Drenttel, William

William Drenttel received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1977 with an Independent Concentration in Film and European Cultural Studies. From 1977-1985, Drenttel was a senior vice president at Saatchi & Saatchi . From 1985-1997, Drenttel was the president of Drenttel Doyle Partners . One of the leading design firms in America, the firm won over 300 design awards. Since 1997, William Drenttel has worked in partnership with Jessica Helfand at Winterhouse, a design consultancy focusing on editorial development and online media; cultural and educational institutions; and social innovation initiatives. In 2002, Drenttel co-founded Design Observer, a site of design news and cultural criticism; today, the site is a leading design publication with over a million site visits a month.

Drenttel is also co-editor of Below the Fold, a journal of visual culture published by Winterhouse; the founder of the Polling Place Photo Project, an online election documentation project run in collaboration with AIGA and The New York Times ; and a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management teaching design and innovation. As a publisher, Drenttel has created books under the Winterhouse imprint for Yale University Press, University of Chicago Press and Princeton Architectural Press . He has published literary works ( Susan Sontag, Thomas Bernhard, Paul Celan ); bibliographic works (catalogues for the Grolier Club ); public policy (National Security Strategy of the U.S.); history (Kafka and film, and the 1943 destruction of Hamburg); and art and design history ( Siri Hustvedt, Michael Bierut and Jessica Helfand ).