Erik Schmitt, Partner & Creative Director, studio1500

Erik is a Partner and Creative Director at studio1500 in San Francisco. Previously he worked with The Office of Michael Manwaring, Pentagram Design, and as a freelance designer. These experiences have allowed him to work on a broad range of projects, including: environments, web, brand development and packaging.  He is also an accomplished photographer.
 
He received a BFA with Distinction in Design from the California College of the Arts.
 
Erik has taught Graphic Design at California College of the Arts and has been a guest lecturer at: San Jose State University, Art Institute of San Francisco, University of California Berkeley, and has co-taught the Yosemite Valley Medium Format Photography Workshop. 
 
He was the recipient of an Artist Residency from the Kala Art Institute in 2014, and was named a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts fellow for 2017.
 
Clients include: Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), The Computer History Museum, San Francisco Planning Department, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sun Edison, Zephyr, Other MInds, San Francisco Unified School District, Collective Invention, NSquare (nuclear weapons elimination initiative), Destiny Arts Center.
 
His work has been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, The Western Art Directors Club, The Industrial Designers Society of America, Exhibitor, Graphis, Webby award, and the International Design Excellence Award (IDEA). It has also been featured in Print, How, Step, Exhibitor, and Communication Arts magazines, as well as the books Logo Design Love, Symbol, Logo, Signage Design, Graphis Logo Design, Graphis Design Annual, Graphis Corporate Identity, and Just Design. 
 
Erik’s  work has also been covered by The New Yorker, Fast Company, Mashable, HOW, Yahoo Tech, Adobe Inspire Magazine, The Global Digital Citizen Foundation, Explore, O Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Artweek Magazine. And by the blogs: FPO, Imprint, Cosas Visuales, Minimal Sites, Visuelle, Aisle One, and Evasée.
 
He is the founder of the Webby award-winning Pages Project, an online archive of book pages bearing marks, notations and other marginalia. The Project explores the act of reading, each reader’s unique relationship to the material, and the nature of the book as a transitory physical object in a digital age.
 
His submission to the Market Street Prototyping Festival, Street Sketch, was one of 50 designs selected (by a team from the San Francisco Planning Department, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Knight Foundation) from over 200 entries from around the world for prototyping in 2015. It was subsequently one of ten designs chosen to become a permanent structure along Market Street in San Francisco.