My design inspiration: April Greiman

Posted by James Chae on February 15, 2013 03:01 pm 6

Earlier this week we published an article on the deep, complex, beastly codebase buried within Photoshop. Paul Miller created a fantastic urban metaphor for this industry standard software that everyone loves and hates.

In early conversations with my fellow designer, Scott Kellum, the name April Greiman came up. We looked at each other, and immediately remembered our graphic design history classes. Specifically, we remembered her iconic design of the 1986 issue of Design Quarterly:

via idsgn.org

April Greiman has been a courageous and unique voice in the American graphic design world for years. She embraced deskop publishing software fully when it was threatening the lives of designers in the 80's. To me, she took the foundations of the International Style and propelled it forward with intelligence and post-modern gusto. Her work is layered and complex, but there is always order and consideration. She truly is a student of the legendary Swiss designers Armin Hoffman and Wolfgang Weingart.

Greiman has also been a very active educator. She helped build the Visual Communications program at CalArts. To this day one can't help but see her influence on the work coming out of the Valencia, CA campus (where Tim Burton used to creep around).

The 65 year old lady is still a working designer in Los Angeles today. She runs a studio called Made in Space and is a part of the eclectic design community.