Photo courtesy David Reinfurt
The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts has awarded Lecturer in Visual Arts David Reinfurt a grant for his current book project A *New* Primer of Visual Literacy: Typography / Gestalt / Interface. Called “the first graphic design text expressly of and for the twenty-first century,” the book combines design history with design principles Reinfurt conveys to visual arts students through the three-course graphic design curriculum at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.
Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The foundation realizes this vision through making project-based grants to individuals and organizations and producing exhibitions, events, and publications. In 2018, the Graham awarded more than $500,000 to 74 individual projects.
Reinfurt is an independent graphic designer and writer based in New York City. Early in his career he worked as an interaction designer with IDEO (San Francisco) where he was the lead designer for the New York City MTA Metrocard vending machine interface, still in use by millions of people every day. On the first business day of 2000, Reinfurt formed O-R-G inc., a flexible graphic design practice composed of a constantly shifting network of collaborators. Reinfurt’s honors include a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship in Architecture and Design as well as a Mark Hampton Rome Prize Fellowship in Design from the American Academy in Rome. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum of American Art, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. In 2018 MIT Press published his project with Robert Wiesenberger, Muriel Cooper, about the pioneering designer who created the iconic MIT Press logo.
Student graphic design work on display in the Hurley Gallery in fall 2017. Photo by MT Simao
Reinfurt began teaching at Princeton in 2010. On arrival at Princeton, he worked to re-establish the Typography Studio and introduce the study of graphic design as a practical and theoretical starting point for students from all corners of the university.
Earlier this year at Princeton, Reinfurt curated *a graphic design exhibition* featuring work by 184 students created over the course of seven years in the sequence of graphic design classes offered through the Program in Visual Arts. The work was on display from November 14 through December 28, 2017, in the Hurley Gallery at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus.
A *New* Primer of Visual Literacy will be published in 2019 by Inventory Press. At Inventory Press’s Los Angeles office from July 11-13, 2018, Reinfurt will present six public lectures that form the basis of the book. From July 16 through 28, the student work from *a graphic design exhibition* will also be on display at Inventory Press.
