Back to Alumni Profiles

Meta Newhouse is facing forward smiling. She has long brown hair and wears a red scarf and brown jacket.

Meta E. Newhouse

2007, M.F.A., Communication Design
Instagram: Meta Newhouse
LinkedIn: Meta Newhouse
Website: Meta Newhouse

About

Meta Newhouse has been named chair of Undergraduate Communications Design in the School of Design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Newhouse joins Pratt from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she served as a professor and design department chair, overseeing programs in graphic design, interactive design, and design for user experience. She begins the role at Pratt on Aug. 1, 2024. 

Newhouse was a professor in graphic design at Montana State University and the former creative director of GroupBaronet in Dallas. She designed work for prominent clients, including Dallas County Community Colleges, the Dallas Symphony, Motorola, and the American Heart Association. Her work has been nationally and internationally recognized in over 40 professional books, annuals, and catalogs such as PRINT, Communication Arts, AIGA, Graphis, and HOW. Her posters for social causes are part of the permanent collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Musée des Arts de Décoratifs (the Louvre) in Paris and featured in the 70th-anniversary exhibition on the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.

Newhouse is the founding director of the Design Sandbox of Engaged Learning at MSU, an award-winning initiative integrating interdisciplinary opportunities for undergraduate students. It aims to transform the educational experience by applying design thinking to solve real-world problems. She chaired the Women’s Faculty Caucus from 2014 to 2016 and is passionate about projects on climate change and racial and gender equity, which influence her course content.

As chair of Pratt’s Undergraduate Communications Design Department, Newhouse will oversee approximately 80 faculty and 575 students, guiding a B.F.A. program emphasizing graphic design or illustration, blending critical cultural observation with emerging technologies.

“I’m honored to work with the extraordinary faculty and staff at Pratt and to champion the boundless creativity of its students. NYC is ‘our oyster’… so the collaborative opportunities seem limitless. I’m beyond enthusiastic about the future of both graphic design and illustration as disciplines that can move society forward. August 1 can’t arrive soon enough,” said Newhouse.

She was a tenured professor at Montana State University in the College of Arts and Architecture for 15 years and directed the Design Sandbox. The program fosters interdisciplinary collaboration through courses and workshops addressing community and industry needs, with one course, Farm to Market, winning the 2017 Core77 Design Education Initiative Award.

Her research focuses on branding, guerrilla thinking, design as a social practice, and the intersection of type and culture. She has received multiple awards, including two Teaching Innovation Awards at MSU and a Fulbright Fellowship in Ireland at University College Cork in 2020. Newhouse regularly participates in symposia at MSU and major academic and professional conferences such as AIGA, TypeCon, and ATypi.

Newhouse’s professional practice, Meta Newhouse Design, encompasses research, strategy, concept, design, copywriting, and production for non-profits like the American Heart Association, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and for-profit businesses in various industries. Her design work has been featured in publications like Brand Identity Essentials and Logo Lounge and international exhibitions such as Poster for Tomorrow: Make Extremism History. Her poster “Climate Change Bites” is part of the permanent collections at institutions, including the V&A Museum in London and Les Arts Decoratifs de Paris in the Louvre. She has also participated in creative residencies, most recently at the Museum of Typography and Printing (Tipoteca) in Cornuda, Italy.

Newhouse earned her Master of Fine Arts in Communication Design at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, and her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts and Art History at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.