place where she found her first real
artists’ community after RISD. It’s the place where she
met the musicians she brought together as the group
Folk Told ME in 2009, and it’s where she solidified her
vision of multimedia hip-hop performance as a means
of preserving the far flung cultural strands of the
African diaspora.
But for nine months of the year, that expansive vision
got put on hold as Jazzmen — still very much tethered
to her home in New York City — worked to pay the bills.
She taught through Urban Arts Partnership, a nonprofit
that provides dynamic arts education to city schools.
And she took every freelance opportunity that came
her way — from animation work for art films to docu-
mentaries and most notably, for South African artist
William Kentridge’s 2010 production of The Nose at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
“Straddling between two countries has been crazy,”
Jazzmen says. “While I was touring with another musical
theater group, we got this amazing opportunity to go
to Belgium. And it was like the royal treatment — every-
thing was taken care of, we all had our own hotel rooms.”
But because she was already on the other side of the
Atlantic, Jazzmen grabbed the opportunity to fly to
South Africa directly afterward to record with her band.
“We wrote, rehearsed and recorded a five-track EP, then
played around Johannesburg and did some appearances
on TV shows — all in less than a month.”
In 2013 Jazzmen returned to school and has since
earned a master’s in Public Humanities at Brown, where
she was a Graduate Fellow in the Study of the Public
History of Slavery. The program facilitated her ongoing
interest in redressing history through music, animation,
performance, visual arts and exhibitions. She’s now
collaborating with Folk Told ME on Grandma’s Lament/
Sello Sa Nkoko, an audio/visual graphic novel.
The longest of her long-shot dreams — building a com-
munity art hub in Johannesburg and partnering with
the Smithsonian for cross-cultural exchange through
music — remain far in the future. “It’s been great work-
ing on other people’s projects, and I’ve done a lot in art
and education that I’m proud of,” Jazzmen says. “But I
feel like it’s really time to put my artist self in front now.
With the band, our music is about the whole concept
of Sankofa,” she says, invoking a core symbol in Akan
language and culture: “Moving forward while being
vigilant about the past.”
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R O B E R T R I C HAR D S O N / C I N E MATO G R APH E R
Working with some of the best directors in Hollywood,
Robert [BFA 79/Film/Animation/Video] has earned a
behind-the-scenes reputation as the go-to man for nuanced
cinematography. In 2012 he earned his third Academy
Award — for Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of the
Caldecott Medal-winning children’s novel The Invention
of Hugo Cabret by RISD alumnus Brian Selznick. Robert’s
extraordinary abilities and painterly eye continue to
keep him in high demand, regularly working with Quentin
Tarantino (most recently on Django Unchained and The
Hateful 8), Oliver Stone (with whom he won Oscars for The
Aviator and JFK) and Scorsese (Shutter Island, George
Harrison: Living in the Material World).
DAV I D HA N S O N / R O B OTI C I ST
At RISD David [BFA 95/Film/Animation/Video] was a student
leader, serving as vice president of the governing body and
organizing events like Pong, a RISD-Brown art/tech fest.
Since then he has pursued his passion for the intersection of
art and science by earning a PhD in Interactive Arts & Engi-
neering and tenaciously focusing on “bringing robots to life.”
David’s sculpturally remarkable and scientifically advanced
bots — including his mass-marketed RoboKinds — are
designed as assistive tools for autism therapy, teaching
and cognitive and neuroscience research. In a recent TEDx
Talk, David presents a robotic Einstein head covered in his
trademarked Frubber, a rubber that mimics the movements
of flesh. “The goal is to achieve not just sentience, but
empathy,” he explains.
J E S S I CA WAL S H / G R APH I C D E S I G N E R
In the first five years after graduation, Jessica [BFA
08/Graphic Design] worked at major studios such as
Pentagram and Print magazine, while juggling freelance work
from AIGA, I.D. magazine, RISD, Technology Review and The
New York Times, among others. She has won design awards
from the Type Directors Club, the Art Directors Club, the
Society of Publication Designers, Print, Graphis and more.
