A branding visionary, artist, writer, and educator, Debbie Millman (born 1962) is an inspiration for designers not only from America, but all over the world.
Debbie Millman's portrait form her personal site.
Throughout her career, she has helped an array of brands like 7 Up and Gillette find their identities. Now Millman is set to help aspiring designers discover their voices.
Burger King's logo designed by Debbie Millman © Matthew Horwood / Alamy Stock Photo.
Debbie Millman graduated from SUNY Albany, majoring in English, but decided to shift her career path to design. In 1995 she secured her first design role at Sterling Brands, delving into the dynamics between people and brands. In 1999 she crafted Burger King’s new logo and identity, a design the brand embraced until 2021. Millman, serving as President Emeritus of AIGA, is one of just five women to hold this position in the organization. In 2019 she received a lifetime achievement award from AIGA. Graphic Design USA recognizes her as “one of the most influential designers working today.” Millman sees design as “one of the few disciplines that is a science as well as an art” and wrote seven books to communicate these ideas. In 2004 she launched her podcast “Design Matters with Debbie Millman.” This acclaimed show has received multiple awards, including the prestigious Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award.
Debbie Millman's illustration from her Behance project.
Gail Anderson (born 1962) is an American graphic designer based in New York.
She worked for Rolling Stone from 1987 to 2002, achieving the position of senior art director. She also designed a number of book covers, Broadway music show posters and a postage stamp commemorating the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Anderson is the chair of Design and Advertising faculties at the School of Visual Arts in NY.
Gail Anderson. Photo by Declan Van Welie. Courtesy of Gail Anderson.
Rolling Stone magazine spread, 1997: Marilyn Manson. Art director: Fred Woodward. Designers: Fred Woodward, Gail Anderson. Photographer: Matt Mahurin.
“Most of what I do is typography-driven, whether it’s through type-play or working with hierarchies in editorial content. More and more, I’m interested in creating editorial content as much as designing it—I’m all about communication through design,” Anderson said in an interview with Inside Design. For much of her career at Rolling Stone, working with art director Fred Woodward, Anderson fine-tuned her typographic expressionism, devising quirky letterforms out of traditional and non-traditional materials. In 2015, Princeton Architectural Press published Outside the Box, Anderson’s book dedicated to hand-drawn packaging. The book explores one of the biggest trends in the packaging design world today: visual authenticity.
Some of Gail’s work for Rolling Stone. Illustration by Alex Ostroy.
A page spread of Outside the Box book.