Creative director, designer, educator, and founding partner of the brand and design consultancy Area of Practice.


Area of Practice partners with business leaders to develop systems and create branded experiences between print and digital—focusing on strategy, brand voice, information hierarchy, typography, innovative design, and meaningful imagery.

Kevin has served as the senior design director of the strategy and brand experience design company COLLINS, the design director of Martha Stewart Living and More magazine, an art director at HarperCollins Publishers and Artisan Books, as well as the senior designer at SpotCo (Spot Design).

Kevin’s work has been recognized by AIGA Communication Graphics (365), and 50 Books/50 Covers; American Center for Design 100 Show; Art Directors Club; American Illustration; Communication Arts; Émigré; Graphis; Metropolis; New York Book Show; Print; Society of Publication Designers, Type Directors Club; and included in ADC Young Guns 2.

Books featuring his work include Becoming a Graphic Designer: A Guide to Careers in Design; Citizen Designer, Second Edition; Graphic Design Solutions; Handwritten: Expressive Lettering in the Digital Age; Head to Toe: The Nude in Design; I Love Type, Franklin Gothic; The Language of Graphic Design; Letterforms: Bawdy, Bad, and Beautiful; New Modernist Type; New Vintage Type; Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty; Sight for Sound; Teaching Graphic Design; and Type Speaks; amongst others.

Kevin has also served as a brand and design advisor for Circle of Blue and Designing Water’s Future—a global initiative to change how the world will care for and manage its dwindling freshwater supplies.

He teaches undergraduate Typography and graduate Design and Branding at the School of Visual Arts as well as Advanced Typography and Experimental Typography at Parsons School of Design.

Say hello: kevin@kevinbrainard.com or follow on Instagram and Twitter.