Computer Arts magazine dubbed her a Top Rising Star
in Design and the Art Directors Club named her a Young
Gun in its annual round-up of top talent. To top it off, in
2012 design luminary Stefan Sagmeister invited Jessica
to become a partner in his NY-based firm, which is now
known as Sagmeister & Walsh.
VI CTO N GAI / FR E E L AN C E I LLU STR ATO R
Now freelancing in New York, Victo [BFA 10 / Illustration]
grew up in Hong Kong and still splits her time between the
two cities. Her energetic editorial illustrations have caught
the attention of art directors at The New Yorker, The New
York Times, International Herald Tribune, Utne Reader,
McDonald’s and Adidas Hong Kong, among many other
clients. Though Victo speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, English
and Japanese, her British kindergarten teachers couldn’t
quite handle her real name — Ngai Chuen Ching — so they
called her Victoria. That, in turn, baffled her Chinese class-
mates, who went with Victo instead — a name that in many
ways sums up the cross-cultural allure of her multi-award-
winning work.
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DAVI D STAR K / E VE NT D E S I G N E R
Though David [BFA 91/Painting] is a fine artist at heart, after
graduation he discovered that painting alone in the studio
didn’t suit his personality. So he began working as a floral
designer to supplement his income and support his studio
work. That soon led to event planning and decorating, and
before long David had built a thriving business doing what
he loves best. Based in Brooklyn, David Stark Design and
Production now employs 35 incredibly creative people who
design and make everything that goes into over-the-top cor-
porate and private events for clients ranging from Beyoncé
to Zac Posen, Target to Tiffany & Co., the Museum of Modern
Art to the Metropolitan Opera.
M E LI S SA A R M STR O N G / AR TI ST
“My studio ends up resembling a mad scientist’s lab,” Melissa
[BFA 07/Industrial Design] says, referring to ambitious
experiments with making sculpture by growing it — from
sugar crystals. “I have always been really interested in
the intersection of art and science,” she explains. In 2009
Melissa was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio
Center and the following year she earned an NEA grant to
study at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Based in
Brooklyn, she’s an active member of the Wayfarers artist
collective and balances studio work with a day job as a
sculpture conservator. In 2016 Melissa will begin a master’s
program in Zoology at the University of British Columbia,
continuing her exploration of the intersection of art, design
and science.
S H E PAR D FAI R E Y / AR TI ST + D E S I G N E R
For the past 25 years, Shepard [BFA 92/Illustration] has
been both critiquing and shaping popular culture through
guerrilla art campaigns of global proportions. Now, as a
fine artist, designer and entrepreneur, he’s still best known
for his ubiquitous 2008 Hope poster of Barack Obama.
His image of the president is in the permanent collection
at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and led to a
commission for the cover of TIME magazine. Shepard first
grabbed national attention through the Obey Giant street
art campaign he started at RISD, which eventually grew to
involve millions of stickers, posters and spray-paint stencils
in public places throughout North America, Europe and
Australia.
R AC H E L D O R I S S / TE X TI LE S E X EC UTIV E
When Rachel [BFA 99/Textiles] first came to RISD, she was
already head over heels in love with textiles, imagining that
she might eventually own a small weaving studio in rural
Vermont. But while studying both printed and woven tech-
niques — and with frequent class trips to Manhattan — she
suddenly wanted to explore practical applications within
the textiles industry instead. Moving to New York right
after graduation, Rachel found a job designing printed silk
scarves at Echo and the following year, joined the textiles
firm POLLACK. By 2012 she had become a vice president
and, when founder and fellow RISD graduate Mark Pollack
chose to pursue new ventures, she felt well prepared to
take over as design director of the company.
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Aizone FW12 Jessica Walsh
Primoris Melissa Armstrong
robotic head David Hanson
Hugo Robert Richardson
TRU E G R IT
It’s not the first time that a chance meeting at RISD has
led to a partnership in both business and life. But for
James Minola and Chelsea Green, the alliance seems
almost destined: Both grew up in southern California,
both had family living on an island in the Puget Sound
and both shared the ambition to make a positive impact
through design.
