FEMALE

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
 APRIL
GREIMAN
Born in 1948, April Grieman is an American designer who
is widely recognized as being one of the first designers
to embrace computer technology as a design tool. She
grew up in New York City as the daughter of an early
computer programmer/systems analyst. She studied at
Kansas City Art Institute and then went on to work as a
freelance designer. She worked closely with the curator
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City before
moving to Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, Grieman directed her first design studio,

April Grieman Inc. from 1987-2004. This is where she
established her multi-disciplinary approach of blending
technology, science, words, and images with color and
space. In 2005, she opened Made In Space which is her
current design consulting firm in LA.

Griemen prefers to be called a transmedia artist because

she thinks the term graphic designer is too limiting. Her
style is type layering in which groups of letterforms are
sandwiched and layered but also often float in space along
with shapes, photos, and color swatches. An integral part
of her digital art was the exploitation of pixelization and
other digitization errors. Her work is considered to be a
bridge between modern and postmodern art.
MURIEL
COOPER
Muriel Cooper was born in 1925 in a suburb of Boston,
Massachusetts. She Received her Bachelor of Arts and
Bachelor of Fine Arts in design from The Ohio State University
in 1944 and 1948, respectively. After her death in 1994,
The New York Times called her “the design heroine you’ve
probably never heard of.”

Cooper went on to receiver her Bachelor of Science in

Education from Massachusetts College of Art. She later went
on to be a freelance designer at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology Office of Publications, which became the MIT
Press. Cooper, along with other designers, were influential in
bringing modern Swiss-style typography to the MIT Press.

In her time at MIT, Cooper was fascinated with developing

digital technology and became influential in introducing
computers to MIT Press design. Cooper founded MIT’s
Visible Language Workshop where she taught interactive
media design. She was recognized as a pioneer in designing
and changing the landscape of electronic communication.
She summarized her career by saying she’s always been
concerned “More with change and technology and their
meanings to human communication than with rigorous
graphic design theory and style.”
CIPE
PINELES
Born in 1908 Vienna, Cipe Pineles was a graphic designer
and art director who immigrated to the United States with
her family at age 13. She faced many barriers to entering
the workforce due to sexism and had to work her way up.
In 1932, Pineles became the assistant to the art director of
Condé Nast Publications where she was given the freedom
and independence to design many projects on her own.

In 1942, Pineles became the first female art director of a

major magazine when she started as the art director for
Glamour Magazine. She worked for Vogue, Seventeen
Magazine, Charm Magazine, and Mademoiselle. Pineles
started the art and illustration program that Seventeen
Magazine would become known for, even contracting artists
like Andy Warhol to do illustrations.

Pineles was credited with being the first person to bring

fine arts into mainstream media. She described her work
to Glamour Magazine saying, “You might say we tried to
convey the attractiveness of reality, as opposed to the glitter
of a never-never land.” She wrote and illustrated a book of
Eastern European Jewish recipes, which were mostly passed
down by her mother, that was published after her death as a
sort of autobiography.
K AT H E R I N E
M c C OY
Born in Illinois in 1945, Katherine McCoy is an
American graphic designer and educator best
known for her work as the co-chair of the graduate
Design program at Cranbrook Academy of Art. She
attended Michigan State University, initially studying
Interior Design before switching to Industrial Design.

McCoy entered the workforce at Unimark

International, a design firm led by Massimo Vignelli
as well as other leading American Modernist Graphic
Designers. Later she joined Omnigraphics design
firm where she collaborated with Muriel Cooper
in the early days of the MIT Press. In 1971, she
founded McCoy & McCoy Inc with her husband and
fellow industrial designer, Michael McCoy.

In 1991, the McCoys alongside a team of students,

produced the book Cranbrook Design: The New
Discourse which documented the work produced
in the Cranbrook Studios during the 80s. Their
work was more focused on being a highly creative
interpretation of theory and often took precedence
without regard to the “needs of the profession.”
DEBORAH
E V E LY N
SUSSMAN
Deborah Evelyn Sussman is an American designer and
pioneer in the field of environmental graphic design.
She was born in 1931 to a skilled commercial artist
which inspired her to study painting at Bard College. She
earned a degree in graphic design from the Institute of
Design in Chicago in 1959 and a Doctorate of Humane
Letters from Bard College in 1998.

Sussman began her career as an office designer in 1953

before eventually moving on to open her own practice
in 1968. Deborah and her husband, Paul Prejza formed
their own firm in 1980 where they worked on “urban
branding” projects for the cities of Philadelphia and
Santa Monica.

Best known for her bold and colorful work which featured
the integration of typography in an environmental
landscape, Sussman designed the logo for the 1984
Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She also contributed
to designs for the Seattle Opera, McCaw Hall, the
Wayfinding systems for Walt Disney Resorts, and the
identity of the Cleveland Cavaliers. In 2014, Sussman
lost her battle with breast cancer at the age of 83.
PA U L A
SCHER
Paula Scher is an American graphic designer,
painter, and art educator in design who was born in
1948 in Washington, DC. She earned her Bachelor
of Fine Arts in 1970 from the Tyler School of Art
before moving to New York City to work as a layout
artist for Random House’s children’s book division.

