maria rogal

Maria Rogal is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Florida, USA. She spent her formative years living in the US and internationally in Laos, Peru, and Liberia. Her trans-cultural perspective influences her work, which focuses on the relationship between culture and design and how we can leverage the potential of design, broadly defined, to positively shape the human experience. Since 2003, she has worked in Mexico on the Design for Development (D4D) initiative in which graphic design students and faculty work “in the field” with artisans, farmers, and organizers from marginalized Maya communities to foster small business development and create cultural programs. In 2008 she received the inaugural AIGA Design Research Grant (2008) to continue the D4D initiative and presented papers on aspects of this work at GLIDE ‘10—Global Interaction in Design (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) and at MX09 Design Conference: Social Impact of Design (Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City). Her articles have been published in journals including Visible Language and Zed and she has exhibited her creative work internationally. Rogal was awarded a Fulbright-García Robles Scholar grant (2006–2007), a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad grant (2007) and a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship (2003) to research in Mexico.