Peter Seitz (born 1931) is a

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for publishe ...

, author, teacher and business owner who served as the first design director at

The Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

(

Minneapolis, MN Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

), and helped establish the graphic design program at the

Minneapolis College of Art and Design The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private college specializing in the visual arts and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCAD currently enrolls approximately 800 students. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer ...

Early career and education

Born in

Schwabmünchen Schwabmünchen ( Swabian: ''Mingkchinga''Schwabmünchen) is a town in Bavaria in the administrative region of Swabia south of Augsburg in the Augsburg district. Geography Location Schwabmünchen lies about 20 km south of Augsburg between ...

, Germany in 1931, Seitz graduated from Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm (Ulm School of Design) with a diploma in Visual Communication in 1959, after studying with Tomás Maldonado,

Max Bill Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer. Early life and education Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversmit ...

, and

Otl Aicher Otto "Otl" Aicher (; 13 May 1922 – 1 September 1991) was a German graphic designer and typographer. Aicher co-founded and taught at the influential Ulm School of Design. He is known for having led the design team of the 1972 Summer Olympic ...

. He then received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Graphic Design and Photography from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

in 1961, studying with

Paul Rand Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum; August 15, 1914 – November 26, 1996) was an American art director and graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Morningstar, Inc., Westinghouse, ...

Bradbury Thompson J. Bradbury Thompson (March 25, 1911 – November 1, 1995) was an American graphic designer and art director known for his work designing magazines and postage stamps. Early life and education J. Bradbury Thompson was born on March 25, 1911 in To ...

and

Herbert Matter Herbert Matter (April 25, 1907 – May 8, 1984) was a Swiss-born American photographer and graphic designer known for his pioneering use of photomontage in commercial art. Matter's innovative and experimental work helped shape the vocabulary of 20 ...

. After Yale, Seitz was hired by the architectural firm, I.M. Pei & Associates. In 1964, Walker Art Center director Martin Friedman appoints Seitz design curator and editor of the Design Quarterly, a national publication of applied arts, architecture, and design. In 1968, opened his first graphic design firm, Visual Communication, Inc., as a solo practitioner. Seitz went on to organize the Minnesota Chapter of AIGA, and Siggraph. In 1970, Seitz joined Dewey Thorbeck and Al French (architecture), Roger Martin (landscape architecture), and Steve Kahne (computer specialist) in launching InterDesign, the Twin Cities’ first

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

design firm. Major InterDesign projects include: the identity programs and

signage systems Signage systems are visually oriented information systems, consisting of signs, maps, arrows, color-codings systems, pictograms and different typographic elements. Signage systems differ from other methods of information presentation because they ...

for the

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with list of lakes in Minneapolis, thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. ...

Parkways, the downtown

St. Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...

Skyways, the Minnesota State Capitol and the Minnesota Zoo. In 1971, Seitz began teaching graphic design classes part-time at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He served as Chair of the Design Department from 1977 to 1978, and as Acting Chair of Design from 1998 to 1999. Seitz assembled one of the first computer graphics laboratories at MCAD in 1981. Seitz retired and became MCAD professor emeritus in 2002. His life and work is chronicled in "Peter Seitz: Designing A Life".

Selected honors and awards

*American Institute of Graphic Arts, Fellow, AIGA Minnesota Chapter "AIGA Fellow Award" the American Institute of Graphic Arts AIGA.org, 200

/ref> *Graphis Annual *Society of Environmental Graphic Designers *Society of Publication Designers *Society of Typographic Arts

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seitz, Peter German graphic designers American graphic designers Information graphic designers American typographers and type designers Yale University alumni Artists from Minneapolis 1931 births Living people German typographers and type designers People from Augsburg (district)