UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jon Key, co-founder of the Brooklyn-based design studio Morcos Key who was featured in Forbes magazine’s “30 under 30 Art and Style” list in 2020, will join the Stuckeman School at Penn State remotely via WPSU at 6 p.m. on Jan. 19 as part of the school’s Lecture and Exhibit Series.

Titled “Designing to Amplify,” Key’s talk will discuss using design and art as a means to amplify and empower communities with a focus on queer and transgender communities of color. The event is co-hosted by the Department of Graphic Design.

Morcos Key, which Key co-founded with Wael Morcos, collaborates with arts and cultural institutions, nonprofit organizations and commercial enterprises in North America and the Middle East to translate its clients’ stories into “visual systems that demonstrate how thoughtful conversation and formal expression make for impactful design.” Services offered by the firm include branding and visual identity, art direction, editorial design, signage and wayfinding, exhibition design, photography and Latin and Arabic type design.

After receiving his bachelor of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, Key began his design career at Grey Advertising in New York City. He then moved on and ascended the design ranks to work with HBO, Nickelodeon and The Public Theater.

Key’s work has been featured in the Jeffery Deitch Gallery in New York City, the Armory Show, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic.

He also is the co-founder and design director of Codify Art, a multidisciplinary collective dedicated to creating, producing, supporting and showcasing work by artists of color, particularly women, queer and transgender artists of color.

As an educator, Key has taught at the Maryland Institute of Art and Parsons School of Design. He currently teaches at The Cooper Union where he was named the Frank Staton Chair in Graphic Design in 2018-19.