Ryan Lewis
Western Michigan University
Ryan Lewis is a graphic designer, type designer, animator, artist, and associate professor of Graphic Design at Western Michigan University’s Frostic School of Art. At WMU, Lewis has taught courses in color, handmade books, letterpress, advanced design problem solving, typography and self-directed design research projects. Lewis’s current creative research interests include typeface design and time-based media projects. His animations have been selected and screened at exhibitions and festivals nationally and internationally such as Urban Institute of Contemporary Art (UICA) in Grand Rapids MI, Minneapolis College of Art & Design, UMASS Boston, MICA Place Baltimore MD, RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Denver, Indianapolis Art Center, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, the South Bend Museum of Art, Museum in Gimpo-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, the XVI Festival Transterritorial de Cine Underground in Argentina, the International Motion Festival in Cyprus, and Videomedeja, an international video art festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia. In professional practice, Lewis has worked also as a web and information designer at the Ohio University Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs designing for grant-funded energy, economic and environmental projects. Previously, he also worked as a graphic designer, interactive designer, and senior designer for the dental software division of the Fortune 500 Company Henry Schein, Inc. in American Fork, Utah. Lewis earned an MFA degree from the School of Art + Design at Ohio University, and a BFA from Utah State University. He is also a member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
They the People
They the People
Symbols are often born with intended messages or ideals, but their most enduring associations accumulate over time. Symbols are not content, but are instead vessels in which content is stored by societies. As the celebrated American identity designer Paul Rand once stated: “It is only by association…that a logo [symbol] takes on any real meaning. It derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which it symbolizes.” Meanings come and go. They amass in rich, messy, complicated, diverse, beautiful layers. Accumulated meanings can be contradictory and problematic. Symbols can be tarnished by misuse, replacing associations of pride and unity with embarrassment, shame, and fear. Symbols inevitably come to represent lived realities rather than lofty ideals.