The Most Dangerous Design School in the World

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, the influence of a small graduate programme in Michigan was felt not only across the USA but internationally. Under the leadership of Designer-in-Residence Katherine McCoy, the 2D Design programme at Cranbrook Academy of Art during that era drew theoretical and social concerns into practice in new ways, and was a key player in the challenge to the hegemony of the modernist tradition in American graphic design. Lucille Tenazas is one of the most influential designers to have graduated from Cranbrook during that time. In this conversation with Robert Sollis, of London-based studio Europa and senior lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts, Tenazas reflects upon the significance of the Cranbrook model, the ways in which she discovered her own voice as a graphic designer, and her convictions as a design educator today.