Mary Banas

Mary Banas’ creative practice YES IS MORE includes research, teaching and design. She also works collaboratively with artist Breanne Trammell as BMTMB showing and presenting work in Life is a Highway (San Francisco, 2019), For Freedoms: Art as Political Resistance (Cincinnati, OH, 2018) and A = B: The Studio Practice Conference (Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, 2018).

Banas has designed for and with organizations and companies including ATO Records, Blend, Designer Fund, Dolby Labs, Honor, Imprint Projects, Mode Analytics, Pinterest, Postmates, Segment and WBUR Boston. In 2018 she designed the packaging for singer-songwriter Mitski’s album Be the Cowboy, which was nominated in the Best Recording Package category for the 61st annual Grammy Awards. Her work is in the collections of Counterproof Press (Storrs, CT) and the Letterform Archive (San Francisco, CA), and she has written for C-Magazine (Canada) and AIGA Eye on Design.

Banas has taught graphic design since 2009, notably as senior lecturer in the MFA and BFA programs at California College of the Arts and as Visiting Assistant Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut. She has also taught at Rhode Island School of Design (RI), the University of Bridgeport (CT), Ox-Bow School of Art (MI) and Roger Williams University (RI). She has led design workshops for Dolby Labs (San Francisco), OTIS College of Art and Design (Los Angeles) and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley).

She has been a visiting critic at Maryland Institute College of Art, Pratt Institute, San Jose State University, Kansas City Arts Institute, University of Utah and Boston University. She currently teaches in SMFA at Tufts in the Graphic Arts area and advises MFA thesis students at BU.