Katherine McCoy, nationally recognized as a graphic designer and educator, serves as the Joyce C. Hall Distinguished Professor of Design at KCAI. She was appointed to the position in 2005 after serving as a special assistant to the college's president for two years.
Katherine McCoy and her husband, Michael, also a designer, were recognized in 2005 with the inaugural Design Mind Award, presented at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The award recognizes "visionaries who have affected a paradigm shift in design thinking or practice through writing, research and scholarship."
The McCoys previously held the Joyce C. Hall Distinguished Professors of Design position together in 1987 and for 23 years co-chaired the graduate design program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Katherine McCoy was a senior lecturer at Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design in Chicago from 1995 to 2004 and served as a distinguished visiting professor at the Royal College of Art in London from 1993 to 1996.
The McCoys spend much of their time now in Buena Vista, Colo., where their firms, High Ground Design and McCoy and McCoy, are headquartered and where they conduct High Ground workshops for active design professionals. As a partner of McCoy & McCoy Associates, Katherine consults in communications and signage design, design marketing, exhibition design and the interior design of furniture showrooms and executive offices. Recent clients include Tobu Stores Tokyo, International Design Center Nagoya, the Chicago Bears, Cranbrook Educational Community, Formica Corporation, Unisys, Philips Electronics and Detroit Institute of Arts.
Katherine McCoy is a past president and fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America, an elected member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a 1999 medalist of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. She was president and chairman of the Board of the American Center for Design and served two terms as an AIGA national vice president. Her work and teaching methodology has been published and exhibited internationally.
Contact: mccoykj@aol.com