Studio Overview

Jessica Helfand | William Drenttel is a design consultancy that concentrates on graphic design and new media, publishing and editorial development, literacy and urban issues. Founded in January 1997, the studio has a staff of four. Current clients/projects include websites and strategic development for Netscape, Booz Allen & Hamilton and Miavita; creative direction of Academic Partners LLC publications (Lingua Franca and University Business); books for University of Chicago Press and Princeton University Press; and consulting for America OnLine and Teach for America. The studio is also
designing the National Design Award symbol and award for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Jessica Helfand is a designer and writer in the field of editorial design and new media. Between 1990 and 1993 she was design director for The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine. The following year she founded Jessica Helfand Studio Ltd., where she designed internet sites and online identities for numerous clients including word.com, The New York Times, Discovery Communications, Champion International Corporation and most recently, Newsweek. A contributing editor to I.D. and Eye magazines, she is the author of Six Essays on Design & New Media and Paul Rand: American Modernist, and was appointed Curator of Technology for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's Mixing Messages exhibition in 1996. Helfand is on the faculty of the graduate design program at Yale School of Art, and has taught design at The Cooper Union and New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

William Drenttel was president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts from 1994-96. From 1985-96, he was partner and creative director of Drenttel Doyle Partners. DDP designed the original Spy magazine, and redesigned numerous consumer and trade publications including Inc., World Monitor and The New Republic. In addition to designing more than 100 books for various publishers, projects included creating the graphic identity, events programming and exhibitions for the World Financial Center; the graphic identity and exhibitions for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; the graphic identity and publications program for Princeton University; and the Transit Museum Shop and 19th Amendment installation at Grand Central Terminal. Among its more than 300 design awards, Drenttel Doyle Partners was named to the ID 40 list of design innovators in 1994. Drenttel is a trustee of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, a former board member of Poetry Society of America, and is chair of a five-year Literacy Initiative between the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Library of Congress Center for the Book.

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