Eric Benson

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Eric Benson is an American designer, author, and educator. He is Chair of the Graphic Design Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also is the co-founder of the Fresh Press Agri-Fiber Paper Lab, where he explores sustainable papermaking using corn stover, soy stalks, prairie grasses, and other waste fibers from local farms.
Early life and education
Benson was born in Arizona and graduated in 1993 from H.H. Dow High School in Midland, MI. He attended the University of Michigan and graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design and Industrial Design in 1998. His MFA thesis at the University of Texas became the sustainable design non-profit Re-nourish.
Career
During his professional career as a Graphic Designer, Benson worked for two years as a print designer at Lexicom Publishing in Ann Arbor, MI before his move to Boston, MA where he was a senior designer at Razorfish from 2000-2001. After the burst of the dot-com bubble, Eric moved to Houston, TX working as a freelance designer before latching on as a senior web designer at Texas Instruments from 2002-2004. He left corporate America in 2004 for a MFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin where his thesis become the non-for-profit Re-nourish, LTD. Re-nourish hopes to help the graphic designer "make responsible and pragmatic decisions for healthy people, profit, and planet."
After receiving his MFA in Design in 2006, Eric was hired as an Assistant Professor in Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Benson's initial research at the University of Illinois asks three connected questions. How can the graphic design profession (academic and corporate) work more effectively towards sustainability? What should the graphic designer make now and into the future to ensure positive social change, a healthy economy, and a clean planet? Is systems thinking a viable theory of practice that the graphic designer can employ in both an academic and a professional setting?
Benson's research and teaching is explored more deeply in his 2016 book on systems thinking and graphic design entitled "Design to Renourish: Sustainable Graphic Design in Practice" published by CRC Press. Eric's writing also appears in academic design journals and has provided three chapters for design books.
Since 2012 his work has focused more on creating new sustainable materials (like paper) graphic designers use in their practice. Fresh Press is his studio where he and his staff turn agricultural residue (corn stalks, prairie grasses, tomato vines, etc.) into paper and paper products.
Benson has won two AIGA design awards, and some of his work has been displayed at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Hammer Museum, The Walker Art Center, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

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