Aaron Marcus

Aaron Marcus studied at Princeton University, Yale University and Omaha Central High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is graphic design and informatics. Work by Aaron Marcus is recorded in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Distinctions recorded are Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cardiovascular Research, CHI Academy and ACM Distinguished Member.

• Name — Aaron Marcus • Born — 22 May 1943 • Birthplace — Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. • Occupation — User interface and information visualization analyst/designer • Alma Mater — Princeton University, BA, Physics, 1965

Marcus grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, in the 1950s. In secondary school he studied both science and art, and was editor of his high-school newspaper. He graduated with an A.B. in physics from Princeton University in 1965 after completing a senior thesis. He obtained BFA and MFA in 1968 at Yale University School of Art and Architecture. At Yale he also began the study of computer graphics, taking a course in basic functioning of computers, and he learned FORTRAN programming at the Yale Computer Center in the summer of 1966.

In 1967, Marcus spent a summer making ASCII art as a researcher at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1968 to 1977, Marcus taught at Princeton University in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning and in the Visual Arts Program. In 1969-1971, he programmed a prototype desktop publishing page-layout application for AT&T Bell Labs, and in 1971-1973, while a faculty member at Princeton, he claims to have programmed some of the first virtual reality art/design spaces. In the early 1980s, he was a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, as well as a faculty member of the University of California at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. In 1982, he founded Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A), a user-interface design and consulting company, one of the first such independent, computer-based design firms.

Marcus has written over 250 articles, some of which have been published in trade journals. A selection of his published papers follows: • Marcus, Aaron. "Playing with Type: The Work of Chang Sik Kim." Foreword, in Typogram: Visual Pun, Exhibition Book, "Doo Sung Design Gallery Publishers, Seoul, South Korea, 26 March-6 April 2011, (in English, Korean, and Chinese), pp. 31-35. • Marcus, Aaron. "Diagrams: Past, Present, and Future," An Introduction, in, Gauguin, Jan, Designing Diagrams: Making Information Accessible through Design. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2011, pp. 6–7. • Marcus, Aaron. "Branding the User Experience." On the Edge Column, User Experience Magazine. 10:3, 3rd Quarter, 2011, p. 30. • Marcus, Aaron, and Gould, Emilie. "Conducting a Culture Audit for Saudi Arabia" Multilingual, Issue 120, 22:4, June 2011, pp. 42–46. • Marcus, Aaron, and Jean, Jérémie. "Green Machine: Designing Mobile Information Displays to Encourage Energy Conservation." Information Design Journal, 17:3, 2010, pp. 233–243. • Marcus, Aaron. "UX Storytelling." Book Review, User Experience Magazine. 10:1, 1st Quarter, 2011, p. 30. • Marcus, Aaron, My Journey: From Physics to Graphic Design, to User-Interface / Information-Visualization Design, in Alexberg, Mel, (Ed.), Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Spring 2008, 192 pp. • Global/Intercultural User-Interface Design, in Jacko, J. and Spears, A. (Eds.), Chapter 18, Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, Third Edition. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, 2007, pp. 355–380. • The Sun Rises in the East, Fast Forward Column, Interactions, 14: 6, November–December 2007, pp. 44–45