William Drenttel is a partner, with Jessica Helfand, in Winterhouse, a design studio in Northwest Connecticut. Their work focuses on publishing and editorial development; new media; and cultural, educational and literary institutions. Recent clients include The Poetry Foundation, Nextbook, New England Journal of Medicine, the U.S. State Department, Errol Morris, Norman Rockwell Museum, Yale Law School, New York University School of Journalism, University of Chicago Press and the National Design Awards. In recent years, they have also worked with Netscape, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Miavita, Lingua Franca, Newsweek, Champion Paper, News International, and Teach for America.

Drenttel also has an ongoing management role, serving as creative director, in two of the largest literary foundations in America — The Poetry Foundation in Chicago and Nextbook in New York City. Drenttel is the publisher of Winterhouse Editions, publishing design criticism and literary works by writers including Susan Sontag, Leon Wieseltier, Jessica Helfand, Paul Auster, James Salter, Thomas Bernhard, Paul Celan and Franz Kafka, among others. Winterhouse Editions are distributed by the University of Chicago Press, Princeton Architectural Press and Small Press Distribution.

From 1985–1996, he was a partner at Drenttel Doyle Partners in New York City. Selected clients and projects include: editorial design of numerous magazines, including Spy, The New Republic, and Inc.; strategic consulting and large design programs for companies such as Champion International, Springs Industries and Hewitt Associates; the overall graphic identity, and program and exhibition design for the World Financial Center; a new identity program and exhibition design for the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; a new graphic identity and publications program for Princeton University; and exhibition and store design at Grand Central Station. Among its over 300 awards, Drenttel Doyle Partners was named to the I.D. 40 list of design innovators in 1994.

Drenttel has been a co-editor of three of the Looking Closer anthologies of critical writings on design published by Allworth Press. He is president emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, a trustee of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities at NYU. He has lectured at two AIGA National Biennial Conferences, the Library of Congress, Walker Art Center, the Annenberg School of Public Policy, and San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. He received a B.A. in European Cultural Studies from Princeton University.

Jessica Helfand is partner with William Drenttel in Jessica Helfand | William Drenttel, a design consultancy in New York that concentrates on editorial design and the development of new models for old and new media. Clients include Newsweek, Business Week, Lingua Franca, America OnLine and Champion International Corporation. Helfand is also media columnist for Eye magazine and a contributing editor of I.D. Her book, Six (+2) Essays on Design and New Media was published in 1995 by William Drenttel New York. She is visiting lecturer in graphic design at Yale University School of Art and adjunct professor at New York University’s graduate program in Interactive Telecommunications, and has lectured at The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Columbia University School of Jounalism and the Netherlands Design Institute, among others. She holds a B.A. and a M.F.A. in graphic design from Yale University.

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