Our home page banner was created by graphic artist Michael Samuel. Michael was born in Brooklyn NY in 1958 to David and Evelyn Samuel, two school principals. He has a younger brother Stephen.
Michael has always had an interest in art fostered by his parents. Evelyn made beautiful quilts and David was a former art teacher who studied with a famous artist and had artwork in the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the American Vi-sionary Art Museum of Baltimore. Stephen is an engineer whose company Design Visionaries consulted on the design of the Mars rover Perseverance.
Michael attended the University of Hartford in 1975 where he began designing logos, posters and illustrations. In 1980 he moved to Manhattan to study graph-ic design at the School of Visual Arts. In 1984, at the age of 26 Michael rented a studio on Union Square in Manhattan and started his own business Mike Samuel Graphics.
His first big job a month after he opened was the redesign of the Sears logo. Other high-profile logo jobs quickly followed including The History Channel, A&E Television, Advil, Nickelodeon, Scholastic, W Magazine, Hebrew Nation-al, Bristol Myers, Prudential, Audubon, Hillary Clinton for Senate, Hebrew National, VH-1, MTV News, Metropolitan Opera, Turner Network Television, Camelot Films, Weintraub Films, Tasti D-lite, 1010 WINS, Warner Audio, New York Chamber Symphony Orchestra, the American Go association and HAI (the Human Awareness Institute).
Michael is an AGA shodan who began playing Go at 40 at the Brooklyn Go Club. He ran the US Go Camp from 2003 to 2007, was the runner up Teacher of the Year in 2002, taught Go at The Asia Society, the UN School, the Rubin Museum of Art, The Manhattan Country School, and the Sakura Matsuri festi-val in Prospect Park. He designed the logos for the Go Congresses of 2007,2009, 2010, 2014, 2022, and 2023. Mike designed the books of Janice Kim's Learn to Play Go series and the cover of First Kyu.
Michael currently resides in Los Gatos CA, in the Silicon Valley where he de-signs logos, bicycle jerseys and teaches engineering CAD software to tech industry engineers and inner city students.