Zach Scheinfeld is a multidisciplinary designer, artist, and creative programmer from New Rochelle, NY. He's interested in pushing the boundaries of digital experiences and using the browser as a generative tool to build a more creative, fun, and thoughtful internet. In 2016, Zach earned his BA in Studio Art and Mathematics from Wesleyan University, and in 2023, graduated with an MFA in Graphic Design from RISD.

Zach is currently working as a designer at Pentagram for team Giorgia Lupi in New York City and teaching Interaction Design at Parsons. He's also worked with agencies like Studio Rodrigo, Prophet, and Work & Co. You can reach him at zscheinf@gmail.com.
book
publication
typography
identity
print
motion
web
data
interface
interaction
3d
installation
network
game
product
sculpture
mobile
UX
projection
generative
tool
printmaking
fabrication
photography
Radical Modernism
2021
Radical Modernism is a mini publication that showcases the work of American designer Dan Friedman (1945-1995), and Italian architecture firm Superstudio (1960s). The book explores Friedman’s idea of “working outside of the margins.” I wrote a small introduction essay that is included throughout the project documentation below.
book
publication
typography
Albula Railway
2021
A rebranding of the Swiss railroad and UNESCO World Heritage site famous for swirling viaducts and elongated tunnels that allow for transportation across the Alps.
identity
print
typography
publication
MFA Identity
2023
An Identity for the 2023 RISD grad show, where my collaborator Serena Ho and I highlighted the wide range of work, thoughts, and lived experiences among the graduating grad class. We asked our classmates to complete a survey that included questions like: “What tools are you working with?”, “What have you been thinking about?” and “What are you reading?”, and used this content to create an interactive homepage that users can click through to explore the responses. The print identity and motion poster are an extension of the wide range of experiences and ideas that came through in the answers.
identity
print
typography
motion
web
data
Inbox Interpreter
2022
Inbox interpreter is a network of websites that re-designs the interface of a typical email inbox. The system takes content that is usually anxiety inducing, and transforms it into a whimsical interface consisting of five websites spanning across ten monitors. Each phase of the network highlights a fragment of my inbox, and produces an animation or click interaction that recontextualizes the email’s language. The work was installed as a physical installation in the form of a circle, giving users the opportunity to take a slow walk around my email.
interface
interaction
3d
web
motion
installation
Language Time
2022
Language Time is a collaborative compendium created by masters students in Digital + Media at the Rhode Island School of Design about their studio practices. The book uses a color coding system to create a unique section for each artist, but also reflects the synergetic nature of the work in moments like the RISO printed gradient shown on the cover. The project was commisioned through the course 'Critical Theory + Artistic Research in Context at RISD (Spring 2022)
book
publication
typography
print
Field Guide to the Providence River
2022
Field guide to the Providence River is a collection of found objects and printed ephemera that archives the river as a meeting point between land, water, nature and people. The project asks questions about the significance of an urban beach and the interplay between the remaining pieces of a once thriving and essential marshland.
print
publication
book
data
System for a System
2021
System for a System is a living database of terms, influences, historical references, ideas and projects related to my graduate thesis research. The site uses a data visualization library to create a flexible network that can be manipulated and reshuffled to tell the story of my research in a flexible and non-linear way.
interface
interaction
web
motion
network
Input Output
2023
Masters thesis book in graphic design made at RISD documenting a series of projects I made in grad school. The book, called 'Input/Output', emphasizes the processes and systems that create engagement, narrative, and meaning in graphic design as opposed to singular inputs and outputs.
print
book
Falling Elements
2022
Falling Elements is a version of a falling sand game, a genre of computer games that contains components for users to create unique simulated environments. Each element has its own action that comes from a simple rule. For instance, sand will travel down or diagonal. Water goes down, diagonal, or side to side. By providing a toolkit of simple behaviors, the game allows for users to create complex and unexpected simulations, providing the opportunity to not only act as a player, but also a game maker and storyteller.
interface
interaction
web
motion
game
Tokyo Olympics
2021
I created a poster to make sense of the chaotic and unorganized daily schedule for athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. To make the information clear and accessible for athletes, I used the familiar track-like oval form as a structure to center the most important information: the event time and travel distance from the Olympic Village.
print
data
typography
Variational
2023
Brand identity, motion design, website, and product design for Variational, a crypto trading platform backed by Coinbase and other top VC firms. This work was made in collaboration with Studio Rodrigo and Cold Cuts under the creative direction of Ritik Dholakia.
identity
web
product
motion
Crank to Scroll
2021
Scroll Crank is a speculative design project that transforms the passive action of scrolling with a typical computer mouse wheel into a more active and mindful experience. In gripping the device base, turning the crank, and hearing the clunky gears churn, the user’s attention is directed back to their own body while using a tool that typically has a dissociating, disembodying effect.
interface
interaction
3d
web
Drawing Programs
2024
Ongoing series of interactive creative coding sketches made with P5.js, Jquery, and a combination of animation software including Cinema 4d and After Effects.
interface
interaction
3d
web
Block Party
2022
Block party is a module typeface inspired by Giulio da Milano’s 1933 typeface Fregio Mecano. The original typeface was a kit of letterpress components that could be combined to create countless iterations of each letterform. In this revival, I extrude the forms into three dimensional blocks that designers can play, manipulate, and create with. The kit comes with blocks made out of varying materials meant to be combined and experimented on.
