Bert P. Smith
Bert P. Smith
associate professor
School of Communications Design
Contact Information:
Phone: 410.837.6040
E-mail: bsmith@ubalt.edu
M.A., University of Baltimore
B.F.A., Maryland Institute College of Art
Growing up in Baltimore in the '50s, I remember being drawn to the world of commercial signs, advertising and posters with bright colors, elegant stylized letterforms and lively original images that caught my eye as I rode the trolley to school or walked downtown. I knew someone must be responsible for making or thinking up these things I thought were beautiful, and I wanted to be that person.
Years later, after serving in the Marine Corps and graduating from art school, I used all that I had absorbed as a youngster when I was hired to design Baltimore's first TV news graphics at WJZ. It was a great experience because I had to apply all my design training to the screen, capturing the essence of a story with one image and two or three words—and on the tightest of deadlines. Each graphic had to be conceived, researched, hand drawn, cut out and assembled, often only minutes before a live broadcast. And this was for two shows. Every day.
Fortunately, I've achieved success as an author, illustrator and award-winning graphic designer. The most important thing I can teach my students is to observe critically that same man-made world I experienced and realize that everything they see there—from buildings to bridges, cars and typefaces—is a product of design thinking.
View some of my work below:
This poster for the Sixth Annual Celebration of Black Writing (designed for Moonstone Inc. as a project of the Institute for Publications Design) won a Certificate of Excellence from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, was included in the 1991 Communication Graphics show and was published in Graphic Design USA:12, the annual of the AIGA. I served as art director, designer and illustrator; January 1990.
This poster for the Word & Image Conference won a Certificate of Merit from the New York Art Directors Club and was published in their 67th Annual. I served as art director (with Ed Gold), designer (with Mary Perantonakis) and illustrator; Spring 1988.
As a Pub Design student in the eighties, I took an advanced illustration course at MICA and had the assignment of creating a self portrait, but without showing my face. This, of course, forced me to think about symbols and settings and objects that might represent me. This led to the hand coming out of the old marmalade jar I kept my pencils and tools in. I have done several versions of this idea over the years, but always come back to the original one you see here.