Kelly Kolar is Principal of Kolar Design, Inc., a Cincinnati-based visual communication and architectural graphic design firm that specializes in creating integrated environments. As principal designer, Kolar has guided the firm in a wide range of collaborative environmental design projects, such as the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the University of Cincinnati’s MainStreet District, and Procter & Gamble’s global headquarters. Her firm’s work is featured in several books, including Urban Identities, Designing & Planning Environmental Graphics, and City Signs.
Kolar is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, where she also serves as an adjunct professor as well as president of the alumni board. She has lectured nationally and internationally and her work has been reviewed in Print, Metropolis, Publish, the AIGA Annual, and Print Casebook. Kelly authored the foreword in Festival Graphics and recently contributed to Wayfinding: Designing and Implementing Graphic Navigational Systems. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
She is currently serving terms on the boards of the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) and the Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati.
