048. Lorraine Wild: Redefining Design Education (w/ Louise Sandhaus)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Women Designers You Should Know

Episode 048: Lorraine Wild: Redefining Design Education (w/ Louise Sandhaus)
Host: Amber Asay
Guest: Louise Sandhaus
Air Date: August 19, 2025

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Overview

This episode celebrates the influential career of Lorraine Wild, a pivotal figure in American graphic design who transformed what it means to teach, write, and practice design. Host Amber Asay is joined by designer, educator, and author Louise Sandhaus—one of Wild’s close collaborators and friends—to trace Wild’s journey from her formative years in Canada, through her education and early industry experience, to her profound impact as a design educator at CalArts. Themes include feminist pedagogy, design as a cultural practice, mentorship, and the ongoing struggle for women’s recognition in design history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Louise Sandhaus’s Background and Early Influences

• Sandhaus comes from a creative family in Massachusetts and Florida. She recalls her parents' printmaking and their dueling personal aesthetics as formative, as well as her exposure to bohemian and modernist circles through her father’s career. (05:05)
• Early design experience came via an apprenticeship at an Orlando ad agency, learning both technical skills and the “big idea” conceptual strategies from New York transplants.
  • “I got exposed to a whole different dimension of design that was…conceptually based.” (09:21, Louise Sandhaus)

2. Educational Trajectory & Meeting Lorraine Wild

• Sandhaus’s circuitous path to graduate school took her from a trade school in Florida to Boston, where she befriended Muriel Cooper and began contemplating design as a cultural practice.

• A crucial “serendipity” moment: A trip to California led to a meeting with Lorraine Wild at CalArts, which instantly felt like the right educational fit compared to Yale. Wild helped smooth Sandhaus’s entry into CalArts, both administratively and as a mentor. (11:03 - 13:46)

  • “The minute I got to CalArts and she started, like, showing me around, I went, oh my god, this is the place I need to be. This is the place where my work will blossom…” (12:27, Louise Sandhaus)

3. CalArts, Netherlands, and the Evolution of Pedagogy

• Sandhaus describes CalArts in the early 1990s as an “ineffable” artist community, driven by horizontal mentorship and “a sense of possibility.” (15:49)
• After CalArts, she attended Jan van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands, valuing the European approach to championing young designers as leaders and curators of ideas.
• Noted the importance of organizing design conferences—such as one about the age of the computer and bringing together voices like Gillian Crampton Smith—at the onset of digital design. (19:00)

4. Building a Career: Practice & Teaching

• Sandhaus started her studio, LSD (“Louise Sandhaus Design”), in 1998, emphasizing the necessity for teachers to continue making and practicing. (22:16)
• Focused especially on exhibition design, bringing user-centered thinking to traditional museum environments.
• Experience designing the LA County Museum of Art's “Made in California” exhibition became a springboard for her research and later the landmark book Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots.

5. Lorraine Wild: Journey & Philosophy

Early Life & Education

• Wild’s creative output began in high school—making magazines from friends’ poetry and engaging with publishing early on.

  • “She would gather the poetry of some of her students and create these little mini things or like mini magazines.” (28:22, Amber Asay)

• Turned on to Rainer Banham, introducing Wild to the idea of design as a playful, cultural, and intellectual practice. (29:07)

• Attended Cranbrook in the 1970s under Michael and Katherine McCoy, known for “hippie modernism”—a fusion of modernist form with experimental, social, and feminist values. (31:22, 32:18)

Industry Work and Grad School

• Worked at Vignelli Associates, experiencing first-hand the American adoption of strict European (especially Swiss) design orthodoxy.

  • Wild questioned the dogmatic use of a limited set of typefaces and detachment of style from content. (34:01 - 36:00)
  • “That she was bothered by this detachment of style from content…” (35:18, Amber Asay)

• Her MFA thesis at Yale, “Trends in American Graphic Design, 1930–1955,” filled historical gaps and reframed U.S. design history as a continuum shaped by cultural context. (37:11, 37:52)

Educator and Writer

• Published “More Than a Few Questions About Graphic Design Education” (1983), critiquing trends toward form over meaning and arguing for a more intellectual, collaborative, and historically informed approach.

  • “Design as a meaning-making practice…not just form-making.” (42:15, 43:21, Louise Sandhaus)

• Appointed director of CalArts’s graphic design program in 1985, with a mandate to implement her ideas from theory into practice. She shifted the program away from a purely commercial focus to one centered on cultivating each student’s intellectual and creative voice through collaboration and historical awareness. (43:55 - 46:35)

Legacy and Approach

• Wild’s design studio, Green Dragon Office, has produced over 70 significant art/architecture books and museum catalogs. Her style is subtle, intellectually rigorous, and rooted in context-driven collaborations.

