Ozubko retired in June 2020.
Christopher Ozubko joined the Design faculty in 1981. In addition to his academic training, he worked two years as a typography technician at University of Alberta after completing his BFA degree. He served as Director of the School of Art + Art History + Design from 1996 to 2014.
Ozubko’s areas of interest are in typography, design history, and international design education. He is developing collaborations with European and Asian design institutions to promote student and faculty exchange and has received numerous grants for international lectures, workshops, and seminars at the University. Together with his colleagues in Design, he has conducted ten summer workshops for Japanese design students and participated in a lecture and design program in collaboration with Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Ozubko was one of ten international educator/designers that led a week-long workshop at the ‘ICOGRADA Design Week’ in Hong Kong during January 2006. In November 2007, he traveled to China and lectured at three major universities and was the keynote speaker for graphic design at the Shenzen International Design Conference. In 2010, Ozubko led a Higher Education Press design workshop in Beijing. He has also arranged for collaborative design projects with Southeast University in Nanjing, China. Since 2005, he has offered a five-week seminar in Rome, Italy, for Design students during early autumn that combines photography, history, design, epigraphy, traditional craft, and industrial technology. Twice he has been nominated for UW teaching awards.
In addition to teaching and administration, Ozubko established his own atelier, Studio Ozubko, where he works with clients ranging from nonprofit arts organizations to corporations and institutions. Ozubko has garnered over one hundred regional, national, and international design awards. His poster designs are in the collections of the Lahti Museum of Poster Art, Finland; George Pompidou Museum, Paris; the US Library of Congress; Museum of Applied Art, Helsinki; National Gallery for Foreign Art, Sofia, Bulgaria; Les Silos/Maison du Livre et de l’Affiche Chaumont, France; Dansk Plakatmuseum, Arhus, Denmark; Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Amman, Jordan; and IPT Toyama, Japan. His professional work has been published in Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Taiwan, and the USA. His design work can be found in Print Casebooks, Novum Gebrauchsgraphik, Graphis Posters, World Graphic Design Now, ID magazine, IDEA magazine, and EYE magazine. He has made presentations of his design work in Canada, Great Britain, Switzerland, and China. Ozubko has received design awards that include AIGA Book Show, American Center for Design, Halo, Art Directors of Los Angeles, New York Type Directors Club and The Art Museum of America.
Ozubko is a member of the Association Typographique Internationale, A.Typ.I, and is past president of the Seattle Chapter of AIGA, American Institute of Graphic Arts. He was selected for the Swiss publication of Who’s Who in Graphic Design which showcases the work and contributions of international designers. In autumn 2002 he was recognized as an AIGA Fellow, one of 10 national awards of distinction for significant contribution to raising the standards of excellence in practice and conduct within the design community. As Education Chair of the international design conference ‘Seattle ICOGRADA Design Week’ in 2006, he was responsible for organizing and supervising the successful student workshop that addressed the ‘United Nations Millennium Development Goals.'
