Maeda Named One of Year’s Most Influential Designers

Also Named Trustee of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt

John Maeda, E. Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Media Lab, has been named by I.D. Magazine as one of the year’s 40 most influential people in design. The honor places him in league with such luminaries as Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas and Philippe Starck.

Maeda has also been named a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the only museum in the nation devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. In October, an exhibit of his work will be on display at the Cartier Foundation Gallery in Paris.

A world-renowned graphic designer, artist and computer scientist, Maeda is currently co-director of SIMPLICITY, a research program aimed at redefining users’ daily relationships with technology by exploring ways to break free from its intimidating complexity and information overload.

His early work redefined the use of digital media as a tool for expression by combining computer programming with traditional artistic concerns, work that helped pioneer the interactive motion graphics seen on the Internet today. He also initiated the Design By Numbers project, a global effort to teach computer programming to visual artists through a freely available, custom software system.

In 1999 Maeda was included in Esquire magazine's list of the 21 most important people for the twenty-first century. He is also the 2001 recipient of the United States’ highest career honor for design – the National Design Award – and Japan’s highest career honor, the Mainichi Design Prize. In May of 2003, he received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Maeda received both his BS and MS degrees from MIT, and earned his PhD in design from Tsukuba University Institute of Art and Design in Japan.

PLAN 61
June 2005