  • “It's not the thing that a publication is going to publish because there's no sort of like, flash or glitz or crazy newness...the work has an intelligence to it that may not always be recognized.” (51:26, Louise Sandhaus)

• Earned the AIGA Medal; her influence as a feminist, educator, and writer is acknowledged, but her quieter, thought-driven contributions are less visible in terms of “star designer” culture. (52:12)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On discovering CalArts:

  • “This is the place where my work will blossom and that will respond to my rebellious spirit. And Yale would have, at that time, probably killed it.”
    (12:27, Louise Sandhaus)

• On Lorraine Wild’s educational impact:

  • “Her mandate was to actually move design from a commercial practice…to really cultivating the students as designers and what they might bring and what became known as a voice.”
    (25:18, Louise Sandhaus)

• On design as activism and meaning-making:

  • “Two main ideas in more than a few questions are about, like, design as a meaning making practice…The other thread…is about students understanding themselves again, within a historical continuum, that their work doesn't just pop up in a vacuum.”
    (42:15, 43:21, Louise Sandhaus)

• On the perils and promise of digital democratization:

  • “I think, because this is an old story, but the democratization of the tools of producing graphic design are so accessible that it’s become in many ways an essential skill…But it’s also becoming increasingly difficult to recognize work that doesn’t fit the kind of stylistic modalities that become increasingly the way in which you communicate.”
    (54:18, Louise Sandhaus)

• On the future of design amid technological change:

  • “That AI doesn't kill it.”
    (55:46, Louise Sandhaus)

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Noteworthy Segments & Timestamps

• Sandhaus’s early family influences — (05:05)
• Meeting Lorraine Wild, choosing CalArts over Yale — (11:03 - 13:46)
• User-centered exhibition design at LACMA — (23:04)
• Impact and ethos of Cranbrook and the McCoys — (30:21 - 32:46)
• Wild’s critique of Helvetica hegemony at Vignelli Associates — (34:01 - 36:00)
• Wild’s historical research and “Graphic Design in America” book — (37:11 - 40:37)
• “More Than a Few Questions About Graphic Design Education” — (40:37 - 43:21)
• Wild’s transformation of CalArts program — (43:55 - 46:35)
• Discussion of star designer culture and legacy — (51:26 - 53:18)
• Democratization and the impact of AI on design — (54:18, 55:46)

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Conclusion & Reflections

This conversation offers a deeply personal and detailed account of Lorraine Wild’s career, philosophy, and lasting imprint on design education. By focusing on meaning, historical context, and collaborative process, Wild championed an approach that resists both superficial style and the “star designer” mentality. Her guidance helped generations of designers and educators—including Louise Sandhaus—to find their own voices and to see design as a critical, cultural practice.

Lorraine Wild’s Lesson:
“It’s not just about having a voice, but having something to say. That’s the lesson we can all carry forward, especially in today’s world.”
(57:31, Amber Asay)

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For further reading:

• [Green Dragon Office (Lorraine Wild)]
• [Louise Sandhaus’s publications]
• Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots
• “More Than a Few Questions About Graphic Design Education”
• Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History

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Summary prepared for listeners seeking an in-depth understanding of the episode’s content, context, and highlights—celebrating the enduring importance of women in design history.

Transcript

[A]

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to Women Designers. You should know the podcast where we remind everyone that design wasn't always just a boys club. I'm Your host, Amber A.C. i am a creative director and founder of a design studio called Nice People, where we work on branding and packaging and websites all the time. And I am so excited to share today's episode because we're joined by someone who's been doing the work of documenting and challenging the field of design for decades, the incredible Louise Sandhouse. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you've probably heard her name come up in several episodes, like in my conversation with Lisa Congdon and with Briar Levitt and even with Sean Adams. And of course, back in episode five, where we talk about her groundbreaking book, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires, and Riots. Louise's work has radically changed how we talk about women in design, especially those who've been overlooked or left out of the official histories. And today, she's here to talk about one of her close collaborators and friends. Paying it forward as usual. We are talking about Lorraine Wilde. She's a designer's designer. You may know her for her writing and her teaching and for her legendary studio, Green Dragon Office. But above all, Lorraine sees herself as a maker. And in this episode, we trace her journey from Ontario to Cranbrook, from Vinylia Associates to Yale, and finally to Cal Arts, where she helped reshape the graphic design program and mentored generations of students to find their voice. Louise takes us behind the scenes from how Lorraine pulled her into the CalArts orbit and to what it means to think of design as a cultural practice and not just a profession. We get into hippie modernism, feminist pedagogy, books that feel like archives, cranky writing, and what happens when a designer decides to question in everything she's been taught. This episode is full of insight, and it's a tribute to a thinker who changed the way we understand what design is even for. So let's get into it for you and me and her and she. Breaking boundaries, building a better world. You should know. Welcome, Louise, to the podcast. Thanks.

