Product Design adjunct professor creates coats for cancer doctors

One of the coats that Larry Murphy designed for his cancer care team.

Larry “Murf” Murphy, Product Design adjunct professor at MIAD, has a unique way of thanking his cancer care team. Each year since 2018, on the anniversary of his surgery, Murf creates designs on lab coats for his doctors. “I iron the jacket, and then I just start and whatever happens, happens,” said Murf in an interview with Fox 6. 

In addition to teaching Product Design classes at MIAD, Murf worked as Chief Designer for GE Healthcare. Creating works of art using a lab coat, magic markers and colored pencils for his care team is a “therapeutic giveback” for him. “It allows me to get the situation, get the experience, sort of out of my head through my hands onto a canvas which happens to be a coat. And I get to move away and move ahead,” he says.

Murf presented this year’s coat to radiation oncologist Dr. William Hall at Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Hall says he will display the coat in his office. Murf has no plans to slow down and hopes to create 100 more coats. “All they need to do is keep me alive, and I’ll keep drawing,” he says. Read the full interview with Fox 6.