Raeann Van Zee

Raeann Van Zee is a designer, printmaker, and a passionate design educator. In addition to teaching in the Art + Design department, she coordinates the Seerveld Gallery and the Seerveld Gallery Lecture Series, which invites a number of professional artists to campus each year.

Raeann’s design work considers value, forms of labor and currency, language, the intersection of physical and visual expriences, and the activity of self-publishing. Raeann publishes artist books and other printed matter via the micro-press BOVINE, distributing them in independent bookstores and at art book fairs across the country. She would call the work of creating publications a sort of poetic knowledge construction, and is interested in the altered relationship between designer and work when they are involved in all stages of production.

Raeann is an alum of Trinity’s Art + Design department, where she received her BFA in graphic design. She earned her master’s degree in graphic design at the School of Design at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her publication work has been featured in the LA Printed Matter Art Book Fair, San Francisco Art Book Fair, the Detroit Art Book Fair, among others. She is an avid participant in design and printing communities in Chicago, including the Chicago Printer’s Guild, of which she is an active member. In 2022 she was awarded a fellowship at UIC where she completed her MDes program, and in 2025 was awarded an artist residency at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

Her teaching practice encompasses a wide range of classes, but is especially focused on the areas of typography and 2D Form. As an educator and practitioner she is interested in using writing and research as design tools, and investigating design’s value assignments as well as its social implications. Raeann also maintains that the simple joy of composition is a neverending thrill that she is lucky to instill in and to experience anew through the journey of her students. She urges students to seek out meaningful processes, to ground their practice in care and curiosity for the world, to communicate thoughtfully and intentionally, and to consider the sacred gift of creative activity — possessing the profound urge to create — that is inherent in humans.

Link to design site: https://raeann-vanzee.com/
Link to publishing site: https://bovinepress.com/