Steven McCarthy is professor emeritus of graphic design at the University of Minnesota. He earned an MFA in Design from Stanford University, and a BFA in Art from Bradley University. McCarthy’s long-standing interest in theories of design authorship – as both scholar and practitioner – has led to lectures, exhibits, publications and grant-funded research on six continents. His book on the topic, The Designer As... Author, Producer, Activist, Entrepreneur, Curator and Collaborator: New Models for Communicating was published in 2013 by BIS Publishers, Amsterdam. He has published in the field’s leading journals: Design Issues, Visible Language, She Ji, AIGA Dialectic and Design & Culture. McCarthy’s creative work has been in over 135 juried and invitational exhibitions, and his artist’s books are in special collections libraries at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, UCLA, UC–Berkeley, University of Washington, and University of Michigan among others. In 2017 he was awarded the Minnesota Book Artist Award.