[B]

It's great to be here.

[A]

I'm so excited to talk to you today. You have been doing the work of talking about women in design long before I have and have been a trailblazer in a sense of doing that work and researching and all of that. And so I highly value all the work that you've done up to this point and continue to do.

[B]

Thank you. Yeah, many people are doing the work you.

[A]

Yeah. Yes.

[B]

Briar Levitt. So many others. Yeah, yeah. Acknowledging all these women that have contributed mightily to design who have not been acknowledged.

[A]

Yeah. In fact, we had gone over your book in an earlier episode, episode five, and it was Lisa Congdon and she wanted to cover Jerry Kavanaugh and it was because she had first learned about her from your book that you had co written. Yeah. And so, yeah, you have already been mentioned early on in this podcast and then again with Briar Levitt and I think maybe even Sean Adams mentioned you too. So you've been mentioned several times and now I finally have you on to talk to you.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

One of my main goals with this podcast is for it to be about designers. Talking about designers too. And I think it's fun because you have such an iconic career. And of course, we're going to talk about Lorraine Wilde today.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so I'd love to touch on your career first before we get into Lorraine Wild. And so I always like to go way back to your childhood too. Like, do you make this be like a, you know, full retrospective? So you grew up in a highly creative household in Massachusetts and later in Florida. Could you share an early memory maybe sneaking into your parents studio or basement printmaking area that first made you realize design was for you?

[B]

So there was a basement, literally. And my parents were doing printmaking. So the ping pong table in our basement was a kind of print operation. So they did woodcut printing. So, like the ink was there and the rollers. But the other thing, I think my parents had a disagreement, a disassociation about the style of furnishings in our house. So there were two different styles. I think my dad was the modernist.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So he had his thing. And my mother had another tradition that she'll go unnamed. And so they had a studio and like where they worked. And it was at the same level as my bedroom. And that room was locked and I was not allowed in that room. But I think it had things like a name's chair and many colors of paint and paintbrushes and all kinds of fun things I really wanted to get into. So those were the memories from childhood about a creative life and from having parents who were creative. And the other thing I wanted to say is my. My dad. So I never got the story straight, but I think my dad was a bit of a, like a bohemian or a beatnik or just some kind of social renegade because at one point he quit his like, secure job at General Electric as an art director to work with a silkscreen greeting Card company.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Named Editions limited. And so I just remember the work that he would bring home from the cards that he had produced, but also his kind of eclectic pals who were from New York City, and there we were in Western Massachusetts. So it was all very exotic and interesting to me.

[A]

How fun. I mean, I feel like that already sets you up for a very creative life and career, too. So your parents were both printmaking?

[B]

So my parents were both printmaking. My dad had an education in applied arts, which is what it was called at the time. There wasn't anything called graphic design that you would study. And my mother became an illustrator, but she had essentially studied fine arts.

[A]

And so do you still have some of their prints today? Or, like, do you treasure those things?

[B]

So I have a wood block from my dad. I don't have a print of it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It was kind of like messy parting of ways with a stepparent. My sister probably adds a print, but I ended up with the woodblock, so I'm very happy to have that. And I have a set of the Editions Limited greeting cards.

[A]

Oh, cool.

[B]

So I have that. Yep. And then I have a lot of clipping. So my mother had a column in the Orlando Sentinel when we moved there that she both wrote and illustrated, So I have all those.

[A]

Wow. And what year, roughly, was this that they were doing, like, the printmaking?

[B]

So this was probably around 1960. 1961. Yeah.

[A]

So were they, like, very modern feeling prints or illustrations?

[B]

You know, you probably think it was something traditional. I just remember this fish. Like, the woodcut that I have is of a fish.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And it looks like a fish print in a way. You know, have you ever, like, printed with a fish? Like an actual fish? Yeah.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Kind of resembles that, you know, like modernism that we have to remember. There was eclecticism, and that eclecticism would look at, like, traditional, like, wood block prints and things and bring those in. So maybe it was that that they were looking at at the time.

[A]

Yeah. So after high school, you entered the field through an ad agency internship and then a technical program. And even though it wasn't a formal design school, that was essentially how you got into having, like, a creative career or looking more into design. Is that right?

