Sam Romero

Background

About Sam Romero

After earning my MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, I became a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at Florida Southern College. I am now a Full Professor of Art and the director for the Graphic Design Program at FSC, where I oversee both the BA and BFA programs in Graphic Design. I am also a co-founder of and the current Brand Advisor for the U.S. Latinx Art Forum, an advocacy and professional organization for the field of Latina/o/x art.Since 2008, I have designed and or taught numerous art and design courses. Some of these courses include Design Fundamentals, Drawing I, Intro to Digital Photography, Video Art, Type and Layout, Digital Illustration, and Senior Seminar. In 2015, my commitments to teaching, advising, and mentoring students earned me the Omicron Delta Kappa Honors Society Teacher of the Year Award.In 2021, an interview and images of my design work were published in Black, Brown + Latinx Design Educators by Kelly Walters (Princeton Architectural Press, 2021). In the published interview, I spoke about centering my identity within my design practice and teaching pedagogy and the impact its had on my students. The author and her publisher held several virtual panels and Q&A sessions, of which I participated in 2 events. The 1st was a virtual book launch in partnership with AIGA. The 2nd event was in partnership with Parsons School of Design. In 2020, I co-chaired “Browning the Design Canon” at CAA. The panel explored the historical and contemporary intersections of U.S. Latino/a/x design with that of other BIPOC designers’ visual narratives and approaches. Our objective was to create dialogue and unseat traditional design canons, while looking forward to a decolonial design future from the Latinx and BIPOC designer perspective.My most recent conference presentation, Criticism in the Age of Diversity, was given at SECAC in the fall of 2024. The presentation addressed the need for a philosophy of design criticism and critique methodology within the context of a quickly evolving visual language of design. I am currently continuing this research with a new project/case study called,"Designing Criticism."