Debbie Millman

Sterling Brands

From 1995 to 2016 Millman was the President of the Design Division, and Chief Marketing Officer at Sterling Brands based in New York City, where she worked with many of the world’s largest brands, such as Pepsi, Gillette, Colgate, Kimberly-Clark, Nestlé, and Campbells including the redesign of Burger King, merchandising for Star Wars and the positioning and branding of the No More movement.

HOT 97

From 1993-2005 Millman was the off-staff creative director of HOT 97 in New York City, where she worked with Emmis Broadcasting General Manager Judy Ellis and Promotion Director Rocco Macri to transform the dance music radio station into the world’s first hip-hop radio station. Millman created the HOT 97 logo in 1994 and then redesigned it again in 1999, which is still the logo today.

Design Matters

In 2005, Millman founded Design Matters, a design podcast that now has over 300 interviews with design leaders, educators, authors and thinkers including Massimo Vignelli, Steven Heller, Marian Bantjes, Tina Roth Eisenberg, and Stefan Sagmeister, Milton Glaser, Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, Barbara Kruger, Seth Godin and more. By mid 2017, 12 years since its inception the show has passed the five million downloads per year mark. The podcast received a number of awards such as the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and in 2015 iTunes named it one of the best podcasts of the year.

School of Visual Arts

In 2009 Millman and Steven Heller founded the world’s first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. The school's inaugural class wrote and designed the Rockport book Brand Bible: The Complete Guide to Building, Designing and Sustaining Brands, and in 2013 the students designed and created branding for the Museum of Modern Art’s retail program, Destination: New York. In 2015 their project was to reposition the Kappa Middle School in Harlem and in 2016 they rebranded Mariska Hargitay’s Joyful Heart Foundation and the class of 2017 redesigned the identity of the Performance Space 122 in New York City.

AIGA

Millman is the President Emeritus of AIGA, one of five women to hold the position in the organization’s 100-year history and a past board member and treasurer of the New York Chapter. Millman is a regular keynote speaker at a variety of global educational institutions, covering topics on design and branding. In the past she has presented keynote lectures at Rotman School of Management, Princeton University, Michigan Modern, the Hong Kong Design Association, the Melbourne Writers Festival, the National Museum of Serbia, Design Thinkers in Toronto, the Festival of Art and Design in Barcelona, Webstock in New Zealand, QVED in Munich, the ING Conference in Dubai, TypoBerlin, the By Design Conference in Slovakia and more.

Residencies

Millman’s artwork has been exhibited at the Boston Biennale, Chicago Design Museum, Anderson University (South Carolina), School of Visual Arts, Long Island University, The Wolfsonion Museum and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art. In the past she was an artist-in-residence at Cranbrook University, Old Dominion University and Notre Dame University, and has also conducted visual storytelling workshops at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, the University of Utah, Anderson University (South Carolina), Albuquerque Academy, the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and the Type Directors Club in New York City.

Media

Millman is a regular contributor to a number of print media outlets, such as The New York Times, New York Magazine, Print Magazine, Design Observer and Fast Company. She is currently the Editorial & Creative Director of Print. In the past Millman has designed campaign buttons for Hillary Clinton, wrapping paper and beach towels for One Kings Lane, greeting cards for Mohawk Paper and MOO Paper, as well as playing cards for DeckStarter and various others.