[B]

Yes. When I was still in high school, I was apprenticed to an ad agency in Orlando, Florida. You know, so I just learned technical stuff like how to run the stat machine and things like that. And I got to hang out there and get exposed to a lot, and I think it's. I stayed connected to these people and At a certain point, I'm not sure what was going on in New York, but a lot of the big idea guys, the Mad Avenue people, started moving to Florida. And one of these guys, I think he was from Doyle, Dane and Bernbach, which was like one of the big agencies, big idea agencies, became the creative director at this ad agency where I was working. So I got exposed to a whole different dimension of design that was very idea based and conceptually based. So the delivery wasn't like design that was more fanciful, but design that really delivered home the message in a kind of often very humorous way. But it really had a lot to do with photography. So when I went to the art Institute of Fort Lauderdale after I graduated from high school school at 17 years old, yeah, and so it was more like a, I'd say a trade school, but again, there were these big people from New York who had relocated. So this school was near Miami, so they relocated to Miami and were now teaching at this school. So I think I had a sophisticated education that continued this kind of late conceptual, big idea thinking.

[A]

And so you finished there before going to CalArts, is that right?

[B]

So CalArts is quite a bit down the road. So I went on to actually having a professional life and a career. And I had moved to Boston at one point and we started teaching in Boston. And I also befriended Muriel Cooper. And so as I began to see what she was doing, I could see like the handwriting was on the wall, that design was about to radically change. And so I became increasingly curious about design as a cultural practice. And so all of that said graduate school. And so first thought I was, I applied for risd, was rejected there, applied to Yale and I was like, wait, listed there. Although that was the moment when Alvin Eisenman was going to be leaving and they didn't know he was going to be replacing them. I was told, yeah, you'll get in, don't worry, you just have to bide your time. But during that I went to California to see a friend who had moved there to Los Angeles. And when I was there, I wanted to meet some people. We were talking earlier about John Adams. So I wanted to meet April Griman. So I went to April Griman and there I met Sean Adams, who was working for April. And the other person I wanted to meet was Lorraine Watts child. So she tells me to meet her at CalArts. And I had no clue what that was, much less why I was going to meet her there. But I thought, okay, I'll just go there. And the minute I got to Cal Arts. And she started, like, showing me around. I went, oh, my God, this is the place I need to be. This is the place where my work will blossom and that will respond to my rebellious spirit. And Yale would have, at that time, probably killed it. So it was just serendipity and the fates and luck that I meet both Lorraine Wild and realize that CalArts is the right place for me. I deny an undergraduate degree because I went to this, what was a trade school. I had an AA degree that wasn't a problem for Yale, but it was a problem for CalArts. So I had to go back to school and essentially finish my undergraduate degree before I could go to do graduate studies at CalArt. But again, it was an amazing experience that really prepared me for my graduate education. Even though it was the extra years of this education, it was well worth it, and I was very lucky.

[A]

And I love that you found and met these really iconic women of graphic design that really guided you or led you to this place. Were there any other women along the way? Like, was that really important in your progress was seeing other women doing this, too?

[B]

Muriel Cooper was vital, but I worked with women. I had male bosses.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Sometimes I would experience doubt or, you know, didn't feel like I was treated well, but I had a lot of men who also were extremely respectful and championed me. And don't think I had the worst of it in the way that I think many women have related their experiences, you know, And I think in some ways we're still parsing that out, what the reality was of women and the contributions that they made and how those were acknowledged and how they were treated.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's so true. And, like, I think that there were these, like, very few and far between moments where, like, women were really shining and were respected and admired, but it wasn't always consistently that way. And these kinds of details are what I notice more and more as I do more research and talk about more women and, you know, hearing about some of these women who really were revered and. Yes. And all of that, where there isn't a whole lot of sexism at play there, because somehow they've earned their stripes and they've really become respected in the.

[B]

Community, you know, Are they as legendary as so many men became? No. But now it's getting acknowledged that in their moment, they were known and respected. It didn't become part of the history.

[A]

Yeah. Tell me more about CalArts. What was that like? That was back in the 90s, is that right? Yeah.

[B]

I probably first visited there around 1990 and started my education there in 1992. You could feel when you entered that building that there was something magical that was going on there, something ineffable, that it was a community of artists. It wasn't the kind of like top down education. So that was very much imbued the place that it was more horizontal than lateral. And so it was just more experienced artists working with ones who wanted to understand better about who they were as artists. There was just a sense of possibility. And I think it was the place. It was California. All of that are part of the characteristics of what enabled CalArts to, I think, be what it is and to have cultivated so many people who have contributed so much to the arts.

