Yolanda Cuomo
Principal / Creative Director
Yolanda Cuomo is an experienced art director and avid educator. As Principal of Yolanda Cuomo Design, she provides the creative vision, direction, and passion behind all of the Studio’s work. Cuomo and her team work collaboratively with their clients, which include leading publishers, museums, authors, editors, artists, and photographers, to develop memorable and meaningful cultural and commercial projects.
Cuomo’s recent projects include the design of two books with photographer Pete Souza OBAMA, An Intimate Portrait and SHADE, A Tale of Two Presidents, a seven hundred page book entitled An Anthology about Paolo Pellegrin curated by Germano Celant that accompanied an exhibition at the Maxxi Museum in Rome, Italy, a book about Bob Dylan called DYLAN BY SCHATZBERG and the book A Life In Pictures: Steve McCurry. Throughout 2013, Cuomo edited and designed a two-volume nine-hundred-page limited-edition box set, The Library of Julio Santo Domingo, which also included a special-edition iPad and private app celebrating this collection. In fall 2012, Cuomo co-authored with Norma Stevens the book New York at Night, a collection of photographs published by PowerHouse Books. In 2011, Cuomo’s studio designed the enormously successful Diane Arbus retrospective which was organized by the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and traveled internationally.
Cuomo’s devotion to excellence has been repeatedly recognized. In 2013, she was profiled by the New Yorker in a film called Let’s Make a Book About This and featured on Time Magazine’s LightBox in “Profile of a Curatorial Master: Yolanda Cuomo.” Cuomo’s work has also been honored by several important industry awards. She was the recipient of the prestigious National Magazine Award, in 2004, from the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) for her art direction of Aperture, the premier magazine for significant photography. She received Infinity Awards in 1995 and 2004 from the International Center of Photography. Other leading professional organizations have recognized Yolanda’s work, including the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Society of Publication Designers (SPD), the Art Directors Club, and Magazine Publishers of America.
Outside her Studio, Cuomo teaches courses on design and book-making in the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has also taught or guest-lectured and taught workshops at the Officine Fotografiche in Rome, the Photographic Center Northwest, the International Center of Photography, LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, Parsons The New School for Design, School of Visual Arts, University of Delaware, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Magazine Publishers of America Folio Show. Cuomo has a BFA from Cooper Union. She lives in Weehawken, N.J., with her husband and two sons.
Bonnie Briant
Designer-at-Large
Bonnie Briant has been with Yolanda Cuomo design since graduating in 2008. She has worked on a multitude of different projects at the studio from books, to exhibitions, to branding and objects. Full time until 2018, she now works with the studio on a few specific projects each year.
Bobbie Richardson
Associate Designer / Production and Design
Bobbie Richardson was born in Houston, TX and joined the studio in 2014. She started as an intern while still at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the Photography and Imaging department, where Yolanda was her professor. After she graduated in 2015 she stuck around and is now the youngest member of our team. She assists the studio with production and design. Bobbie loves to pair and sequence and is great at typography and ripping paper. Bobbie is her full name.