Read Article: Pratt News
Cheryl D. Miller’s honorary degree will be conferred in recognition of her tremendous influence within the design profession, her commitment to end the marginalization of BIPOC designers, and her work as a theologian and revisionist historian. The Institute is honoring the breadth of her commitments, including her activism, industry exposé writing, research rigor, and archival vision. A national leader of minority rights, gender, race diversity, equality, equity, and inclusion advocacy in graphic design, Miller is the founder of the former Cheryl D. Miller Design, Inc., NYC, a social impact design firm. In addition to her design work, she is also an author, educator, trade writer for PRINT magazine and Communication Arts magazine, theologian, and a decolonizing design historian.
Dr. Miller has an MS in Communications Design from Pratt Institute and a BFA in Graphic Design from Maryland Institute College of Art. She completed Foundation Studies at Rhode Island School of Design, and has a Doctor of Humane Letters from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. She received a doctor of humane letters from Vermont College of Fine Arts (2020), a doctor of fine arts from Maryland Institute College of Art (2022) and Rhode Island School of Design (2022), and an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. In 2021, she was an AIGA medalist for “expanding access,” a Cooper Hewitt Design Visionary awardee, an honorary IBM Design Scholar, and an Eminent Luminary and The One Club Creative Hall of Fame inductee (2022). A recipient of countless awards, she is dedicated to visual arts advancement. The Cheryl D. Miller Collection at Stanford University is her professional firm’s legacy archive, which includes her memoir research and manuscripts. The collection features Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, corporate communications developed for Fortune 500 corporations, and corporate communications for national African American organizations developed post-civil rights era (1974–1994). She is further archiving the history of Black graphic design in North America, collected at both Stanford University and The Herb Lubalin Center, Cooper Union. She is professor of diversity, equity, and inclusion in communication design at the Art Center College of Design; distinguished senior lecturer in design at the University of Texas, Austin; E.W. Doty Fellow 2021; and adjunct professor at Howard University. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Vermont College of Fine Arts and the President’s Global Advisory Board of Maryland Institute College of Art.