Steven Heller is an author, art director, educator and blogger. For 33 years he was a senior art director at the New York Times, originally at the OpEd page and then the New York Times Book Review. He is the co-chair and co-founder (with Lita Talarico) of the SVA NYC MFA Design / Designer as Author + Entrepreneur program. He co-founded the SVA MFA Products of Design, MFA Interaction and MPS Branding programs. He was the co-director of SVA's Modernism & Eclecticism: A History of Graphic Design symposiums. The author or editor of over 175 books, including Design Literacy, Graphic Design Rants and Raves, Graphic Style, 100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design, Typology and the Typography Sketchbooks.
He is the recipient of the 2011 Smithsonian National Design Award for "Design Mind," the 1999 AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement, the 2016 Eric Carle Award, The Society of Illustrator's Art Direction award, The Art Directors Hall of Fame Educators Award, the Pratt Institute Hershel Levit Award and two honorary Ph.Ds from College of Creative Studies in Detroit and the University of West Bohemia in the Czech Republic. He has appeared in over 20 documentaries on design and political art and has written over 100 introductions and forewords for books on design and illustration.