Mary Y. Yang
Mary Y. Yang is a designer and educator based in Boston, MA. She is the founder of Open Rehearsal, a design studio that collaborates with cultural and educational clients on research and projects spanning brand identities, exhibition graphics, book design, environmental graphics, and editorial design. Her work has been recognized by Communication Arts and featured in AIGA, PRINT Magazine, Society of Typographic Arts, Design360°, and Hyperallergic. She has been named as one of Graphic Design USA’s 2026 People to Watch.
Yang is an Assistant Professor at Boston University, where she teaches in both the undergraduate and graduate Graphic Design programs. Her research and pedagogical approach examine how language can be used as a tool for multilingual exchange, co-building history, embodied learning, and cultivating spaces for collective knowledge. She is currently the 2025–2026 Artist-Writer-in-Residence at Johns Hopkins University’s University Writing Program. In addition to her role as an educator, Yang is the co-founder of Radical Characters, an educational and curatorial platform that researches and explores graphic design, typography, and culture through Hanzi (Chinese characters).
Yang holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in Communication Design from Washington University in St. Louis, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. She has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and lectured at the University of Washington. Previously, she has worked on the graphic and brand design team at Victoria’s Secret PINK (NYC), the University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA) and Studio Blue (Chicago, IL).
Workshop design, researchEmbodied Making As Collective Publishing: The Body and Hanzi
Collaborator: Chen Luo (Body&Forma)
WorkshopsBoston Art Book Fair, School of Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA, 2022–2024
Exhibition C-U-B-E Gallery
Curated by Moon Jang
Lamar Dodd School of Art
University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 2024
ZineBoston Art Book Fair, School of Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA, 2022–2024
In the permanent collection TL;DR Zine Archive (Aggie Toppins and Shreyas R. Krishnan), Washington University in St. Louis, Special Collections, St. Louis, MO
Exhibited at art book fairs including Tokyo Art Book Fair (Tokyo, Japan), UNBOUND RISD (Providence, RI), and Multiple Formats (Boston, MA)How can embodied making create a space for collective exchange and expression? What does collective publishing look like through collaborative labor in a shared space and time? What are ways that we can examine the boundaries between bodies and print, typography, and space, and the individual to the collective?
Embodied Making As Collective Publishing explored how embodied making can inform collective publishing. Participants explored the relationship between the body and Hanzi through a series of hands-on exercises to create collaborative, wearable posters. As participants practiced writing Hanzi at a large scale, each stroke and mark-making on the human-proportioned poster built up into a diverse exchange of language and forms.
Read about the exhibition
✸ Published in Slanted Magazine #44—Type Fashion and PLATES #2: Body Issue (RELATED DEPARTMENT/Page Bureau by Scarlett Meng)
✸ Exhibited in PLATES: The Politics of Layout, Ulises Project Space
✸ Solo-exhibted at C-U-B-E Gallery, University of Georgia