[A]

Yeah, I believe Mary Blair went there. And it has quite a strong tie with Disney too. I always think about Disney when I hear CalArts, like Disney Co. Still pulls their artists and animators and things like that from CalArts.

[B]

Yeah, animation is one of the more commercial aspects of CalArts. Yeah. Where it is this kind of like funky art school.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. What an exciting time, though. And after CalArts then did you go to Netherlands for like further education? Is it called the Jan van Eyck Academy?

[B]

Yeah, exactly. When I was at CalArts, my focus really was about design pedagogy, how design was taught. I knew that a big reason I was going back to school was because I wanted to become a full time educator, needed the MFA to do that. But also I wanted that time to develop my own thinking about design pedagogy. And when I got out of CalArts, I just didn't feel like I was finished. And so I applied to the Jan van Eyck in the Netherlands, which is south of Holland. And this institution, which is known as a workplace or workplace of which there are probably ones around, like Germany and I'm sure other places in Europe. There are no classes or anything going on. There are tutors that you can work with. Surprisingly, when I got to the ang, the head of the department was Carl Martins. So that was unexpected. And Jan van Turen was the head of the Jan van Eyck. And he was somebody whose work and writing I was very interested in. So I was supposed to be there for two years. I ended up staying for a year, but still getting the laureate.

[A]

So what were like your biggest takeaways from that experience?

[B]

I guess the big thing that I did there was I produced a conference called 101, something like design in the Age of the Computer.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So it was just at the forefront when designers were starting to work on computers, how that was going to change what we did and how we did it, how we talked about what we were doing. And the conference was very interesting for me to do. It brought together people from across Europe to have this conversation. I think most memorable was Gillian Crampton was the keynote speaker I had invited. She had headed up the Interaction Design program at the Royal College of Art. So it was one of the first programs that was really about designing on a digital platform. As a digital platform. It was just so amazing to have this conversation with other people and to be at the head of what felt like establishing myself in a career to come after I got out of school Holland is amazing. It was amazing to be there because the thinking is so expansive there, the ideas are so expansive and they, they champion younger people to become leaders, not to wait until they're older and acknowledged in the field, but to just to bring those ideas to a place where people are discussing them seriously. And you see young architects that are building and making things. And that's pretty incredible for culture too.

[A]

So then what happened next? Did you get started with teaching right away?

[B]

So I was pretty quickly hired back at CalArts to teach and I simultaneously was working in Los Angeles on a very interesting project that was actually for Taco Bell, which was called Tricon Industries. And they were trying to automate their store operations and user centered design comes out of product design, but it hadn't been like fully established for interaction design and interface design. The interesting part of doing that project was developing a methodology of developing the software. And I had an amazing client and worked for an amazing company that had been hired to do this project. And they allowed me to work with the developers to come up with a methodology so that the product would really respond to the needs of the users who probably had never touched a computer. So it was a fascinating project. And so I think, you know, that's what sort of led to working in digital media. When I started teaching, you started your.

[A]

Design studio, Louise sandhouse design, in 1998. So it seemed like you started teaching and founding your own studio at the same time. Was that important to be doing both?

[B]

Oh, I have to think back here. First of all, the studio is lsd.

[A]

It's so funny.

[B]

Yeah. And yeah. Which became even more meaningful.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But you know, it felt like that was expected that you didn't just teach that you're making.

[A]

Yeah. And like bringing that into your class and things like that. Is that right?

[B]

Yeah, there's a vitality of that. It's tough to like teach full time. And I also became co director of the program. Yeah, there was just an important dialogue, I think, going on when you're making and then you're talking about making.

[A]

What was the majority of your client work during that era? What would you say you specialize in as a designer?

[B]

That would probably be exhibition design, which I got into because I had approached the LA County Museum of Art about the way that they did their museum exhibition design, that they might approach it from a user experience perspective, which was not really a dialogue in exhibition design at the time. And so Stephanie Barron, who was like the senior curator at the LA County Museum of Art, was beginning this project, this big millennial show that was made in California art, image and identity, 1900-2000. And so she brought me on, and then I formed a team with Tim Durfee and Iris Rain, who are architects, and we spent two and a half years designing that exhibition. And then that led to other projects.

[A]

Yeah, tell me more about, like, shifting over to your first major publication. Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots. It had such a cultural impact too. But what led you to working on that and what was all of that like?

[B]

So that came out of working on that exhibition for the LA County Museum of Art, because at one point I can see that artists in California are declaring their independence from a European lineage and deciding that they're going to define art on their own terms. So that led me to thinking about what did graphic designers do? You know, did they also reject the European lineage? And if so, how? And how does that manifest? And so it became this big research project, and that's what manifested in this book.

