Goldberg, noted for her album-cover and publication design work, served as a mentor to countless students in her long career at the College
The late designer and SVA faculty member Carin Goldberg in the design studio she shared with her husband, architect James Biber.
On Thursday, January 19, celebrated designer and longtime School of Visual Arts BFA Design faculty member Carin Goldberg died at the age of 69. Over the course of her four-decade career at the College, Goldberg taught close to 2,000 students, many of whom went on to distinguished work in design, education, advertising, publishing and branding, all while pursuing her own singular, award-winning career in design and branding. She is survived by her husband, architect James Biber, and son, Julian Biber.
Goldberg was born and raised in New York City. After receiving her BFA from Cooper Union in 1975 she began her career at CBS Television. Within three years, she was working in album-cover design, creating the record sleeves for such artists as Bette Midler, Yo-Yo Ma and Sly and the Family Stone—as well as the iconic cover for Madonna’s self-titled 1983 debut. (In a 2015 interview with The Cut about the latter, Goldberg called it “probably the easiest job I ever had.”) She soon expanded into editorial and publication design and branding work, amassing a client list that spanned from Citigroup to the Humane Society to country singer Tim McGraw. She joined the SVA faculty in the fall of 1982 and in 2010 designed a collage-based poster for the College’s long-running “subway series,” which took as its inspiration a quote from artist Paul Gaugin, “Go on working freely and furiously and you will make progress.”
The late designer and SVA faculty member Carin Goldberg’s 2010 poster for the College, titled “Go On Working Freely and Furiously and You Will Make Progress.”
Among Goldberg’s many professional distinctions and honors are a 2008 Art Directors Club Grandmasters Award for Excellence in Education, a 2009 AIGA Gold Medal, a 2012 Cooper Union Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award and a 2014–15 Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize for Design. She served as an AIGA NY board president and exhibited her work at such venues as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.
MPS Branding Chair Debbie Millman has collected a number of tributes to Goldberg for Print, featuring contributions from SVA alumni and colleagues like BFA Advertising and BFA Design Chair Gail Anderson (BFA 1984 Media Arts); ArtCamp founder and BFA Design faculty member Santiago Carrasquilla (BFA 2012 Graphic Design); Vox Media Vice President of Design Kristina DiMatteo (BFA 1996 Graphic Design); MFA Design Co-Chair Steven Heller; designer and SpotCo founder Drew Hodges (BFA 1984 Media Arts); Executive Creative Director at Google Creative Lab, EMEA, Julia Hoffmann (BFA 2002 Graphic Design); Apple designer and Champions Design co-founder Bobby C. Martin, Jr. (MFA 2003 Design); designer, illustrator and BFA Design faculty member Paul Sahre and animator, art director, designer and illustrator Zipeng Zhu (BFA 2013 Design). To read it, click here.