Danielle Aubert
Danielle Aubert
Biography
Danielle Aubert is a graphic designer whose work examines materials, methods of production, machines and labor. She is the author of The Detroit Printing Co-op: The Politics of the Joy of Printing (2019: Inventory Books), Marking the Dispossessed (2015: Passenger Books) and 16 Months Worth of Drawings in Microsoft Excel (2006: Various Projects). She is co-author, with Lana Cavar and Natasha Chandani, of Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies (2012: Metropolis Books). She is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Wayne State University, in Detroit. From 2013-15 she was a Fellow in the Creative and Performing Art at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.
Danielle Aubert holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia and an MFA in graphic design from Yale University. She practiced graphic design in New York and Moscow before returning to graduate school. In 2005 she moved to Detroit, where she served on the board of the AIGA, taught at the College for Creative Studies, and started her own practice before joining the department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University in 2008.
In 2009, Aubert, Lana Cavar and Natasha Chandani edited, wrote for and designed Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies, about life in Lafayette Park, a residential district in Detroit designed by Mies van der Rohe. In 2014, Chandani and Aubert worked with AIGA/NY on a post Hurricane Sandy design project in Rockaway, Queens. From 2008–2017, Aubert designed the quarterly journal Criticism, which in 2012 was selected to be a part of the 25th Brno Biennial of Graphic Design in the Czech Republic. She has designed publications and print material for many clients in the arts and academia. In 2015 she published the artist book, Marking the Dispossessed, that collected all the reader's notes, underlines, and marks found in 100 used copies of Ursula K. Le Guin's 1976 novel, The Dispossessed.
In 2019, Aubert published a book on the Detroit Printing Co-op, a facility cofounded by a group that included Fredy and Lorraine Perlman, of Black & Red Press. The Co-op existed from 1970–1980 and was the site of production for many radical left publications, including the first English translation of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle.
Criticism: A Journal for Literature and the Arts (2015: Wayne State University Press), a quarterly journal redesigned in 2008
Producing Waste, Producing Space (2015) poster designed with Manuel Miranda, for a symposium at the Princeton School of Architecture, printed on waste paper
Marking the Dispossessed (2015: Passenger Books), a collection of marginalia found in 100 used copies of Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed.
Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies (2012: Metropolis Books) co-edited and co-designed with Lana Cavar and Natasha Chandani.
Academic Interests
Graphic design, printing, labor, methods of production
Awards and Honors
Knight Arts Challenge Award recipient, 2018
Princeton University Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts, 2013-2015
AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers Award, 2012, 2010, 2009
Degrees and Certifications
Yale University, MFA in Graphic Design, 2005
University of Virginia, BA in English, 1998
Courses Taught
Introduction to Graphic Design
History of Graphic Design
Typography
Senior Studio
Recent Publications
The Detroit Printing Co-op: The Politics of the Joy of Printing
2019: Inventory Books
Marking the Dispossessed
2015: Passenger Books
Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies: Lafayette Park, Detroit
with Lana Cavar and Natasha Chandani
2012: Metropolis Books
Sixteen Months Worth of Drawing Exercises in Microsoft Excel
2006: Various Projects