Rhode IslandSchool of Design

Working

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

Making a creative living means doing what you love to do.

“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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Milk Gus Van Sant

Art & Max David Wiesner

Sunset Overdrive Jacinda C

hew

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.”

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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

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M I C HAE L R I LE Y / F I LM D E S I G N E R

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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K AR E N L AM O NTE / F I N E AR TI ST

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

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