Lorraine Wild
Encyclopedia
Biography
Lorraine Wild was born in Ontario, Canada, but has lived in America for a greater part of her life. She is a world-famous graphic designer, published writer, art historian, and art instructor of design. In 1973, she entered the Cranbrook Academy of Art program which was, at the time, under the leadership of Michael and Katherine McCoyKatherine McCoy
Katherine McCoy is an American graphic designer and educator, best known for her work as the co-chair of the graduate Design program for Cranbrook Academy of Art....
. In 1975, she received her BFA. Two years later, she moved to New York to work for Vignelli Associates from 1977-1978. During this time, she was researching the history of American graphic design post World War II. This personal interest of research led her to further studying at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
where she earned an MFA degree in 1982. While at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, she designed Perspecta 19, which was Yale’s architectural journal. Along with Perspecta 19, she also designed the Chamber Works and Theatrum Mundi portfolios for the architect Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind, is an American architect, artist, and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect...
, and the book of architect John Hejduk
John Hejduk
John Quentin Hejduk , was an American architect, artist and educator who spent much of his life in New York City, USA...
entitled Mask of Medusa in 1985. Her work on the designs of these books helped launch her fast-growing reputation for thoughtful and distinctive design in books on architecture, art, and design. Her MFA thesis entitled "Trends in American Graphic Design: 1930-1955" was recognized as an important contribution to design scholarship and led to many commissions for essays. During the early 1980s, she taught in the University of Houston’s architecture school. In 1983, she wrote "More Than A Few Questions About Graphic Design Education," which was regarded as a very influential essay. It was first published in The Design Journal. In the article, she gives a provocative analysis which became the driving force for recharacterizing graphic design education in the United States. From here on, her reputation continued to soar and her work earned national recognition.
Design Career in the '80s
By 1985, she became the program director of graphic design at the California Institute of Arts (Cal Arts). During her time as director, she developed and implemented a new model for graphic design education that emphasized the process of conveying meaning through experimental, conceptual, and formal development. The program challenged modernist graphic design methodology by encouraging students to use personal and emotional experiences to their work. In 1988, Liz McQuiston selected Lorraine Wild as one of forty-three women in six countries whose work is innovative or has had significant impact in their chosen fields of design. The other American graphic designers included Jacqueline Casey, Muriel CooperMuriel Cooper
Muriel Cooper was a digital designer, business woman, researcher, and educator.Cooper received her BA from Ohio State in 1944, and a BFA in Design and a BS in Education from Massachusetts College of Art. After her graduation, Cooper moved to New York City and attempted to find a position in...
, June Fraser, April Greiman
April Greiman
April Greiman is a contemporary designer. "Recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool, Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with establishing the ‘New Wave’ design style in the US during the late 70s and early...
, Katherine McCoy
Katherine McCoy
Katherine McCoy is an American graphic designer and educator, best known for her work as the co-chair of the graduate Design program for Cranbrook Academy of Art....
.She continued to stay on the Cal Arts faculty after she stepped down as program director in 1991.
Design Career in the '90s
From 1991-1998, she served as project tutor at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, Netherlands. Lorraine Wild was one of the founders of the design office ReVerb, which was the recipient of the 1995 Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. She left ReVerb in 1996 to start her own company- Lorraine Wild Design. As a side project, she partnered with Roman Alonso and Lisa Eisner in 1999 to establish Greybull Press. Greybull Press was an imprint specializing in the publication of photographic archives and collections that were considered potentially influential to tastemakers. Lorraine Wild Design was later renamed the Green Dragon Office in 2004. The Green Dragon Office focused on collaborations with architects, artists, curators, and publishers in the United States and abroad. In 1998, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held the exhibition "Lorraine Wild: Selections from the Permanent Collection," a display of work that the Museum regards as their collection of significant design produced in California.Design Career in the Millenium
In 2005, she became a regular contributor to Design Observer, the leading website on design commentary and criticism. She has also served on the National Board of the AIGA and on the design advisory board for the international Design Conference at Aspen, Colorado. She loves the works of designers W.A. Dwiggins, who reinvented American typography by bringing arts-and-crafts values to design for machine production; Alvin LustigAlvin Lustig
Alvin Lustig was an American graphic designer and typeface designer. He studied at Los Angeles City College, Art Center, and independently with Frank Lloyd Wright and Jean Charlot. He began designing for books in 1937. In 1944 he became Director of Visual Research for Look Magazine. He also...
, an architect, printer, educator, who refused to specialize; Imre Reiner, an anti-Modernist typographer in Switzerland who rebelled against “objectivity”; Sister Corita Ken, a Southern California nun and printmaker who, in the 1960s, seized upon the idea of using the language of pop culture to speak to her local audience about spirituality, subverting, and appropriating to communicate; and Edward Fella, who mutated out of “commercial art” by working on problems only as he defined them and his commitment to anti-mastery.
"Her thoroughly informed and deeply sympathetic understanding of the nature of art and design has brought her commissions for monographs on artists and architects as far-ranging as Mike Kelley and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
, as well as books and exhibition catalogues for institutions such as Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, Museum of Contemporary Art
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
in Los Angeles, The Getty Museum, UCLA's Hammer Museum, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture
Canadian Centre for Architecture
The Canadian Centre for Architecture is a museum of architecture and research centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Phyllis Lambert is the Founding Director and Chair of the Board of Trustees, and Mirko Zardini is the Director and Chief Curator....
, Montréal." Her visual work has been formed around a passion for typographic detail and formal invention and anaysis.
Awards
Lorraine Wild was one of forty-three women in six countries whose work was selected by Liz McQuiston as innovative or had significant impact in their chosen fields of design. She was one of three finalists for the 2001 Communication Award of the National Design Awards sponsored by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. She was awarded a Gold Medal by the New York Art Director’s Club for the design of Height of Fashion. She has received a great number of awards from prestigious organizations such as the American Center for Design, the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ (AIGA) highly selective "50 Best Books of the Year," the American Institute of ArchitectsAmerican Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
and the American Association of University Publishers. Her writing has appeared in many periodicals and books that include Émigré, ID, Print, Graphic Design in America, Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse, Lift & Separate, Looking Closer, and The Education of a GraphicDesigner.
Wild was the recipient of a 2006 AIGA medal.
Current
She is currently a principal with Louise Sandhaus and Rick Valicenti in Wild LuV. She also heads Greybull Press with Roman Alonso and Lisa Eisner. She is married to John Kaliski, AIA, principal of the Los Angeles architectural and urban planning firm Urban Studio-LA and has one child named Ana Wild Kaliski and a dog named Biscuit.External links
- Lorraine Wild Design website.
- Greybull Press website (which also features a short biography of Wild).
- Lorraine Wild biography from Cal Arts.
- Wild LuV website (which also features a short biography of Wild).
- Lorraine Wild: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA.
- http://designobserver.com/author.html?author=1017.