Young Guns

David Shields is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design in the School of the Arts, at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and served as department chair 2012–2021. Before his appointment at VCUarts, he was an Associate Professor of Design at The University of Texas at Austin where he served as the Head of the Design Program and as the Design Custodian for the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection (rrk.finearts.utexas.edu).

Before joining the UT Faculty, David lived in Brooklyn, and taught at several institutions in the New York region. In 2000 he partnered with Jennifer Elsner to form Viewers Like You, a design studio providing creative consultancy for graphic and editorial communications specializing in a wholistic approach to experiences and branding.

An active scholar researching the typographic history of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, he is currently completing a monograph focused on the Rob Roy Kelly’s American Wood Type Collection to be published by UT Press in 2022.

His design work has been published in Rethinking Design, AIGA Fifty Books of the Year, Behind the Seen: Studio Dumbar, and has appeared in periodicals including Eye, Emigre, and Print Magazine. His work is also included in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Museum of Modern Art. His writing has been published in Slanted Magazine, Printing History, Design Inquiry Journal, Ultrabold the Journal of the St Bride Library, and on the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum’s History Blog. He keeps a (slow) blog of his research at Wood Type Research (www.woodtyperesearch.com), 144-character missives on Twitter, and image forward micro-blogging on Instagram (@ 19cWT).