Grace Spee’s design practice sits amongst the realms of design, animation, and computer science. She attempts to gamify her design process, pushed by her deep interests in video games as an artistic medium, digital living, kinetic typography, and virtual reality. Grace’s current design research focuses on the sense of self and identity in digital spaces, using design to question and explore how digital ways of living affect us culturally, socially, and psychologically. Before starting her career as a designer, Grace studied psychology and worked in several research laboratories, both as a researcher and a graduate therapist.
Grace’s work has been shown as part of the Video Game Art Gallery Online in Chicago and has been published in the International Journal of Visual Design. In 2021, she and her teammates presented their work OASIS: A Collaborative Virtual Reality Design Exhibition at the International Conference on Design Principles & Practices. Grace was on the Art Gallery Subcommittee for ACM SIGGRAPH 2022, the premier conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques. Recently, Grace’s design research has analyzed video games as vehicles of play, escapism, and creative typography. Grace has presented on the history and analysis of video game typography at TypeCon 2023, and showcased her class’s work on creative typography in augmented reality at TypeCon 2024.
In addition to her design research, Grace is the Assistant Director of Events and Communications for the School of Design. She also serves as Communications Chair for the Chicago Design Archives.