[A]

It's kind of multidisciplinary and like, bringing in these different ideas and really helping, like shaping not only history itself, but helping us understand more about California's history too. And so you've been described as an instigator in design education and have encouraged personal voice. And can you share an anecdote where a project beautifully embodied that philosophy?

[B]

I would say that philosophy, I importantly want to acknowledge is a product of my education. And in particular, Lorraine Lyle. She was the person who, when she came to CalArts, her mandate was to actually move design from a commercial practice that it was taught as a commercial practice where you were handmade into industry. You know, you were to really cultivating the students as designers and what they might bring and what became known as a voice. So I just continued that legacy. And again, to go back to my recognition of going to CalArts, you know, and realizing that something was going to happen there. Something about me that I only had an instinct about, what I called my rebelliousness, my renegadeness could be manifested there. Like it would grow and evolve. And that's where I began to see myself in a set of ideas that Lorraine and Jeff Keedy and Fella had really brought to CalArt. And I was a product of that education.

[A]

Yeah. Was Lorraine Wilde one of your teachers then?

[B]

Yeah. My whole going to CalArts was Lorraine. You know, it was. I think in some ways she was being sly. She knew I was headed for Yale and wanted to attract me to coming to CalArts. So, you know, she didn't take much of a push and there was no, like, direct. But as I'm looking at CalArts and she's telling me about the classes, I can see the suitability for that. She really helped us figure out, like, why I was going to have to go back to school. Like, she really tried working with CalArts. We didn't understand why Yale was able to accept me without an undergraduate degree, but not CalArts. You know, it turned out that Yale is so old and established that it's not accredited in the same systems that an institution like CalArts is. And so that's why they could not take me. It has to do with financial aid and that it was federal, and so you have to meet certain standards in order to get federal financial aid. She became very much a mentor during that period of helping me to get to CalArts. And she also gave me a job in her studio when I finally did get there because funding was very tight for me. Yeah. And she is one of my closest friends today, so.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

No, we're very similar in age also. I went back to school when I was older.

[A]

Yeah, that's so interesting. And I love that we're going to talk about Lorraine Wild today so we could dive right into her story. And I have like a little bit of a timeline blocked out and then you can, you know, tell me more, interject and all of that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1953. And in high school, I kind of love this. But she was creating her own magazines and layouts and she would gather the poetry of some of her students and create these little mini things or like mini magazines. I imagine she, like, distributed them out to her friends and family and she even contributed. Contributed to the school newspaper. And it was already paving the way for what the rest of her career was, which is very much about design meets communication or writing and design all blending together and thinking about those two things together.

[B]

So you're telling me things that I was not familiar with, but when I think of Lorraine's early experience, experience that I know of and just really related to, was that when she was in high school, she had a friend who turned her on to Rainer Banham. And here she is seeing somebody who's a really interesting, playful thinker and looking at design as a cultural practice. And she talked about to me about how much that influenced her, But I think she was able to see an intellect in design. And so that's what kind of propelled her to really, I think, push against her parents in the education that she pursued at Cranbrook, because I think that was not something in her family that would be pursued otherwise. But she felt so strongly about it, and an aunt helped her to get there, and she's one, along with Nancy Scolos, one of the few undergrads who went to Cranbrook.

[A]

Yeah, Cranbrook is a school that we've talked about a couple times on here. It's the school that even the Eames went to. And that was, of course, before her time, but it's become such a pivotal place for women in design, and, like, you know, was really a big hub in history of a lot of design practices and disciplines. And so it's really incredible that she went there. She went there in the 70s under the McCoys, Michael and Catherine McCoy. And she's also a really big name in design that I hope to cover on another episode. But they called their approach Hippie modernism. It was this fusion of modernist clarity with these, like, social feminist values. And it sounds like it was, like, the perfect time for her to go to Cranbrook and to really become the designer and have the design ethos that she has today.

[B]

I think Kathy was a big influence on her. She was, like, young. And if you've listened to the podcasts of Jared Fuller and his interviews with Kathy and Mike, Michael, they're. They're very enlightening as to what was going on for them because they were so youthful. I don't think I realized how young Kathy and Mike were when they were at Cranbrook in the beginning. And they just seemed to be on the kind of, like, fringes of looking at design more expansively. And I just remember hearing about the road trip that they took. It was just like they were so adventurous. Like, they would take this dude on road trips, and I would love to.

[A]

Be a fly on the wall in that era, too, and to, like, really see what that was like. And it was as I understood it. It's this very experimental kind of an education, too.