In 1972, Scher was hired by CBS Records in their

advertising department. After two years, she
became the art director of Atlantic Records where
she designed her first album cover. She remained
at Atlantic Records for only a year before returning
to CBS Records as an art director for the cover
department. In her eight years at CBS Records,
Scher designed 150 album covers a year for some
of the most iconic albums.

Now, Scher is a partner in the New York Office

of Pentagram where she has developed identity
branding systems for Microsoft, Adobe, Tiffany &
Co, the MoMA, Coca-Cola, and many other clients.
She is best known for straddling the line between
pop culture and fine arts in her work.
RUTH
ANSEL
Born in New York City in 1938, Ruth Ansel is an
American graphic designer. She earned a degree
in Fine Arts from Alfred University in 1957 before
beginning her career at Columbia Records.

In 1961, Ansel began working in the Art Department

at Harper’s Bazaar where she developed a critical
eye to be able to create tension on the page. She
soon became the co-art director at Harper’s Bazaar
alongside Bea Feitler. Her work pushed boundaries,
defined eras, and became iconic. She quickly began
collaborating with famous artists and photographers
like Andy Warhol, Guy Bourdin, Hiro, and Richard
Avedon (who produced her “genius”).

In the 1970s and 80s, Ruth Ansel became the first

female art director of The New York Times Magazine,
House & Garden, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. In 1992,
Ansel opened her own design studio where she
continues to produce groundbreaking work. Recently,
she won The Art Directors Club AIGA Medal in 2016.
LUCILLE
TENAZAS
Lucille Tenazas is an American graphic designer and
educator who was born in 1953 in the Philippines and
raised in Manila. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts
from the College of the Holy Spirit in Manila. She pursued
a postgraduate degree at the California College of Arts
and Crafts before transferring to the Cranbrook Academy
of Art where she earned an MFA in 2-D design under the
guidance of Katherine McCoy.

In 1985, Tenazas moved back to San Francisco to teach

at the California College of Arts and Crafts and founded
her practice, Tenazas Design. She founded the graphic
design MFA program at CCA which would allow students
to develop their ideas through self-discovery.

Tenazas was awarded the National Design Award in

Communications Design in 2002, as well as the AIGA Medal
in 2013 for “her prominent role in translating postmodern
ideas into critical design practice; her exploration of the
relationship between type, photography and language;
and the development and leadership of highly-respected
design education programs—always with exquisite
execution.” Now, she is a professor and Associate Dean of
the School of Art, Media, and Technology at the Parsons
School of Design in New York.
BARBARA
STAUFFACHER
SOLOMON
Born in California in 1928, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon
is an American graphic designer and landscape architect.
She is known for her large-scale interior Supergraphics,
which were highly influential in the 1960s and 70s, as
well as her exterior signage at Sea Ranch in California.

Stauffacher Solomon moved to Basel, Switzerland in 1956

following the death of her first husband to study graphic
design at the Basel Art Institute. In 1969 she married
Daniel Solomon, and has since showed at exhibitions
with her daughter, Nellie King Solomon. Stauffacher
Solomon later went back to school the University of
California, Berkley where she graduated with a degree in
Architecture in 1981.

In 1968, Stauffacher Solomon designed iconic

architectural scale paintings for the building interiors
at Sea Ranch. This is where she began expanded her
focus from her vocabulary of signage to create motion
and special awareness. She combined Swiss design with
California Impressionalism to create the logo for Sea
Ranch. Later Stauffacher Solomon went on to write an
autobiography which she named “Why? Why not?” which
was published in 2013.
NANCY
S KO L O S
American graphic designer, author, educator, and co-
founder of Skolos-Wedell studio, Nancy Skolos, was
born in 1955. She is best known for her work at Rhode
Island School of Design (RISD), where she is the head
of the graphic design department.

Skolos initially studied industrial design at the University

of Cincinnati before transferring to Cranbrook
Academy of Art where she completed her Bachelor of
Fine Arts degree in Design in 1977. Solos met her now
husband, photographer Thomas Wedell in 1975 and
married him in 1979. She went on to graduate with an
MFA in Design from Yale University in 1979.

In 1980 Nancy Skolos and her husband Thomas Wedell

opened their studio with a third partner who eventually
left. The studio’s primary format is the poster after
experimentation in a variety of formats early on. The
studio has received many accolades and awards and
has produced work that is included in the graphic
design collections of the MoMA, the Israel Museum,
and the Museum of Design in Zurich. Today, Skolos
remains a professor at RISD.
Hannah Froimson
Typography I
Fall 2021
The Corcoran School
of Art and Design
George Washington
University
Instructor: Hyung Park