James and Chelsea now live and work in a 1901 farm-
house on Bainbridge Island — 35 minutes by ferry from
Seattle — where they run Grain, the socially conscious
product design studio they founded the year after
graduating. They also keep five chickens and make
their own wine.
The daughter of entrepreneurs, Chelsea didn’t plan to
follow in her parents’ footsteps. “Not having a regular
paycheck kind of frightened me, and I didn’t think I
would ever want to do that,” says the designer, who
earned a graduate degree at RISD after graduating
from Pratt and working for several years.
In 2002, just as she landed an enviable first job at a
luxury architecture firm, James was still searching
for the right kind of design education. He had left the
mechanical engineering program at the University of
Washington and was looking for a way to develop his
skills as a craftsman. “In terms of choosing an art or
design school instead of a more traditional path, I had
actually tried the traditional path and discovered it
wasn’t the right fit,” James says. “But engineering
school showed me that what I thought I liked about
engineering was actually something else.”
When their paths finally crossed at RISD — during a
Wintersession course in Guatemala — James and
Chelsea soon began thinking about starting a business
that reflected their fair-trade, eco-minded values.
“They’re so emblematic of the collaboration and explora-
tion that my course Bridging Cultures Through Design
was all about,” says Mimi Robinson [BFA 81/Painting],
the San Francisco-based designer who led the travel/
study experience. “They’re remarkably talented and
have wonderful ideas, but it’s really their stick-to-it-ive-
ness and their ability to adapt that are their hallmark.”
An ability to adapt enabled James and Chelsea to build
a viable business in the midst of a deep recession.
Their very first product — a PVC-free recyclable shower
curtain — may not have been the splashiest launch, but
it spoke to their ideals, was affordable to make and
remains a top seller. More recently, their Bound line of
textile-wrapped mirrors has been featured everywhere
from Apartment Therapy to Elle Decoration UK and
their fair-trade collaborations with Guatemalan artisans
caught the eye of a buyer for Anthropologie, one of
more than 100 retailers and shops across the country
and abroad that now carry their products.
“In Guatemala, we could quickly see how all the things
we knew and were learning could be applied to making
a positive impact on local craftspeople,” Chelsea
explains. “It just lit a fire under us in terms of thinking
about new ways to work.”
partners / co-founders, Grain
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M O R E O N L I N E : G R A I N D E S I G N . C O M
An emphasis on global issues and sustainability inspires
graduates to connect the dots in new and interesting ways.
“When we finished each set, you could actually stand back and look at it and see that it all blurred that line—as something that was too far-fetched to exist and yet was right there in front of us.”Jonathan Mosca BFA 07 / Printmakingset designer, Beasts of the Southern Wild
M O R E O N L I N E : A I R B N B . C O M
A strong spirit of entrepreneurship inspires plenty of alumni to start
their own businesses.
S I M PLE I D E A > S O LI D S U C C ES S
It’s an idea most people probably wish they’d had
themselves: help people to rent out a room, an apart-
ment, a house to a visitor looking for a comfortable,
inexpensive place to stay. Property owners welcome
the potential to earn money for space they’re not using;
travelers are pleased to have found an interesting place
to stay, often for less than the cheapest hotel in town.
What’s not to like?
Since Joe Gebbia 05 ID/GD and Brian Chesky 04 ID
teamed up to get their fledgling idea off the ground in
2008, Airbnb has served more than 40 million guests in
190 countries and has “revolutionized the way people
think about travel, displaced the hospitality industry’s
established players and generated billions in revenue
for themselves and their hosts,” as Inc. magazine noted
in naming it the 2014 Company of the Year.
But Airbnb didn’t start out as a sure bet. At RISD Joe
and Brian were known as go-getters who ran the Balls
(basketball) and the Nads (hockey) teams, respectively.
After school Joe convinced Brian to quit his job in LA
and move to San Francisco in 2007 so the two of them
could start a business — just as the economy was on
the brink of freefall.
