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There is often a certain essence of a design program—a way of thinking, a way of making—that, however much it may be reinterpreted by every individual, can be detected in the work of the students long after they’ve graduated. This essence can take a tangible form in work that through use of certain combinations of typefaces, technologies, content, and even colors, is readily identifiable. More usually, however, a program’s ethos is traced in the approach to a piece of work— whether it’s systems-based or intuitive; pragmatic or conceptual; referencing scholarship or more widely available cultural values; political or poetic; and so on. Such legacies are self-perpetuating. Fellow students often end up collaborating or even going into business together, teachers can become employers, school activities and events always need promoting and documenting, and it’s natural to turn to alumni—many students even begin teaching themselves.

When the culture of a design school is potent enough, it can maintain a gravitational pull for its constellations of students. In order to compile this year’s Field Guide, therefore, I contacted a selection of graphic design programs both in the U.S. and further afield in Europe in search of designers emerging from, and yet still connected to, their respective schools. Astrid Stavro lives in Barcelona but maintains a link with her graduate school the Royal College of Art in London by designing books for them. Emily Anderson interned for a year in Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s in-house design studio. Unlike many of his classmates, Christopher Sleboda stayed in the town of New Haven after receiving his MFA from the Yale School of Art and has since been appointed director of graphic design at the Yale University Art Gallery. Dustin Arnold has been helping his former professors to develop design concepts for an upcoming conference at his alma mater, the Art Center College of Design. Johnschen Kudos now works for his former instructor Abbott Miller as part of a team at Pentagram. Paul Sahre was quick to recognize his student Joon Mo Kang’s talents and began to employ him even before he’d begun his senior year at the School of Visual Arts, and Victoria Lam’s education continues in her workplace, which happens to be the office of her California Institute of the Arts professor, Lorraine Wild. Other connections forged while at school are maintained by the students themselves: Kudos, along with five of his Maryland Institute College of Art classmates, has launched an online publication called Splotch Visual Pulse that explores various themes of popular culture; Ryan Corey collaborates with other CalArts grads as The Society of Image-makers; and Andre Andreev and G. Dan Covert met as students at California College of the Arts, reconnected while working at MTV, and have since set up their own firm, dress code.

The STEP Field Guide itself begins to intersect with these networks. Both Stefan Bucher and Eric Olson, featured in STEP’s previous surveys of young designers, have taught some of the exceptional individuals featured in this year’s Field Guide to Emerging Design Talent.