Doug Scott

Douglass Scott began teaching in 1973 and has been teaching graphic design at RISD since 1980. He has also taught at Yale University (1984–2023), Northeastern University, UMass/Dartmouth, Harvard University and Maine College of Art, among others. In 2011 he received the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching at RISD, and in 2019 the Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2023 High Impact Teacher Award at Northeastern University College of Art, Media and Design. Scott has been a visiting critic at over 40 schools and has given over 250 lectures on art and design history and his work.

For 35 years Scott was graphic designer and design director at WGBH, public television and radio in Boston. Major projects include Masterpiece Theatre, NOVA, This Old House and Evening at Symphony. Before coming to WGBH, he was a principal of two architecture/graphic design firms: Art Coalition and Rainbow Studio in Lincoln, NE. He has also been a consulting creative director of Davis Publications, an art education publisher. He has designed over 200 books for prominent publishers and has won over 140 awards for his work.

Scott was the curator of the History of American Typography section of the 1989 Graphic Design in America exhibit, which opened at the Walker Art Center and traveled to New York, London and Phoenix. He also curated The Roots of Modern American Graphic Design at the Art Institute of Boston in 1987. Since 1978, Scott has curated over 200 exhibits of design examples and has served on the board of directors of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, where he was honored as a Fellow of the AIGA in 2016. He holds a BArch from the University of Nebraska and an MFA from Yale University, and he studied the history of graphic design with Louis Danziger at Harvard University.