Natalia Ilyin

Visiting Professor

NIlyin@Cornish.edu

Natalia writes about the ways design affects how we live and think and is a brand consultant specializing in the unique issues of NGOs and 501c3 cultural organizations. In the past, she’s worked as a graphic designer, an art director and as the Director of Programs for the AIGA national organization. She has taught at Yale University, The Cooper Union and the University of Washington, and currently teaches a short section in semiotics every Fall at Rhode Island School of Design, where she was named Critic for the MFA in Graphic Design in 2009-10.

Natalia co-directs SisterScarf, a small refugee-relief organization that provides microgrants for community-identified initiatives on the Thai-Burmese border. SisterScarf has granted funds to Border orphanages, shelters for children living on the street, a farm where refugees infected with the HIV virus can live and grow their food, “outpost” libraries, SHAN language schooling, medical aid for sex-workers, sex-education for Burmese teens, cyclone relief, water-purification relief, boat-people relief, tsunami relief and other projects.

She participated recently in Art Center College of Design’s Toyota lecture series and has given talks and workshops at Microsoft, Boeing, RISD and MECA. She’s spoken at CCA, the Wolfsonian Museum, The Henry Art Gallery, The Frauncis Tavern Museum, at various conferences and in other places she can’t remember right this minute. Her most recent book, Chasing the Perfect: Thoughts on Modernist Design in Our Time, is a personal look at the philosophy of modernism and its effect on the designers of our era.

Natalia’s articles have been published in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Portland Oregonian, the Miami Herald, Metropolis, STEP, Adbusters, Communication Arts, 2+3D,  and in Looking Closer 2 and 4 and several other design writing anthologies. She is at work on her third book.