As soon as Brian moved in, Joe’s landlord raised his
rent by 20%, leaving the two jobless entrepreneurs in
a tight spot. Noticing that San Francisco hotels were
sold out due to a major design conference in town,
they inflated an airbed in their living room and emailed
a few top design blogs to offer their space to out-of-
towners. Envisioning that they might actually provide
breakfast, too, they came up with the name Airbed &
Breakfast — and were pleasantly surprised when they
got three bookings.
“We earned enough money to save the apartment,” Joe
says. A year later, with $20,000 in credit card debt and
no investors willing to help, they hit on another idea:
Build on the “breakfast” part of the business with two
branded cereals, Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s, to
sell online during the height of the 2008 presidential
election. Thanks to national press coverage, the
promotion netted $30,000 — enough to keep Airbnb
afloat until another $20,000 in seed funding came
through in early 2009. By 2011 investors plowed $112
million into Airbnb, estimating the company to be worth
approximately $1.3 billion — a figure that has since
grown tenfold.
Beyond the many clones it has since inspired — from
companies for renting parking spaces to drive-shar-
ing services — Airbnb’s primary influence may be
in changing the way venture capitalists think about
design. Rather than “an afterthought,” as Joe points
out, design is now seen as crucial to startup success.
CEO + CPO / co-founders, Airbnb
BrianChesky
+ Joe
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As creative director of Shine, the Los Angeles design and
production studio he founded in 2005, Michael [BFA 91/
Graphic Design] is behind the titles and opening sequences of
some of Hollywood’s biggest hits, including The Newsroom,
Raising Hope, Modern Family and Fresh Off the Boat, among
others. While still at RISD, an internship got him thinking about
the real possibilities of mixing design with film. Now, the
three-time Emmy nominee is well known for his innovative
concepts and captivating elements. And Shine even tends
to steal the show: commenting on Kung Fu Panda, the
Hollywood Reporter noted: “the film’s single most striking
feature is the end credits.”
J U LIA R OTH M A N / I LLU STR ATO R
In the first few years after graduation, Julia [BFA 02/Illus-
tration] figured out how to combine all of her interests into
a satisfying career of her own making, working out of her
studio in Brooklyn, NY. She freelances as an illustrator and
pattern designer, creating products, designs and branding
for clients ranging from Anthropologie to Chronicle Books,
The New York Times, Urban Outfitters and Victoria’s Secret.
In addition, Julia runs the design studio Also with two RISD
friends and based on her lifelong love of books, writes a
book blog and works on ongoing book projects of her own,
publishing such gems as Nature Anatomy, Hello NY, Drawn
In and several others to date.
DAN N Y K I M / I NVE NTO R
After a couple of false starts at liberal arts colleges, Danny
[BFA 09/Industrial Design] found his niche at RISD, where he
focused on sustainable transportation and had an opportu-
nity to work on an electric bike project with students at the
MIT Media Lab. In 2010 his lifelong love of riding and building
bikes inspired him to found Lit Motors in San Francisco,
dedicated to designing viable alternative transportation
options that work for current lifestyles. Unlike traditional
motorcycles, the fast, fun C-1 is more like a two-wheel
micro-car with non-tipping stability, steel-reinforced doors,
seatbelts and an airbag. Other manufacturers are also nego-
tiating to license his balancing technology for use in their
own cars and trucks.
HALLI E WAR S HAW / PU B LI S H E R
“While I was at RISD I didn’t really realize the incredibly wide
range of things you could do with the preparation and train-
ing I had,” says Hallie [BFA 89/Graphic Design], owner of a
small, thriving publishing company in San Francisco. After
leaving her job as a textbook designer at Scholastic in the
late ’90s, she was determined to control her own creative
destiny. So, using the skills and confidence she gained at
RISD, she founded Zest Books — “teen reads with a twist.”
School librarians now confirm that “kids love everything
Zest puts out” — a vote of confidence that prompted Hough-
ton Mifflin Harcourt to enter into a distribution partnership
with Hallie in 2011.
