Since 1981, Michael Osborne Design has been creating some of the most memorable packaging, corporate identity, and retail design solutions for their clients, including, Kettle, Target, Sam’s Club, Williams-Sonoma, Brown-Forman, numerous wineries, and the U.S. Postal Service. Osborne’s work speaks for itself; but it doesn’t have to in that the agency has won a myriad of awards. They have garnered awards from all major design competitions, including recognition by many industry publications such as a feature article in Communication Arts, 2011.
Michael has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences and design schools, and was the recipient of the prestigious AIGA Fellow Award in the summer of 2006. His work is included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco MOMA, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.
Michael has also designed the 2002 and 2004 Love stamps, the 2006 and 2013 Wedding stamp set, the 2006 Madonna & Child stamp, the 2007 Patriotic Banner stamp, and the 2012 presorted Spectrum Eagle stamps for the USPS. Michael received his undergraduate degree at Art Center College of Design, and his MFA at the Academy of Art University, where he has taught Package Design since 1991. His design agency’s mantra is simple: we’re here to communicate your brand, not ours.
Osborne’s meticulous creative ideas and design can be seen beautifully in his work(above), “Alphabetilately A-Z Exhibit.” This exhibit displayed United States post stamps through the ages, as promised, from A-Z. Osborne is clearly a trusted contact to the USPS in the amount of special, limited edition stamps that they have trusted him to design for them.
Read some excerpts from Michael’s Q&A in Journal #367!
Tell me about the hard times you’ve had in gaining your success.
A teacher once told me, “Excellent juggling comes from experience; experience comes from horrible juggling.”
What satisfies you most in your work?
What made me happiest…was doing meaningful work, work that had a chance to make a difference…