Ingrid Hess is an associate professor of graphic design in the Department of Art & Design at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She is also a cut-paper artist, painter, and children’s book author/illustrator. She received her undergraduate degree at Goshen College and her MFA in Graphic Design from Indiana University, Bloomington.
After earning her terminal degree, Hess spent 13 years working in Chicago. Her first job was helping with exhibition design at the Chicago Children’s Museum. Later she headed the book division at Kym Abrams Design. While there, Hess designed many of the American Girl books. Her book, The Care and Keeping of You: A Body Book for Girls, was featured in Time magazine. Finally, she worked in the text book industry for Holt-McDougall. Her academic teaching includes a visiting assistant professorship at The University of Notre Dame, starting a graphic design program at the College @ Brockport, SUNY, and joining the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2014.
Much of Hess’s scholarship focuses on using art and design to empower people to be good stewards of the environment. The simplicity in Hess’s work is heavily influenced by her Amish/Mennonite heritage; the bright colors and patterns are inspired by art from Costa Rica (her childhood home for four years). Her dual passions of design and illustration work well together and help her tell stories through pictures.
• In 2016 Hess was awarded a month-long artists residency in Costa Rica. The exhibition she created, Water: Drops of Life, focused on the importance of keeping water clean. It was exhibited both at the National Gallery and in the Museo de San Ramon.
• In 2021 Hess was awarded an ERASMUS (the European Fulbright) to spend a week at Universidade do Minho (UMinho) in Portugal. While there, she completed an exhibition on environmental sustainability titled The Earth Is What We All Have In Common. The work was exhibited in The Nogueira da Silva Museum in Braga.
• Hess received her second Fulbright award to travel to Ireland in 2021 to create additional work on sustainability. She designed a green card game for children. These cards (which focus on climate & energy, water, biodiversity, consumption & waste, food sustainability, and citizenship) were distributed to third grade classrooms around the area.
• In 2022 Hess was awarded an artist residency at Wollemi National Park in Australia. Hess designed banners about the Wollemi wilderness that are used to teach young children about interesting wildlife in the park and about ways to be good stewards of the environment.
• In 2024 Hess was awarded a three-week artists residency in Portugal. The work she created, All Water is Holy Water, focuses on ocean sustainability. It is part of an exhibition that travels around Europe.
• Finally, in 2024 Hess was awarded an Artist-in-Residence at Queen’s University Belfast as part of the Inaugural Reach’24 Sustainability & Arts Festival. Her solo exhibition on ocean sustainability titled Full of Plastic or Full of Wonder? You decide. was extremely well received.
Hess is an accomplished children’s book writer and illustrator. Her titles How Your Brain Learns To Read!, Sleep in Peace, Doodling Dragons, Knitting Knits, Whistling Whales, and Mister Magnificent’s Magical Merrimack Adventure have all won national awards. Her new five-book-series about the five senses is due out this year. Hess understands how critical it is that all types of children are represented in the books they read. Historically, children’s books have not done a good job depicting diversity. This problem is slowly beginning to change. Hess is part of this change. She also works with museums and national parks, both nationally and internationally to create educational exhibitions for children.
Hess has lectured on her work and exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Typically these lectures pertain to how she uses design to empower people and strategies for using design to help solve the world’s most pressing problems. Her work has been exhibited in the United States, Ireland, India, Poland, Australia, Costa Rica, Haiti, and Portugal, More of Ingrid’s work (including interiors of many of her books ) can be found on her website at: http://ingrid_hess.squarespace.com.