Jeanne Criscola, born and based in New Haven, Connecticut, is a interdisciplinary artist and designer. Her artwork reveals the content and context of information and communicates them in graphical form with the devices of human culture, technology, language, and other symbols. The physical objects are time-based projections, installations, and works on paper. Her award-winning studio, Criscola Design, specializes in a wide range of media and scale including print, interaction, film and video, and environments.

As principal of Criscola Design, her studio approaches design and communication as a Fluxus-inspired relationship of concept and craft, working with messages and technologies. Like their clients, the studio, too, is concerned with social activism and conceptual engagement in a globalized society.

The studio’s creative direction and branding concepts can be seen in the many books, annual reports, brochures, magazines, calendars, and other media have won numerous prestigious awards. Jeanne Criscola and Criscola Design have won several graphic design awards, including the Health Public Relations and Marketing News Best Public Relations Campaign Award for Now I Know Better: Kids Tell Kids About Safety (1996); Council on Advancement and Support for Education Regional Award for Excellence in Design (1995); the Council on Foundations Wilmer Shields Rich Awards for Excellence in Communications Silver Award (1994 for Children of Atlantis and 1995 for Dear Unknown Friend: Children’s Letters from Sarajevo, Soros Foundations); and a 1994 Second Place Award for Exhibition Catalogues from the American Association of Museums for Conservation by Design, an exhibition catalog and book of essays for the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and Woodworkers Alliance for Rainforest Protection. In 2003, two publications for The Soros Foundations Network/Open Society Institute won awards from the Council on Foundations in its annual Wilmer Shields Rich competition for excellence in communications. The Network Women’s Program book, Bending the Bow: Targeting Women’s Human Rights, won a Silver Award in the Special Reports category and was praised as a “strong and compelling publication,” “a pleasure to look at.” Building the New South Africa, which tells the story of the Open Society Institute’s grantee Nurcha, was praised as “visually captivating.” In 2005, a visual campaign created for the Revenue Watch Institute won a Silver Award in the Public Policy Campaign category for revenuewatch.org and the 2003–2004 Annual Report produced for U.S. Programs/Soros Foundations won a Silver Award from the Council on Foundations in its annual Wilmer Shields Rich competition for excellence in communications. The judges praised the Annual Report “for its effective, well-organized structure” and its “‘visually rich’ images and layout.”

Practicing design since 1980 has required Criscola to be a perpetual student with a toolbox that lies in the ever-changing landscape of computer hard- and software—a place where possessing a natural affinity to technology is a prerequisite and patience, organization, and determination are a must. With over 25 years of experience in creative direction and teaching, Criscola hopes to in turn foster an innovative environment for the study of media, culture, and technology and to engage her clients and students to become active participants in and contributors to contemporary culture. She encourages all to be able and willing to reflect, critic, debate, and rethink the society and world in which they find themselves. What all the design work has in common is the representation of the evolving human condition through images, typography, color, and form in relation to concepts, exploring political and social implications, cultural messages, change, struggle, place, time, solutions, and shifting concerns.

Criscola holds a MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute, Donau-Universität Krems, a BFA in Textiles from Rhode Island School of Design, and an AS degree in Art from Endicott College. She is a member of numerous professional organizations that includes the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).

For a portfolio of selected design work, visit www.criscoladesign.com

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