Jennifer Morla (born 1955, New York City) is an American

graphic designer A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...

and professor based in San Francisco. She received the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award in Communication Design in 2017.

Early life and education

Morla attended the University of Hartford in Connecticut studying conceptual art before receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design in 1978 from

Massachusetts College of Art and Design Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation's oldest art schools, and the only publicly funded independent art sch ...

in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also mother of 2 girls. Morla married Nilas de Matran, an architect. She was influenced to undertake her career as an artist through visits to the

MOMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

growing up in Manhattan, seeing Charles and Ray Eames' IBM exhibit and films at the 1964 Worlds Fair, and her aunt's career as editor in the art department at Condé Nast.

Career

Design work

After graduation in 1979, Morla was hired at PBS station KQED in San Francisco. Her job consisted of her designing on-air, print graphics and designing animated openings. In 1981, she was hired as the head of the art department of

Levi Strauss & Co Levi Strauss & Co. ( ) is an American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's ( ) brand of denim jeans. It was founded in May 1853 when History of the Jews in Germany, German-Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss moved from Buttenheim, Bavaria, ...

. Her job role consisted of designing the store environment, logos, packaging, and labels for the advertising purposes of the brand. In 1984, she founded Morla Design. Clients include ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', Levi Strauss & Co.,

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

Herman Miller MillerKnoll, Inc., doing business as Herman Miller, is an American company that produces office furniture, equipment, and home furnishings. Its best known designs include the Aeron chair, Noguchi table, Marshmallow sofa, Mirra chair, and t ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, and Luna Textiles. She has worked extensively with conceptual art venues designing identities, books and posters for The Mexican Museum,

SculptureCenter SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit, contemporary art museum located in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. It was founded in 1928 as "The Clay Club" by Dorothea Denslow. In 2013, SculptureCentre attracted around 13,000 visitors.Randy Kenned ...

Capp Street Project Capp Street Project is an artist residency program that was originally located at 65 Capp Street in San Francisco, California. CSP was established as a program to nurture experimental art making in 1983 with the first visual arts residency in the ...

, and

New Langton Arts New Langton Arts (active 1975 – 2009) was a not-for-profit arts organization focusing on contemporary art founded in 1975 and located the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Part of the first wave of alternative art spaces ...

. In 1995, she created a poster celebrating the 20th anniversary of the San Francisco Mexican Museum entitled El Museo Mexicano. The piece featured vibrant colors, print and pattern as a way to pay tribute to the Mexican culture. In 2000, Morla collaborated with Nordstrom creating a new face for the store's credit card to appeal to its consumers. The four holographic cards with vibrant colors and bold patterns reflected a reinvented version of the brand. In 2019, Morla worked with the brand K&M Confections creating the packaging for their milk chocolate to create three different styles of packaging for the types of flavored chocolate featuring the same typeface and foil lettering texture. Morla joined Design Within Reach in 2006 and developed campaigns emphasizing sustainability. Morla is regularly invited to judge design competitions, for instance the

Webby Awards The Webby Awards (colloquially referred to as the Webbys) are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over three thousand industry experts a ...

. She is a member of the

Alliance Graphique Internationale Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) is a club of the world's leading graphic artists and designers. There are 510 members from 46 countries. Its members have been collectively responsible for the identity design of most of the world's top cor ...

(AGI). Her design work is featured in museums such as the SFMoMA and referenced in books such as Meggs' ''History of Graphic Design'', and was the object of a monography in 2019. It is archived at the San Francisco-based

Letterform Archive Letterform Archive is a non-profit museum and special collections library in San Francisco, California dedicated to collecting materials on the history of lettering, typography, printing, and graphic design. It is curated by graphic designer Rob ...

Teaching

Since 1992 she has taught as an adjunct professor at

California College of the Arts The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened a second campus in ...

