Jay Rutherford returns to Nova Scotia to teach for two weeks in the NSCAD Master’s program. Jay lived and worked in Halifax for fifteen years and was an active member of the GDC. Since 1993 he has been teaching in the Faculty of Art and Design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in Germany. Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 6:30 pm Merkin Gallery, NSCAD University 5163 Duke Street, 5th Floor Halifax, Nova Scotia.
View Larger Map Jay Rutherford was born in Canada in 1950 into a family of sign-painters and opticians. Inspired by a graphic designer uncle, he studied the subject from 1969 to 1972 and then worked in various related capacities until 1985, when he decided to return to school. At this point, he began to concentrate on usability factors in design and focussed his attentions on design for clear, efficient communication, rather than creative self-expression or pure commerce. While operating his own design studio and teaching part time, Jay established international contacts in type design and information design. In 1992 he was invited by Erik Spiekermann to work on several type- and information design projects at MetaDesign in Berlin, where he stayed for several months. In 1993, Jay participated in the founding of a new faculty of art and design at what is now the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. In 2003, he took a leave of absence from Weimar to accept a position at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano in Northern Italy, returning to Weimar in 2005. Jay is active in a number of international co-operation and exchange programmes, as well as being responsible for development of a new Bachelors/Masters programme in Visual Communications. He has been active on a number of juries for design competitions and is a member of numerous professional associations related to design and usability.