Born: 1952

Education: Parsons School of Design, California Institute of the Arts

Currently resides: Park City, Utah

Selected honors: National Magazine Awards for Design and General Excellence; AIGA Fifty Books shows; AIGA Communication Graphics shows; ACD 100 shows; IDEA Award for Industrial Design Excellence (with James Sebastian), I.D.S.A.; The Vice President’s National Information Infrastructure Award

John Plunkett studied with Louis Danziger at CalArts before joining Pentagram Design in New York. Mr. Plunkett moved to Paris in 1986 with his wife and creative partner Barbara Kuhr, where they developed the signage program for the Musée du Louvre, in conjunction with Carbon Smolan and the office of I. M. Pei.

In 1992, Plunkett + Kuhr helped found Wired magazine with partners Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe. As co-creative directors, Plunkett and Kuhr were responsible for the look and feel of Wired and its branding. Hailed by Newsweek as a “Rolling Stone for the Computer Generation,” Wired also was noted by William Safire in The New York Times for its “in-your-interface design.”

Currently, Plunkett + Kuhr works in four areas: architecture, branding, exhibits, and publications. Clients include the Carnegie Hall Museum and the Sundance Film Festival. Their book designs include Burning Man and Mind Grenades.

Plunkett + Kuhr’s work has been featured in Graphis, Communication Arts, I.D., and Eye magazines. An exhibition on the design of Wired opened at the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, in 1997. In 1998, Wired was selected by The New York Times as one of the fifty-one greatest designs of the twentieth century.