Faculty and staff

Trevor Embury is a second-generation Canadian settler, graphic designer, educator, researcher, and learner. He is Associate Professor in the Graphic and Digital Design Department at the University of the Fraser Valley; founding organizer and current co-organizer of Counterforms, a public lecture series. He has taught at OCAD University, University of Illinois Chicago, and Alberta University of the Arts and has presented work both nationally and internationally at a variety of academic and professional venues including OCAD University, Tokyo Design Week, Dubai Design Week, and the Chicago Art Book Fair. He holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Physical Geography from the University of Calgary and a Master of Design (MDes) in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois Chicago with the Basel Academy of Art and Design.

His practice engages both theoretical and practical modes of inquiry to develop a critical understanding of design not as a merely reactive or aesthetic discipline, but as a constitutive force in the shaping of human becoming. His work explores the technical milieu within which we are designed artificial—an architecture that increasingly reconfigures the conditions under which perception, memory, action, and desire are structured and experienced.

From 2009 to 2019, he co-founded and served as design director at aftermodern.lab, a Toronto-based visual communication studio that developed identities, publications, exhibitions, environmental graphics, and spatial installations for a wide range of cultural institutions, galleries, festivals, architects, and not-for-profit organizations.