becca gurney is a graphic designer, art director, and design educator.

Becca is an award-winning, concept-driven graphic designer, art director, and educator devoted to advocacy and action. Since graduating Tyler School of Art with an MFA in graphic design, Becca has been using design as a key tool for turning progressive ideas into social and sustainable change. For almost 20 years she has supported and given visual voice to entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, women’s rights and social justice causes, and sustainable energy programs. Always following a goal-based, concept-driven design process.

She’s instilled this process throughout the socially aware and varied design experience she created for herself: succeeding as the sole in-house designer at organizations, as a leader of a team in a fast-paced studio setting, on her own as a freelancer and business owner, and as a educator.

As a professor at Saint Michael’s College, Becca does more than come up with creative design solutions, she creates the next generation of socially aware and active designers. In and out of class, she encourages and builds upon students’ concept development and design skills; she leads them to an original solution, in their own voice, while simultaneously teaching design theory and presentation skills. She gets students excited about the minutia of good typography while working towards a more just world.

Being a design educator has instilled a belief in continual learning and open access to education. With this mission in mind, Becca has taken her teaching out of the classroom and into local neighborhoods with typography, publication design and design theory workshops for community activist groups. And she has mentored junior designers through the AIGA-DC’s SHINE program.

Becca founded Design Choice, a mission-driven design studio with a focus on women’s causes and social justice. She served as creative director for the March for Racial Justice creating the visual voice for various media, including a suite of outreach materials for organizing and fundraising and the development of the strategy and graphics for day-of implementation. The visual experience reached 25,000 marchers in DC, along with thousands more at 18 sister marches across the nation.

Becca was awarded a Beacon Grant to create an online directory of women creatives in DC, with the mission of closing the gender pay gap. This self-driven product went through each step of the design process including discovery through user interviews, wireframing and prototyping, and finally collaborating closely with the developer. The product launched in spring 2019, bringing visibility and job leads to more than 150 talented women in the DC area.

When not designing or in the classroom, Becca organizes and advocates in her community. She led the brand update of Girls Rock! DC and redesign of their website while serving on the organization’s Communications Committee. While teaching at American University, she advocated for resources for adjunct faculty by serving on the Labor-Management Collaboration Committee—finding compromises that help adjuncts to become better educators in order to better serve their students .

A problem solver at heart, she’s here to help.