[B]

Well, you know, it's also new also. So when I went to school in the 70s, it was at a moment when I think graphic design was trying to establish itself as a profession, not a trade. And part of that had to do with, like, becoming a professional so that you could demand more money. Yeah. So it was, I think, a moment of great flux and change.

[A]

Yeah. Like, as you were pointing out, Lorraine Wilde, this became a really big part of her career. She was very observant of and becoming very aware of what graphic design was turning into. And it was becoming this bubble of sorts where a lot of the stuff was being regurgitated from Europe. And we've talked about this in previous episodes, too, where that idea of, like, the Swiss international style was being brought over and was becoming the new way of design and graphic design and communication and advertising. And around this era, basically. Lorraine Wilde went on to work at Vignelli Associates, working for Mossimo and Lela, who we've also covered on the podcast several episodes ago. But this was where she was really being, I don't know, placed in a bucket, or she was really under this idea of the strict Swiss rules and designing within those rules at Vignelli Associates, which they were very on board with and very much about implementing in American design now.

[B]

Well, Massimo and Michael Beirut was there. These are, like, really smart people, or just the idiom or vocabulary that they were working with was very particular, but they were very smart. There are a lot of people who just would slap everything into Helvetica, regardless of what the message was or what the content was. The forum was always like, Helvetica just said modernism, said corporate modernism. But there were also, like, really intelligent people working within that idiom and vocabulary.

[A]

Yeah, Michael Beirut was on the podcast, I guess, six or so months ago. He was sharing his stories of working for Massimo and Lola, which is really cool, too. And that actually came right after Lorraine Wilde had left Vignelli Associates. But while she was there. Yeah, like you were pointing out, nobody questioned why they were using Helvetica for a certain piece or anything like that. That she was bothered by this detachment of style from content and observing that a lot of the design industry was doing that and that she was really leaning into this idea of using context and history to really explain the design choices that you're making. And one quote that she said, recalling a restaurant menu, that I felt really mad. They said they only use Helvetica. Times Garamond Or Bodoni. There was this idea of only use these fonts and nothing else a thing or like. It really made her question why there was so much emphasis on form in the design industry and wanted to continue emphasizing the like, function part and the greater context of the design choices that you're making. Is that right?

[B]

What I know is she sees a lot and she thinks a lot. And I know that at that moment that she was at Vignelli, that she is also wondering about what happens between the wars in the United States. I think she is wondering about this evolution of design, that it doesn't just jump into this vocabulary, like, how does it get there? You know, because there were some incredible modernist designers who come from Europe into the United States and bring incredible inventiveness and ingenuity. And it's not just Helvetica. And she wanted to know more about that and starts doing research on her own. And that's what leads to her going to Yale for her graduate education. But I think it's there that she is also met with resistance about this pursuit to sort of look at design more expansively and not just accept this orthodoxy.

[A]

I understand that her MFA thesis while she was at Yale, this is the early 80s, it was called Trends in American Graphic Design, 1930-1955. This was groundbreaking because it was filling a void in designs and scholarship. And it led, of course, to more research and writings that she had done since then. But, yeah, it was very observational and was really starting to paint a bigger picture of graphic design history at the time, which, from my understanding, what she said is that it felt a little fragmented or it felt like there were things missing within that bigger story.

[B]

Well, you know, her thing is really about designers seeing themselves within a continuum. And so there was this kind of gap from after the war into the 1950s, like, what had happened? Evolutionary, how did she get to where she is? What happened to get there? What social changes, what cultural changes, changes in industry? Just like all of that would influence what people made, what was valued, how it was understood, all of that. And yeah, it was huge what she contributed. And there was an exhibition that was at the Walker Art center and there was a catalog for that. One of the paper companies actually donated the paper and I guess, sponsored this book. And I remember, like, that book was widely distributed and it changed how we understood what we were doing.

[A]

Like a book that Lorraine Wilde wrote.

[B]

No, it's called Graphic Design in America. And it was. I'm going to hold it up for you. A Visual Language History. And so Lorraine contributed. So the person who curated this show was Mildred Freeman. And so Lorraine contributes an essay to this. And the title of her essay is Europeans in America.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

And so I'm going to just read. So the people that are featured in here, there are many writers, including Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, and I don't know if you recognize that name, Joseph Giovannini, Stephen Heller. But the designers that are covered, and it's interesting looking at this now, are Saul Bass, Aaron Burns, Matthew Carter, Ivan Chermayev, Muriel Cooper, Milton Glaser, Richard and Robert Greenberg, April Griman, Tibor Kallman, Alexander Lieberman, Leo Leone, Sippy Pinellas, Paul Rand, Louis Silverstein, and Bradbury Thompson. So these are both the modernists and the postmodernist men and women.