3d
typography
interaction
sculpture
Fora
2021
Along with the team at Studio Rodrigo in Brooklyn, NY, I designed a minimum viable product for Fora Travel, a startup that connects travel entrepreneurs with clients. The design intentionally invokes Fora’s proactively inclusive, data-driven platform, highlighting the luxury nature of their business, while still coming across as accessible.
web
interface
mobile
product
UX
identity
Spiral Flight
2021
Degrees of Uncertainty is a collaborative public art project with University of Rhode Island climate scientist Basia Marcks that visualizes the natural rhythm of Earth’s climate in the form of immersive projection installations. Our work takes time series data based on marine sediments and translates parameters like temperature and rate of climate change into visual qualities like color and movement. We started the project through the Vis-A-Thon program organized by the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab at RISD, and have continued with the support of the National Science Foundation through the Collaborative Visualization Grant.
projection
interaction
generative
data
installation
Extra Special Day
2024
June 2nd was an extra special day, when I got married surrounded by friends, family, and loved ones. It was especially meaningful to design colorful collateral, signage, a website, party favors, and more to mark the occasion.
print
identity
typography
web
Spirograph Retooling
2021
Spirograph animator is a re-tooling of the original Spirograph toy from 1965. The project reimagines the drawing toy as a generative tool for animation, combining frames from various spirograph settings into patterns of movement that present the unique geometric forms in a new light. In the spirit of the original Spirograph, the animator allows for experimentation and discovery in the form of a playful web-based interface.
web
tool
generative
motion
interaction
interface
Mainfactor
2022
Along with the team at Studio Rodrigo in Brooklyn, NY, I designed a marketing splash page for Mainfactor, an e-commerce business. The goal for the site is to emphasize Mainfactor’s unique capabilities with a bold, creative design that mirrors their position as an industry disruptor.
web
interface
mobile
product
UX
Poster Practice
2022
An archive of daily poster creations made over a two week period in Spring 2022. Each poster was designed following a set of randomly combined rules for generating content, aesthetic style, and composition. I packaged the results in a publication, highlighting the breadth of formal studies through a range of page sizes, printing methods, and materials.
printmaking
publication
print
Pixel Land
2021
A variable typeface that explores the possibility of conveying depth through letterforms. The project culminated in a web-based type specimen that uses the rotating letterforms as characters in an illustrated retelling of Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland.
interface
interaction
3d
web
motion
Daylight Savings
2022
Poster specimen for a modified open-source typeface using a custom alternate character set to announce daylight savings in Rhode Island. Each poster was hand-pulled screen printed on paper.
print
printmaking
Screen Protector
2022
Screen protector takes inspiration from visual filters native to common design software. These filters, including the Gaussian blur and Perlin noise, are meant to emulate nature but are often derived from mathematical thinking. As a response, screen protector attempts to create a series of organic lenses that allows a user to observe the properties of light refracting through warped, transparent surfaces. This work offers a possible alternative to computer generated graphics as they are typically created and experienced.
3d
interaction
interface
Wonderfully Creepy
2020
New media are so powerful because they mess with the distinction between publicity and privacy, gossip and political speech, surveillance and entertainment, intimacy and work, hype and reality. New media are wonderfully creepy. They are endlessly fascinating yet boring, addictive yet revolting, banal yet revolutionary.`These dichotomies, described in the introduction of Updating to Remain the Same by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, inspired my project, Wonderfully Creepy: Notes From Two Star-Crossed Corners of the Internet. The project is a collection of essays and artworks in conversation with Chun’s analysis of new media.
book
print
typography
publication
down, where they walk
2021
'down where they walk', my senior thesis project in printmaking at Wesleyan, employs wood-block printing and etching techniques to form compositions of various landscape elements and textures, exploring themes around human interaction with nature and isolation. The work includes ten prints at 48”x24”. It also features a large-scale installation that immerses the viewer in a horizon-line formed by ten hanging rolls of paper, some up to 20-feet long, drawing a playful correlation between gallery-goers and the tiny figures in the prints.
print
printmaking
break;
2022
Break; is a publication about the idea of the loop: a repeated set of instructions for a computer to execute. Like a loop, the publication itself builds up overtime through the layering of images and content. At the end of the cycle, the book offers the reader an opportunity to break out of the loop by expanding into a poster.
book
publication
typography
interaction
print
Stereocard Plates
2021
Stereocard Plates uses stereocards from the Providence Public Library Special Collections as source materials to experiment combining antiquated photographic technology with contemporary computer vision and digital fabrication equipment. In filtering 19th century imagery through modern scanners, image stitching algorithms, UV printers, pen plotters, and laser engravers, the plates contain traces of technology from various industrial eras, referencing the rapid evolution society has experieced in capturing and archiving imagery over the past 200 years.
fabrication
photography
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