Reynold Ruffins

Reynold Dash Ruffins (August 5, 1930 An illustrator of more than twenty children's books, He has had many solo exhibitions and been part of group show exhibitions at Paris' Musée du Louvre, and in Milan, Bologna, and Tokyo.

Biography Ruffins attended the High School of Music & Art in New York City and Cooper Union. While a student at Cooper Union he co-founded Design Plus with Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser, and Edward Sorel. It was a short-lived venture. After graduation the collaborative partnership evolved and in 1954, he co-founded Push Pin Studios with fellow Cooper graduates Glaser, Sorel, and Chwast. In 1963, after leaving Push Pin, Ruffins co-founded another design studio with Simms Taback, a partnership which lasted for more than thirty years. Commercial clients included IBM, AT&T, Coca-Cola, CBS, Pfizer, the New York Times, Time Life, Fortune, Gourmet Magazine, and the U.S. Post Office.

Ruffins entered the field of children's book illustration in 1969, and throughout the 1970s and early 1980s he frequently collaborated with writer Jane Sarnoff. He lived in Sag Harbor, New York; his wife Joan died in 2013.

Teaching A professor emeritus at CUNY's Queens College, Ruffins has also taught at the School of Visual Arts, Parsons The New School for Design, and was a visiting adjunct professor at Syracuse University.

Awards Ruffins was the recipient of the Augustus St. Gaudens Award (presented by Cooper Union) for outstanding professional achievement in the arts. The Cooper Union Presidential Citation was also presented to Ruffins for his work and prominence in his profession. Ruffins' work led to awards from the New York Art Directors Club and a Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators. Ruffins won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award in 1997 for the book Running the Road to ABC (written by Denize Lauture). His illustrations for the Haitian author earned Mr. Ruffins international honors.