Faculty Bios

Lourdes Livingston

Director, BFA & MFA
Web Design & New Media

From 1977 until 1993, Ms. Livingston worked as an Editorial Graphic Designer, Illustrator and Columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her assignments at the Chronicle included all aspects of visual newspaper reporting, from developing daily political commentaries to backroom action at the Cannes Film Festival and street fashions in Milan. Ms. Livingston, already well-grounded in Mac usage, expanded her skills to include working on the SGI platform, and began to work with Silicon Graphics as a Graphic Designer. She later turned her digital focus to the dual Mac-PC environment at Women.com, where in a five-year span she helped build a small startup to a thriving network. As Creative Director at Women.com, she defined the look and feel of the entire network, working with art staffs in New York and San Francisco. She is currently the Director of Graduate Studies in Web Design + New Media. She served on the Education Program Committee for SIGGRAPH 2004 and 2005. She has moderated panels at SIGGRAPH, TYPECON, and at The Academy of Art University; she’s currently a member of BAYCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH, AIGA, and The Graphic Arts Guild.

Kathleen Watson

Online Associate Director
Web Design & New Media

Kathleen brings more than 20 years of industry experience as an interaction designer working for Claris, FileMaker, Lotus, Tandem, and Ford Aerospace. She is a Certified User Experience Professional (CUXP), specializing in visual communication; holds a Masters of Arts in Research Psychology from San Jose State University and certificates in Fine Arts and Graphic Design from UC Santa Cruz. In addition to directing the Usability Lab, Kathleen teaches Principles of Usability, Interactive Design & Concepts, User Experience and Information Architecture.

Ryan Medeiros

Full Time Faculty
Web Design & New Media

Ryan Medeiros is a designer, artist and educator living in the San Francisco bay area. His career began in 1995 at the famous San Francisco package design firm PrimoAngeli Inc. From 1998 to 2001, he owned and operated a three­-person new media design studio in downtown San Francisco. Since Fall 2006, Ryan has been teaching visual design, typography, and software, in the Web Design & New Media Graduate department at the Academy of Art. In 2008, his neo­-constructivist poster entitled "100 Years of Futurism" was exhibited at the Moscow Biennial of Graphic Design. Ryan has a Bachelors degree in Fine Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His design work and fine art have been exhibited in solo and group shows in San Francisco and abroad.