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An accomplished glass sculptor, Karen [BFA 90/Glass]
has been living and working in the Czech Republic since
first discovering Prague as a Fulbright Fellow in 1999. She
initially started using clothing as a metaphor for identity
shortly after learning how to blow, cast and cold work
glass at RISD. Karen’s ongoing explorations have led to
residencies — at the European Ceramic Work Centre and
Corning Museum/Kohler Arts Center, among others — and
to an artists exchange through the Japan-United States
Friendship Commission. Her full-scale, cast-glass dresses
have been exhibited throughout the world and are included
in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
the National Gallery of Australia, Musée des arts decorative
and many others.
T ZU -J U C H E N / J E W E LRY D E S I G N E R
Balancing a studio practice with her position as senior jewelry
designer at FGX International, Tzu-Ju [BFA 00/Jewelry +
Metalsmithing] creates work that incorporates artistic
traditions from around the world. At FGX she designs prod-
ucts for labels such as No Boundary and Style & Co (sold
at Wal-Mart and Macy’s, respectively) and works closely
with art directors, clients and overseas vendors. Tzu-Ju
draws inspiration from various cultures encountered during
her travels — including her RISD year in Rome as part of the
European Honors Program. A subsequent Fulbright Fellow-
ship in China further fueled her research into experimental
binding techniques and working with unorthodox materials.
S U SAN M O NTG O M E RY / L AW Y E R
After earning two degrees in art education at RISD, as an
artist and teacher Susan [BFA 71 / MAE 78] became focused
on the analytic processs of making and resolving complex-
ity. This inspired her to earn a law degree at Northeastern
University, where she now teaches in the School of Law
and the School of Business. As a lawyer at Foley Hoag in
Boston, Susan focuses on intellectual property strategies for
innovators and makers. She insists that her RISD educa-
tion was invaluable in teaching her to problem solve and
think critically. And based on the relationships she made at
RISD — including meeting her husband here — Susan has
remained involved with the community and served as a RISD
trustee for several years.
S E TH M AC FA R L AN E / PR O D U C E R + D I R ECTO R
Add stand-up comedy and phenomenal voicing talents to
his TV and movie work and it’s no wonder that Seth [BFA
95 / Film / Animation / Video] works overtime. He still writes,
produces, voices and animates most episodes of Family Guy,
the animated sitcom that continues to rank #1 with teenage
males (based on his RISD senior film project, it made him the
highest-paid TV exec ever). But Seth also pursues plenty of
other interests, from singing on a Grammy-nominated solo
album of American standards to directing and writing the
screenplay for live-action feature films such as Ted — about
a teddy bear with attitude, voiced by him — and A Million
Ways to Die in the West.
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Stewie Seth MacFarlane
C-1 vehicle Danny Kim
The Newsroom title sequence Michael Riley
earrings Tzu-Ju Chen
pattern design for Windham Fabric Julia Rothman
A recent Zest book Hallie Warshaw
Cast Dress Karen LaMonte
M O R E O N L I N E : J I L L G R E E N B E R G . C O M
Developing an eye for the extraordinary can lead in interesting directions, with
both commercial and fine arts potential.
C U LTU R AL I C O N S
Whether she’s photographing celebrities, children or
animals, Jill makes her subjects appear profound and
even iconic. Her use of light and color exaggerates the
figure while reducing it to its essence, allowing her to
capture raw emotion — along with the attention of view-
ers who are irresistibly drawn to each image.
Jill grew up in a suburb of Detroit, constantly drawing,
painting and exploring sculpture, film and photography.
Before coming to RISD, she’d attended summer art
programs — Parsons in Paris and RISD’s own Pre-Col-
lege program. As an undergrad at RISD, she developed
an intellectual approach to art, noting: “I learned the
language of talking about art as well as the visual lan-
guage of images — how to communicate with pictures.”
After graduating with honors in 1989, Jill moved to New
York, intent on working as both a fine art and commer-
cial photographer. “I used to pound the pavement and
drop my book off at magazines and record companies,”
she says. An early break came when TIME hired her for
a photo illustration of Jeffrey Dahmer and Sassy asked
her to shoot Marlon Wayans.
