Lucille Tenazas is an educator and graphic designer based in New York and San Francisco. She is the Henry Wolf Professor of Communication Design in the School of Art, Media and Technology (AMT) at Parsons School of Design in New York. She was the founding chair of the MFA Design Program at California College of the Arts (CCA), launched in 2000, with an emphasis on form-giving, teaching, and leadership.
Lucille established Tenazas Design in San Francisco in 1985 and continues her design practice in New York. Her work is at the intersection of typography and linguistics, with design that reflects complex and poetic means of visual expression. She was the national president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1996-98 and was awarded the AIGA Medal for lifetime achievement in design in 2013. She received the National Design Award for Communication Design by the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in 2002. In commemoration of her one-person exhibition at SFMOMA and her contributions to the design profession, then Mayor Willie Brown declared May 15, 1996 as Lucille Tenazas Day in San Francisco. This honor was initiated through the efforts of the Filipino-American community in the bay area.
Originally from Manila, Philippines, she has taught and practiced in the United States since 1979, a trajectory that included living in San Francisco, Rome, Italy and New York. She studied at CCA and received her MFA in Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Lucille is an authority in the evolving state of design education and has conducted workshops throughout the United States, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
