David C. Stairs

David C. Stairs (born 1952) is an illustrator, book artist, and design instructor. Stairs was born in Syracuse, NY. He is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design (BFA 1975) and the University of Oregon (MFA 1993). During academic 1975-76 Stairs attended Croydon College of Art's Intensive Printmaking Program in London.
From 1988 to 1991 Stairs’ work frequently appeared in Northwest Magazine of The Oregonian. One of these pieces, “Dick Clark at the Moulin Rouge,” was purchased by Dick Clark Productions. From 1991 to 2001 Stairs was art editor of Northwest Review.
Stairs has produced fifteen artist's books since 1980, several of which are in the collection of the New York Public Library, and the University of Oregon Design Library, among others. One of the titles, “Boundless,” has been the subject of numerous reviews and anthologies, including in Johanna Drucker's The Century of Artists’ Books.
Since 1997 Stairs’ design essays have appeared both in print and online, including in Design Issues, Leonardo, and Design Observer. His 1997 essay “Biophilia and Technophilia,” was reprinted in the 2010 Bloomsbury Publishing’s anthology, The Designed World.
In 2000 Stairs received a Fulbright Program grant to Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. During this stay in Africa he founded Designers Without Borders (2001), an organization dedicated to assisting individuals and organizations in the developing world. In 2002 Stairs was the subject of an article in ’s international edition. In 2003 Stairs and his partner Sydnee Mackay received an award from Sappi Fine Papers Ideas That Matter program in support of DWB activity.
In 2006, the year he began to post articles on Design Observer, Stairs founded the Design-Altruism-Project weblog, an online forum for discussions relating to social design initiatives. His 2007 essay on Design Observer, “Why Design Won’t Save the World,” a critique of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s Design for the Other 90% exhibit, proved controversial. In 2009, after posting the essay “Arguing with Success” at Design-Altruism-Project, Stairs was invited to debate Designer's Accord founder Valerie Casey on the Change Observer section of Design Observer. In 2010 Stairs was a guest speaker at the Design Month Graz celebrations in Austria. In 2011 he was invited to review and critique the Cooper-Hewitt’s reboot exhibit Design With the Other 90%.
In 2012 Stairs received a Fulbright grant to India. The essay which resulted from that research, “Journeying Through the Sacred Profane,” appeared on Design Observer in 2013. Later in 2013, Stairs shared the podium with Michèle Champagne and Rick Poyner as keynote speakers at the AIGA’s BLUNT conference at Old Dominion University, developed by Kenneth Fitzgerald.
In 2014 Stairs and DWB were nominated to submit work for judging in the Cooper-Hewitt’s design biennial but declined the opportunity, citing the museum’s record of misunderstanding the developing world.
In 2017 Stairs returned to Africa and India to do sabbatical research for a documentary. In 2019 Stairs released Digging the Suez Canal With a Teaspoon, a film collaboration with Eric Limarenko that observes the triumphs and challenges of designing for the commonwealth. The film interviews a number of design world notables including Victor Margolin, Arvind Lodaya, John Thackara, Emily Pilloton, Liz Ogbu, and Wes Janz.
Stairs has taught graphic design and art and design history at Central Michigan University since 1994. He lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Publications
A partial list of Stairs’ significant design essays:
*Biophilia and Technophilia (1997, DesignIssues; 2010, The Designed World, Bloomsbury)
*Design and Deforestation (1998, Leonardo)
*Okuwangaala (2002, DesignIssues)
*Altruism as Design Methodology (2005, DesignIssues)
*One Axle or Two? An ICSID Interdesign in South Africa (2006 DesignIssues)
*Why Design Won’t Save the World (2007, Design Observer)
*Post-Professional (2008, Design-Altruism-Project)
*Arguing with Success (2009, Design-Altruism-Project)
*The Visual Representation of the Human Genome (2012, DesignIssues)
*Journeying Through the Sacred Profane (2013, Change Observer)
*Designing Ourselves to Death (forthcoming in 2020 in Ethics in Design and Communication from Bloomsbury)

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