Willem Henri Lucas, The Netherlands / USA

Lucas studied at the ABK, Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten Arnhem, 1979 - 1985 and did his post academic studies 1994 - 1995 at the Sandberg Instituut (Rietveld Akademie), Amsterdam, both in the Netherlands.Lucas had his own design practice in Amsterdam from 1982 - 2004. In 1998 he designed holiday postage stamps for the PTT (Dutch Post and Telecom company), won Best Book design awards in 2002 and 2003 and got nominated by the Art Directors Club in the Netherlands 2003. From 1990 - 2002 he worked as a lecturer at the Utrecht School of the Arts and served as a department chair for the last 5 years.

In 2004 he moved to Los Angeles, US worked at Ogilvy & Mather, LA and holds a tenure professor position at the Design Media Arts department at UCLA where he serves as the chair since July, 1th 2009. He received awards from AIGA in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, Graphis Poster Annual 2006, 2007, the Art Directors Club NYC 2006, the One Club 2006. Clients include MOCA, UCLA, AIA and Morphosis Architects (Thom Mayne).

Both SF MoMa and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam added his design work to their permanent collections. Primarily a book designer (exploring sensibility of printed matter; in material as well as content), Lucas is interested in addressing social issues and bringing design back ‘to the street,’ and ‘humanity’ back into design, encouraging future designers to be a valuable part of their communities.