Gail Anderson

Gail Anderson (b. 1962) is a designer and educator from the Bronx, New York City.

From subways to theaters to social media, Anderson’s graphic designs have appeared across varied platforms in the past thirty years. Gail Anderson’s work often expresses both a visual and political charge—whether designing book jackets, posters, prints, or postage, Anderson’s work refuses to give into the despair conjured by realities like COVID or racism, and boldly calls us to act, to envision, and to engage.   

Anderson is an educator at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and director of design and digital media at SVA's Visual Arts Press. She is a cofounder of the multi-disciplinary design agency Anderson Newton Design, whose clients include the New York Times, Wired, the United States Postal Service, TIME, Thames & Hudson, and Princeton Architectural Press. Gail Anderson attended the School of Visual Arts and graduated with a degree in Media Arts in 1984. 

Anderson points to her childhood drawing and stapling together recreations of Partridge Family and Jackson 5 magazines as her first exploration into design, and the very beginnings of her career as a graphic designer. In her episode of Revision Path, a podcast that interviews and showcases Black designers and creatives, Anderson explains that following her childhood: 

“I had an art teacher, Chris Francis, at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, and she directed me to SVA, and she had taken night classes, and really liked it, and we had a poster in the corner, it was the Paul Davis poster, “To Be Good is Not Enough, When You Dream of Being Great,” and I thought, ‘I want to go to that school.” I love that line, I love the poster…I kind of made my college decision based on the poster and my high school teacher’s recommendation.” 

Created during her youth, Anderson’s Scrapbook about The Jackson 5 is one of many pieces in the permanent collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Also, in NMAAHC’s collection is Anderson’s poster Reclaiming My Time, created in 2018, which references a phrase Representative Maxine Waters used during a congressional hearing. Anderson is a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee for the United States Postal Service, advising the Postmaster General on commemorative stamps.  According to her website, her design for USPS Emancipation Proclamation Freedom stamps (2020.11.39), “sold over 50,000,000 copies, appeared on the evening news, and even became a Jeopardy clue!”  

Anderson has co-authored a number of books with Steven Heller on design, typography, and illustration, including The Typographic Universe (2014), New Modernist Type (2012), New Ornamental Type (2010), New Vintage Type (2007), The Typography Idea Book (2016), The Logo Design Idea Book (2019), The Savage Mirror (1992), and Graphic Wit (1991). Anderson has worked as a designer at The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and Vintage Books (Random House), as senior art director at Rolling Stone, and as creative director of design at SpotCo. 

Anderson is the recipient of many awards, including the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the 2009 Richard Gangel Art Direction Award from the Society of Illustrators, and the 2018 National Design Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Anderson holds an honorary doctorate from Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. She is a noted mentee of Paula Scher. 

In addition to the National Museum of African American History of Culture, Anderson’s work is in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Milton Glaser Design Archives at the School of Visual Arts.   

VIEW OBJECTS CREATED BY GAIL ANDERSON