'A Safe, Inclusive Environment Where There Are No Stupid Questions'

Noriko Yuasa, MFA

Professor, Graphic Design
Department of Art, Design and Art History
Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts

Helping students “find their internal voice and locate the universal connection with others.”

Born and raised in Yokohama, Japan, Noriko Yuasa came to the United States for college…and then decided to stay. Fascinated by typography and immersed in the professional world of graphic design, the opportunity to share this passion with students drew her into the world of teaching. With experience in branding, editorial design, package design, product design and advertising, her diverse background helps her teach students visual language and systems for culturally centered communication.

How do you translate your passion in life to the classroom?

I try to get students to not lose their own passion for design even if it is a difficult project. For class projects, students must collaborate and get to know each other or the subject of their project. It’s important that they learn how to understand and impact people since they will be working for clients. So we might have to talk about our backgrounds, or religion or politics to understand each other. Because working for a client, it doesn’t matter “if you like it” – that’s subjective. You have to keep going back to the core concept.

So, in learning about those topics in depth for projects, we see the world through design. We are not just making things look pretty, we are investigating ideas and figuring out how to convey them in an effective and beautiful way.

What else is special about Webster’s graphic design program?

Our faculty are of course great mentors, but we have mentorship from our alumni and the professional community too. We regularly bring in professional designers, often outstanding alumni, as speakers and as peer reviewers for our annual graphic design showcase.

On Facebook we have a group of alumni who are really active, and they help as mentors to our students, often welcome them for field trips. Our students see the beauty of design and also understand the realities of doing it as a profession.

What is the focus of your scholarship?

After finishing at the Art Institute of Chicago and then earning my MFA, working in New York City gave me this great intersection of emerging design in a multicultural background.

So I am always interested in developing visual language and systems for effective communication in culturally centered settings. For example, I used a faculty research grant to examine the different backgrounds of Japanese women in St. Louis. I interviewed women ranging from 20s to 80s in age, and it is amazing the different backgrounds, religions, interests…the temptation is to categorize them, yet you can see so much diversity even among Japanese people around St. Louis.