Aaron Marcus (born 22 May 1943) is an American user-interface and information-visualization designer, and a computer graphics artist.
Aaron Marcus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 22 May 1943 Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | User interface and information visualization analyst/designer |
| Awards | AIGA Fellow, Member CHI Academy, ICOGRADA Graphic Design Hall of Fame Master Graphic Designer of the 20th Century |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Princeton University, BA, Physics, 1965 Yale University, School of Art and Architecture, Graphic Design, BFA, MFA, 1968 |
Biography
editMarcus grew up in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1950s. In secondary school he studied both science and art, and was editor of his high-school newspaper.[1]
He graduated with an A.B. in physics from Princeton University in 1965 after completing a senior thesis.[2] He obtained BFA and MFA in 1968 at Yale University School of Art and Architecture.
At Yale he also began the study of computer graphics, taking a course in basic functioning of computers, and he learned FORTRAN programming at the Yale Computer Center in the summer of 1966.[citation needed]
Career
editIn 1967, Marcus spent a summer making ASCII art as a researcher at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey.[citation needed]
From 1968 to 1977, Marcus taught at Princeton University in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning and in the Visual Arts Program.
In 1969-1971, he programmed a prototype desktop publishing page-layout application for AT&T Bell Labs, and in 1971-1973, while a faculty member at Princeton, he claims to have programmed some of the first virtual reality art/design spaces.[citation needed]
In the early 1980s, he was a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, as well as a faculty member of the University of California at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design.[3]
In 1982, he founded Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A), a user-interface design and consulting company, one of the first such independent, computer-based design firms.
Articles and papers
editMarcus has written over 250 articles, some of which have been published in trade journals. A selection of his published papers follows:
- Marcus, Aaron. "Playing with Type: The Work of Chang Sik Kim." Foreword, in Typogram: Visual Pun, Exhibition Book, "Doo Sung Design Gallery Publishers, Seoul, South Korea, 26 March-6 April 2011, (in English, Korean, and Chinese), pp. 31-35.
- Marcus, Aaron. "Diagrams: Past, Present, and Future," An Introduction, in, Gauguin, Jan, Designing Diagrams: Making Information Accessible through Design. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, ISBN 978-90-6369-228-5, 2011, pp. 6–7.
- Marcus, Aaron. "Branding the User Experience." On the Edge Column, User Experience Magazine. 10:3, 3rd Quarter, 2011, p. 30.
- Marcus, Aaron, and Gould, Emilie. "Conducting a Culture Audit for Saudi Arabia" Multilingual, Issue 120, 22:4, June 2011, pp. 42–46.
- Marcus, Aaron, and Jean, Jérémie. "Green Machine: Designing Mobile Information Displays to Encourage Energy Conservation." Information Design Journal, 17:3, 2010, pp. 233–243.
- Marcus, Aaron. "UX Storytelling." Book Review, User Experience Magazine. 10:1, 1st Quarter, 2011, p. 30.
- Marcus, Aaron, My Journey: From Physics to Graphic Design, to User-Interface / Information-Visualization Design, in Alexberg, Mel, (Ed.), Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Spring 2008, 192 pp.
- Global/Intercultural User-Interface Design, in Jacko, J. and Spears, A. (Eds.), Chapter 18, Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, Third Edition. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, 2007, pp. 355–380.
- The Sun Rises in the East, Fast Forward Column, Interactions, 14: 6, November–December 2007, pp. 44–45
Books
editMarcus has written/co-written six books. Here is a selection:
- Baecker, Ron, and Marcus, Aaron. Human Factors and Typography for More Readable Programs. Reading: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1990.
- Marcus, Aaron. Graphic Design for Electronic Documents and User Interfaces. Reading: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1992.
- Marcus, Aaron, Smilonich, Nick, and Thompson, Lynne. The Cross-GUI Handbook for Multiplatform User-Interface Design. Reading: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1994.
- Marcus, Aaron, Anxo Cereijo Roibas, and Riccardo Sala. Mobile TV: Customizing Content and Experience. London: Springer, 2010.
Honors
edit- The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group for Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) elected Aaron Marcus in 2008 to its highest honor, the CHI Academy. He has also been named a Distinguished Engineer by the ACM (2011) [4]
- The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) through its Center for Cross-Cultural Design named Aaron Marcus an AIGA Fellow beginning June 2007.
- The International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA) included Aaron Marcus in its publication Masters of the 20th Century published in 2000.
Notes
edit- ^ Chapter by Marcus in Alexenberg, Mel (2008). Educating Artists for the Future. UK: Intellect Books.
- ^ Marcus, Aaron (1965). Determination of the (1,0,0) electronic effective mass in a gallium phosphide semiconductor by means of Raman scattering. Princeton, NJ: Department of Physics.
- ^ "InfoDesign: Understanding by Design | Special on Aaron Marcus". www.informationdesign.org. Archived from the original on 2004-06-02.
- ^ "Awards: Distinguished Member - 2011". Association for Computing Machinery. Archived from the original on 2012-04-02. Retrieved 2011-12-15.