Francesco Zorzi

Why do I teach? I love to learn. By sharing my design process and assisting students as they tackle the projects I present, I also learn from each of them — it’s a two-way street.

Francesco Zorzi is an Italian-born visual designer, award-winning illustrator, and educator at SRISA since 2019. He began his career as a comic strip artist before earning an MFA in Architecture. Zorzi then co-founded a multimedia agency, where he spent nearly two decades as a designer, creative director, and illustrator. He later established his own design practice Francesco Zorzi Studio.

He has earned spots in prestigious events and publications like Luerzer’s Archive’s “200 Best Illustrators Worldwide”, in many American Illustration editions, in the ” 2015 American Graphic Design Awards” by GD USA, in the first edition of Premio Illustri, as well as in four editions of the “3X3 Illustration Directory.”

Zorzi’s work has been celebrated with multiple awards, including three Award of Excellence from Communication Arts, Merit and Honorable Mention awards at the 3×3 International Illustration Show, Honorary Mention at Global Illustration Award 16, and two Gold Awards in the 2016 edition of the Muse Creative Awards.

His illustrations have appeared in prominent newspapers and magazines including The Daily Heller, Creative Quarterly, Juxtapoz magazine, and D La Repubblica. He has worked for The New York Times, Advertising Age, The Boston Globe, and The New York Observer and has been a contributor artist at Hemispheres Magazine. Notably, in the Summer of 2018, he designed the illustration series for the visual identity system of the Lincoln Center Out Of Doors festival in New York.

In published literature, Zorzi’s works are featured in the book by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico “FREE HAND, New Typography Sketchbooks,” and “The Illustration Idea Book: Inspiration from 50 Masters,” by Steven Heller and Gail Anderson, alongside some of the illustration world’s most renowned artists. He’s also a contributing member of AIGA, The American Institute of Graphic Arts.