#Jennifer Morla

[nobrashfestivity]

Jennifer Morla Lecture Invitation 1993

[designaday]

Accidents often produce the best solutions… Only you can recognize the difference between an accident and your original intent.

Jennifer Morla

[literarykids]

Jennifer Morla's Career-Spanning, Kickstarter-funded Autobiography Makes a Splash

Jennifer Morla's Career-Spanning, Kickstarter-funded Autobiography Makes a Splash @Lett_Arc @morladesign #art #books

Entitled, fittingly, Morla: Design, this Kickstarter-funded memoir explores the career of Jennifer Morla  her creative process, design philosophy, and provides behind-the-scenes stories about various high profile projects like her campaigns for Swatch, Levi’s, and Nordstrom.

Reproduced with permission from Letterform Archives. 

Though an autobiography, Morla is a designer, and so it makes sense…

[toothbreaker]

Jennifer Morla

[womenofgraphicdesign]

Congratulations to graphic designer and design educator Jennifer Morla!

The Cooper Hewitt is honoring Morla for her work in the field of communication design - she’s one of the 2017 National Design Award Winners!

Video · AIGA Profile 

[salchat]

Stargate Atlantis epic fanfic with romance... and adventure... and art.

“Rodney? Are you alright? Do you want me to get someone?” It was Morla.

“No! Please, no. I’m fine. Happy to see you, in fact. Why haven’t I seen you before? Where have you been all this time?”

“I was here. You just don’t remember.” She flopped down on the couch, reclining on the thick cushioning. “You look better. Much better.”

“I am. I think. I suppose that doctor must have known what he was doing.” Morla was wearing some kind of elaborate outfit. Should he say something about it? Women seemed to expect that kind of thing, if they were wearing anything out of the ordinary or even if they weren’t. Although maybe he shouldn’t say anything because Jennifer might not like it. Jennifer wasn’t here, of course, but did that make it even worse that he should be trying to think what to say to an attractive woman when Jennifer was so far away?

And now he’d thought of Morla as attractive, so that was even worse. Although he probably wasn’t in the least bit attractive to her, so it wouldn’t make any difference what he thought, added to the fact that he was much older than her and he was with Jennifer. But Morla was certainly no younger than Jennifer. Rodney’s head started to hurt again. John’s voice was in his ears: ‘Just say any old thing!’ “Er… You look very, er… shiny.”

Morla smoothed down the rich blue satiny fabric of her dress and shook out the lace at her sleeves. “Hmm… It’s very pretty, but it’s not really me.” She tugged impatiently at the bow at her waist and kicked her legs in the air; the fabric covered her feet. “You couldn’t run in it, and you never know when you’ll need to run.”

“Yes,” agreed Rodney, reflecting that he tended to judge clothes on their ease of movement for running and fighting purposes, imperviousness to burns and stains and, obviously, the distribution of pockets for convenient withdrawal of snacks.

“Will we need to?” she asked.

“What, run?”

Morla nodded.

“As in, are we prisoners and will we have to effect a daring escape?” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Probably.”

[ovogon]

[cooperhewitt]

Jennifer Morla: Experimental Typography

In celebration of the milestone 20th anniversary of the National Design Awards, this week’s Object of The Day posts honor National Design Award winners.

What does “typography” mean to you? Does the word stir up contempt for Comic Sans and Papyrus, or does it conjure a death match between Times New Roman and Helvetica? For many of us, the word “typography” means “fonts.” Yet the art of typography encompasses much more than choosing typefaces. Designers use scale, spacing, layout, contrast, grids, hierarchy, and more to arrange content in meaningful and expressive ways. A typographic message can stand up and stand out—or gracefully recede to the background.

Jennifer Morla has experimented with typography since 1978, when she began designing motion graphics for a PBS television station in San Francisco. After founding Morla Design in 1984, she became a leader within the Bay Area’s dynamic design scene. Morla has used color, pattern, photography, and editorial wit to bring grit and sparkle to visual communications for consumer brands and cultural institutions. Morla has a special gift for typography. She mixes, matches, splices, and overlaps lines of text to generate provocative interpretations of art and ideas.

Cooper Hewitt recently acquired nearly two dozen posters and other works by Morla, who received the National Design Award for Communication Design in 2017. A group of black-and-white posters from the 1990s demonstrates her mastery of typography as an expressive medium. San Francisco’s Capp Street Project (now part of the Wattis Institute) offers residencies and exhibition opportunities to local artists. While traditional museum or gallery posters feature reproductions of artists’ work, Morla uses type to embody themes and concepts. For the exhibition “Unforseeable Memories” (1995), she covered the poster with a field of small type, printed in all caps in a simple, monospaced typewriter font—and then she crossed out most of the text. All that remains visible are the particulars concerning the event. Paradoxically, the obliterated lines serve to highlight the remaining text, functioning like underscores. In another poster created the same year, overlapping words convey collaborations among a group of artists. Individual names emerge from the crowd.

For a campus gallery at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Morla assembled fragments and shadows of letterforms into vibrant bursts and clusters. Crisp horizontal bands of text stand out against these gestural masses to announce the title and dates for each exhibition. As a series, these black-and-white posters gave the gallery a recognizable voice while singing different melodies.

