Presentation Date: October 24, 2013
Aaron Marcus
Aaron Marcus was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1943, the elder of two brothers. After serving in the US Army, his father Nathan Marcus owned and operated a dry cleaning plant. His mother Libbie was a housewife.
Education:
1961 - graduated from Omaha Central High School
1965 - awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Physics at Princeton University
1967 - became a graduate student researcher in AT&T’s Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey. While there, he:
- studied programming and became the world’s first graphic designer to use computers
- programmed a prototype desktop publishing system for the Picturephone approximately ten years ahead of commercial systems
1968 - awarded both a Master’s and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Graphic Design at Yale University.
His extensive professional experience includes:
- numerous graphic arts achievements, awards, and publications
- tutoring/lecturing at prestigious corporations and universities worldwide
- business travel to Austria, China, Germany, Israel, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
While overseas, he:
- sneaked into former Nazi Germany’s notorious Dachau concentration camp
- had an audience with Jordanian royalty in the Hashemite Kingdom’s palace and suffered a heart attack in Petra
- was trapped in the collapsing Soviet Union just as he and his wife were leaving Russia to enter Hungary
- traveled with his wife through China in 2002
- flew to China in May 2013 to try to close a deal after his cardiologist told him to cancel his flight 20 hours before departure.
Aaron is the husband of American Institute of Graphic Arts Fellow Leslie Becker. They each have two children by previous marriages.