Awards and recognition

* Cooper Hewitt, Communication Design, 2017 * AIGA Medal, for her "ability to surprise and inform through her poignant communication designs for global brands and arts institutions, and for instilling that skill in others through her teaching," 2010 *

(AGI) *Her work for Design Within Reach received the AIGA Corporate Leadership Award inn 2008

Exhibitions and collections

Permanent collections

* MOMA * San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtJennifer Morla at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
/ref> * Smithsonian American Art Museum * Denver Art Museum * Library of Congress * Museum of Craft and Design

Solo exhibitions

* 2012 The Workshop Residence, San Francisco, CA ''The Workshop Residence: Jennifer Morla Artist in Residence'' * 2010 California College of the Arts, CCA, San Francisco, CA ''Jennifer Morla: AIGA Medalist'' * 1999

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

, San Francisco, CA ''Jennifer Morla, Selections from the Permanent Collection'' * 1999 K Kimpton Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA ''Jennifer Morla, Encaustic Works on Canvas'' * 1996 Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA ''Morla: Bay Area Portfolio'' * 1994 DDD Design Gallery, Osaka, Japan ''Jennifer Morla''

Group exhibitions

* 2016

, San Francisco, CA ''Typeface to Interface: Graphic Design from the Collection'' * 2003

Museum of Art and Design The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the ...

, New York, NY ''US Design 1975-2000'' * 2002

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With an encyclopedic collection of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums betwe ...

, Denver, CO ''US Design 1975-2000'' * 1998

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

, Washington, D.C. ''Posters American Style'' * 1985

Grand Palais The (; ), commonly known as the , is a historic site, exhibition hall and museum complex located in the 8th arrondissement of Paris between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine, France. Construction of the began in 1897 following the demolitio ...

, Paris, France ''US Posters'' * 1995 Brandenburg Art Gallery, Berlin ''USA-Posters''

Works in publications

* ''The Designer’s Dictionary of Color,'' Sean Adams * ''Meggs' History of Graphic Design (5th Edition),'' Alston Purvis * ''The Poster: 1000 Posters from Toulouse-Lautrec to Sagmeister,'' Cees W. de Jong * ''Launching the Imagination,'' Mary Stewart * ''Glimmer: How Design Can Change Your Life,'' Warren Berger *

i-D ''i-D'' is a British biannual magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art, film and youth culture. The magazine was launched in 1980 by Terry Jones, originally as a hand-stapled fanzine it has since evolved into a glossy publication. In 2023 the ...

2008 * ''Women of Design: Influence and Inspiration,'' Armin Vit & Bryony Gomez *''Teaching Graphic Design,'' Steven Heller *''Graphic Design America 3,'' Jenny Sullivan *

The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazi ...

* Graphis Magazine * ''Graphis Poster,'' Jennifer Morla foreword and introduction * Communication Arts Magazine * ''Women in Graphic Design,''

Gerda Breuer Gerda Breuer (born 1948, in Aachen) is a German art historian, best known for her numerous publications on the subjects of art history, design history, and landscape painting. From 1995 to 2014, she was professor of art history at the University ...

, Julia Meer *

HOW How may refer to: * How (greeting), a word used in some misrepresentations of Native American/First Nations speech * How, an interrogative word in English grammar Art and entertainment Literature * ''How'' (book), a 2007 book by Dov Seidman ...

15 Masters of Design: Jennifer Morla * ''IDEA Magazine'' (Japan) * ''Linea Graphica'' (Italy) * ''A Diseño'' (Mexico) * ''Novum'' (Germany)

References

*
Graphis Poster Annual 2011
', Morla Design awarded Graphis Poster Annual 2011 Gold *
CCA Graphic Design's Jennifer Morla Awarded High Honors with AIGA Medal
', CCA News, May 17, 2010 * , Interview by

Sean Adams Sean Patrick Adams is an American academic and author. He is the Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of History at the University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-gra ...

, Step Inside Design, July/August 2006. * , Interviews & Profiles by Emily Potts, Step Inside Design, Nov/Dec 2005.
Jennifer Morla interview
At the “Success Ideas and Tips from Master Graphic Designer, Jennifer Morla.” ''The Sherwood Group'', 28 May 2014,

Sources

External links

morladesign.com

Jennifer Morla Designisms

Jennifer Morla interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morla, Jennifer American graphic designers American women graphic designers Massachusetts College of Art and Design alumni American women artists AIGA medalists National Design Award winners