Faculty & Staff

B.F.A. Graphic Design, Fort Hays State University

M.F.A. Visual Communications, Kansas State University

Professor of Art, Rusty Nelson served as Art Department Chair at Truman State University for nine years relinquishing that role in 2016. Nelson has taught Visual Communications at Truman for twenty-one years. Prior to higher education, Nelson worked professionally in advertising for fifteen years in Topeka, Kansas City, and Salina, Kansas. His career encompasses multiple areas of experience from advertising and publication design, corporate identity, outdoor billboard and signage design, book design and traditional and digital illustration.  Nelson’s illustrations have been published in regional and national publications such as Field and Stream, Discipleship Journal and Mature Living. Related areas of interest include micro-publishing and bookbinding as well as mural design and production. Technical areas of experience include traditional paste-up, marker comps, type specifying, pre-press offset lithography production as well as digital applications of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver.