Katherine McCoy-Graphic Designer and Educator review by Nicole Edwards

Katherine McCoy was born Katherine Jane Braden in Decatur, Illinois, October 12, 1945 she is an American graphic designer and educator, best known for her work as the co-chair of the graduate Design program for Cranbrook Academy of Art. She is married to married Michael McCoy who is an industrial designer.

According to an article at www.aiga.org (American institute of graphic art) Katherine often has said that it was a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (on a family trip to the New York world's Fair in 1964) that made her realize she was most interested in the power of design. After majoring in industrial design at Michigan State University and graduating in 1967, she took a job in the Detroit offices of Unimark International, design consultants who produced some of the largest and most notable corporate identity projects of the period.

During her career spanning education and professional practice she has worked with the design firm Unimark, Chrysler Corporation, and with Muriel Cooper in the early days of MIT Press while at the Boston design firm Omni graphics.   Katherine McCoy's career in education was also broad she taught at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design, and the Royal College of Art, London. She is also the co-founder of High Ground, a workshop firm created for professional designers in their studios.

Over the years Katherine designed a lot of material for the Cranbrook educational community, quarterly magazines, catalogues, and posters, along with other projects that she and Michael produced as McCoy & McCoy.  In 1971, Katherine and her husband, Michael, founded McCoy & McCoy Associates, they were later asked by the Cranbrook Academy of Art to become co-chairs of the design department.

In 1991, the McCoys (with a large team of 2-D and 3-D students) produced the book Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse (Rizzoli International Publications).

The McCoys gave up their chairmanship at Cranbrook in 1995 after sustaining twenty-four years of coherent and energetic work. They moved to Chicago, where they spend every fall semester as senior lecturers at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design. Katherine in particular has somewhat moved away from studio teaching, and has instead been concentrating more on theoretical issues having to do with both the teaching and practice of graphic design in the context of new media.

Katherine and Michael spend the rest of the year in the mountains of Colorado, in what, from afar, looks like semi-retirement. But up close in their totally wired encampment they continue their projects and their research. Even the teaching doesn't really stop as she is the co-founder of High Ground, a workshop firm created for professional designers in their studios. 

Below are some of her designs-