Morla’s posters contributed to the flourishing of typographic experiment during the dawn of digital typography. The new design tools that came of age in 1990s freed designers to manipulate type in direct and immediate ways. In place of manual cut-and-paste and costly galleys of typesetting, designers could manipulate the scale, orientation, and sharpness of text and image. Philosophically, designers were questioning modernism’s emphasis on simple, direct messaging in favor of layered complexity. Typography could challenge readers to look closer. In this influential body of work, content becomes visible against a turbulent sea of form and counterform, assertion and deletion.

Ellen Lupton is Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum https://ift.tt/2OIaOE5 via IFTTT

[gdbot]

Jennifer Morla, Capp Street Project: ‘Jim Campbell, Marie... https://ift.tt/2KZR6y5

[conveyinformation2022]

Jacqueline - Poster Report

This poster is designed by the poster designer, Mario Fuentes. A horizontal version of this poster was placed in a public space as an invitation to put graphic diversity back on the street. What I find interesting about his poster is how the fading of the font creates geometric and structured lines throughout all of the text. I personally find that it helps your eye when looking at a very crowded poster full of text when there is some structure and spacing between the letters. The way the letters fade into the background is also an interesting concept that may relate to the understanding and use of the words “lie” and “truth” and how they might be interpreted.

Jennifer Morla designed this poster, “Experimental Typography” as a way to challenge viewers to take a closer look at the work as that is the only way to really be able to view the content on the poster. I find that the way the words are almost hidden in the poster is a very intentional way to have people interact with the poster much more than just briefly glancing at the words and moving on. It creates questions about what the poster is say and why it is presented this way.

[teganbryce-blog]

Jennifer Morla

“ As designers, we often underestimate the impact we have on the world at large, and how our visual vocabulary is influenced by political, social and cultural events.”

Link to Jennifer Morla’s 25 “Designisms”: 

http://morladesign.com/designisms/

[marialoor]

Thanks to @melissawarp Melissa Warp and @kennethfitzgerald for putting together and inviting me to be part of “DesignHer: Works by Contemporary Women Graphic Designers” exhibit at the The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum @wilsonmuseum at Hollins University with such an amazing group of women designers, some of them are my heroes since college times, like Jennifer Morla @morladesign, @zuzana.licko ZuzanaLicko and Paula Scher. Beyond humbled and grateful. The exhibition is open by appointment and running from September 30 to December 12, 2021. This is the complete list of designers exhibiting who range from younger artists building a reputation through internationally-renowned leaders in the discipline: Colette Gaiter. @ccgaiter , Crystal Basaetz, Deanne Cheuk, Debbie Millman @debbiemillman, Denise Gonzales Crisp. @gonzalescrisp , Jennifer Morla, Johanna Druckers, Kali Nikitas @knikitas, Laura Rossi Garcia, Leah Lester, Lorena Howard Sheridan, Marian Bantjes, Michele Champagne, Mieke Gerritzen, Nancy Bernardo, Paula Scher, Zuzana Licko. @zuzana.licko. Photos by Kyra Schmidt. If you are nearby Roanoke, VA, try to check it out! #womensupporitngwomen #womendesigners #DEI #womendesigners #graphicdesign #illustration #education (at Mount Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CV0wDBHPNGv/?utm_medium=tumblr

[literarykids]

Q&A with Jennifer Morla, Designer and Subject of Forthcoming Book from Letterform Archive

Q&A with Jennifer Morla, Designer and Subject of Forthcoming Book from Letterform Archive #FridayFeeling @morladesign @Lett_Arc

  Jennifer Morla is a legend in her own time: for forty years, her shadow has loomed over the world of graphic design. Earning over 300 accolades like the Cooper Hewitt award, the AIGA medal, and the Smithsonian Design Museum National Award, Morla’s work has graced publicity campaigns for some of the world’s best-known brands like Levi’s, Design Within Reach, Swatch, and Nordstrom. The Library…

[renovatiointerio]

" Design brings content into focus; Design makes function visible ". - Jennifer Morla. #renovatiointerio #renovatiotipsandtricks #cafedesign #cafery #cafe #menuboard #chalkboardpaint #innovativedesign #rusticapproach #bainmarie #fooddisplay #cratestyle #rusticcharm #hiddendoor #wallpanneling #jennifermorla #designcollection #designstandards #eyelevel #detailsarewhatmatter #everythingyouneed #everythingisdesigned #functionaldesign #awestruck #woodenfloor #woodeneffect #woodceiling #woodenplanks #blackandwood #warmdesign https://www.instagram.com/p/CDJrXuVJB9W/?igshid=qgfwl9rv5vjk

[tackorama]

Jennifer Morla.

[cooperhewitt]

National Design Awards in San Francisco

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, celebrates the west coast winners of the 2017 National Design Awards in San Francisco with a lively conversation between Caroline Baumann, Director of Cooper Hewitt, and several 2017 NDA winners, including:

Hartmut Esslinger, designer, founder of frog design (Lifetime Achievement Award)

Jennifer Morla, president and creative director of Morla Design (Communication Design Award)

Eric Rodenbeck, CEO & creative director of Stamen Design (Interaction Design Award)

James Lord, founding principal of Surfacedesign (Landscape Architecture Award)

To learn more about the National Design Awards and 2017 winners, visit http://ift.tt/2p4PT2g

from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum http://ift.tt/2DFr6IE via IFTTT