After living for many years in Los Angeles, Jill recently
returned to New York with her husband and two
children. She continues to bring her inimitable style to
both photo and video work for clients such as GQ, HBO,
Showtime, Universal Pictures and Wired, among many
others. She has shot memorable portraits of almost ev-
ery celebrity imaginable: Eminem, Cameron Diaz, Venus
Williams, Jeff Bridges, Alicia Keys, Gwen Stefani, Jon
Stewart, Martha Stewart, Ice Cube, Seth Rogen, Nicki
Minaj and on and on.
Over a decade ago, Jill returned in earnest to fine art
photography and regularly exhibits personal work at
galleries and museums worldwide. In 2006 she attract-
ed a lot of attention with her political End Times series,
a powerful collection of staged portraits of sobbing
toddlers that’s finally being released in book form in
2013 by TF Editores and D.A.P.
Jill’s work has led to several successful books, including
Monkey Portraits, Bear Portraits and her latest, Horses
(2012, Rizzoli). “With animals and children, there is an
authenticity of emotion, which is amazing,” the pho-
tographer notes. But in contrast to her ape and bear
portraits, the Horse photographs present “horses as
if they were supermodels,” she says. “It’s about figure
studies and their physiques as a means of examining
reflected gender roles.”
Glass Ceiling, one of Jill’s most recent series, brought
her full circle — back to the postmodern feminist theory
that inspired her RISD senior thesis, The Female Object.
“My opinions change all the time regarding what kind
of art I want to make, and then I come back to thinking
the same things I thought at RISD,” she says. “I love
making images that make me feel something — that I
find beautiful. I do like other people to like them, but
really I’m making them for myself.”
artist / photographer
JillGreenberg
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“By the time I leave the studio at night I often feel deeply connected to my work and I have to tear myself away like a kid from a playground. The process feeds itself somehow, and I get to be a part of it, which is the best and simplest and most tumbling and humbling feeling I know.”Anna Schuleit BFA 98 / Paintingfine artist and winner of a 2008 MacArthur “genius” grant
RISD will empower you with the creative flexibility
to work in...
advertising, animation, app design, architecture, art criticism,
arts administration, automobile design, book design, branding, cartooning, character design,
children’s books, cinematography, communications, costume design, curating,
documentary filmmaking, editorial illustration, exhibition design, fabrication, fashion,
furniture making, gaming, graphic design, graphic novels, healthcare communications,
hospitality design, infographics, interactive media, interior design, jewelry
design, landscape architecture, lighting design, marketing, metalsmithing, murals, music,
package design, painting, performance art, photojournalism, pottery, printmaking,
product design, public art, public service, publishing, puppetmaking, robotics, set design,
sound design, special effects, studio art, surface design, sustainable design, systems
design, tableware, teaching, theater, toy design, tv production, type design, urban planning,
user experience design, weaving, web design, woodworking, writing, your heart’s desire.
Career C
enter Support: RISD
’s Career
Center is focused on helping students
and alumni find enjoyable, m
eaningful experiences w
ell-suited to individual goals and lifestyles. It offers everything from
online tools, to workshops and
seminars, to personal portfolio review
s w
ith representatives from top-tier
creative organizations.
risdcareers.com
RISD’s Career Center offers dynamic workshops, seminars and lectures that help students and alumni make connections and build the skills needed to become creative entrepreneurs. Resources such as the Art of Business Bootcamp, Entrepreneur Mindshare and E’Ship, a student club, provide additional support, and collaborations with Kickstarter and Etsy help students and alumni access online support for creative startups.
Finding your path in life takes creativity and persistence, but working one-on-one with RISD’s career advisors and taking advantage of our Career Center programs, you’ll be able to envision the life you want to lead and use the connections you make here to achieve that vision.
© 2015 Rhode Island School of Design
R I S D M E D I A G R O U P
D E S I G N Micah Barrett [BFA 12/Graphic Design]
W R ITI N G/ E D IT I N G Liisa Silander
I N IT I A L C O N C E P T D E S I G N Michael Freimuth [BFA 03/Graphic Design]
PR I NTI N G Meridian Printing, East Greenwich, RI