This event is part of the New Work in the Arts & Humanities: Bodies of Knowledge series.

The exhibition Transformers, currently on view at the MAXXI, presents work by four artists who mine the overlapping territory of art and design to create platforms for social change and collective consciousness. As a partner in the New York office of the international design consultancy Pentagram, Michael Bierut has spent the last thirty-five years exploring the ways that graphic design affects the way we determine our identities, communicate with each other, and understand the world. His presentation will provide a behind-the-scenes look at some of his most interesting projects. In this conversation, he will speak with MAXXI curator of design Domitilla Dardi about his new monograph, How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry and (every once in a while) change the world, published in 2015 by Thames and Hudson and Harper Collins. Bierut is also a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art. He is the winner of hundreds of design awards, including the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal. In 2002, he founded Design Observer, a blog of design and cultural criticism: today the site is the largest design publication in the world with over a million site visits a month.

Michael Bierut is the Henry Wolf Graphic Designer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the spring 2016.

This conversation will take place in English.