[A]

What year is this book from?

[B]

The publication date is 1989.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And the other thing that was happening in the 1990s, early 1990s, was Stephen Heller's Modernism and Eclecticism series of conferences. And so I think this instigated the gravitas Science in America, like, instigated a different conversation and design. And Lorraine was really important to that conversation and has continued that conversation looking at design as a cultural practice.

[A]

Yeah. And like, it was shortly after her Yale MFA and all of that, she also worked on this piece called More Than a Few Questions About Graphic Design Education. And it was this essay that landed just months after she began teaching at the University of Houston. She's getting more experience, more context around this stuff, observing more things. And she was pointing out, like, several things about design education. And she was critical about, like, how we could shift design education. And that right now she was noticing it was becoming less about meaning and more about making and mastering form. And she basically became, if you could say it, like a graphic design activist, where she was really pushing for her undergrad students and undergrad designers across the nation, too, to really get deeper with their design practice and to really think about design thinking and bringing that idea to the forefront. And she also was warning against things like star designer model and really pushed for collaboration and having designers come together and to really create something bigger than themselves. And so I think she was really observing things that needed to shift or could really use shifting and could use those observations within the design industry.

[B]

Yeah, lots to unpack there. So two main ideas in more than a few questions are about, like, design as a meaning making practice, that you make meaning through form and that that is culturally understood. And so rather than just form making. Yes. Understanding that connection of what the work says and who that audience is. The other thread, important point in more than a few questions is about students understanding themselves again, within a historical continuum, that their work doesn't just pop up in a vacuum, that there are a lot of, like, influences that have preceded what they are doing, that have shaped the ideas of a moment. And so that's why she's become so important in design history and bringing this course that continues today at CalArt's Historical Survey of Graphic Design, not Graphic Design History.

[A]

Yeah, so it sounds like it was shortly after this. So she wrote that essay in 83, and then it was in 85 that she started directing at CalArts and became the program director. And she, like, rewrote the script on what the students were learning and that, pushing for them to become co authors. And. And this was basically around the time that you got there, too. And so maybe you can tell us a little more about that era of her really becoming a pivotal part of the CalArts program.

[B]

So, first of all, she has a mandate from the dean of the School of Art, Catherine Lohr, a woman who is given by one of the faculty in the graphic design program more than a few questions. And Catherine reads that and brings her in and said, is this just theory, or do you want to put this into practice? And so she's given this mandate to change the graphic design program. Now, this doesn't happen overnight. She brings in Jeff Keady from Cranbrook and Ed Fellow from Cranbrook. And I think it takes some time before they can evolve the program and the way the students are taught. Again, I think that the biggest shift is that the students aren't taught that design is just a commercial practice, and that they essentially have to follow the instructions of the client. You know, that they can become contributors and that, you know, eventually. I think this is more the ethos of Lorraine in particular. They're a collaborator. That is her whole practice in Green Dragon and who she is as a designer, that she is trying to bring what the client is trying to communicate to a particular audience. And she is adept and experienced and expert in how that message might be shaped and delivered. And I think because she is so thoughtful, it's not about a kind of formal move or formal invention, but a kind of intelligence in the choices that she makes of how to structure, shape, deliver things that are often. Often you just. You feel the rightness of the delivery of a content. It's often hard to put your finger on it. But people who know her books, at first, they may seem constrained, but then you Realize, oh, there are some really distinct choices that have been made here that really help to just make the content more than it could possibly be in the hands of somebody else who was just like not able to ask the right questions. And that's what that collaboration is with the client. What are the questions? What is the conversation with that client?

[A]

Yeah, from my perspective, she gets very deep in just graphic design and theory and it becomes such a conceptual thing for her when she's talking about these ideas. And just like the intellect behind design and design thinking and all of that. And like there's an essay she wrote called that was Then and this Is Now. But what is Next? And I guess it's based on a lecture that she gave at Jan van Eyck in the Netherlands. The focus of that one was based on the role of computer based media in design education. And she argued that traditional forms of design were being destabilized and urged educators to rethink how designers are trained. So again, she's like finding these new ways of having these conversations and seems like a recurring theme throughout her career.

[B]

One thing that she emphasized in one of her more seminal essays is that if you are going to have your own voice, then you have to have something to say. So there was an encouragement about knowing what point of view or perspective that you had on the subject matter and so what do you bring to that? So it's not to get out of that mode of stylization and to really think about how that content might be presented. Lorraine is very intellectual, but I want to make sure that it's understood that when she is in conversation with a student, part of her brilliance is being able to share, often through personal anecdote, how a student might be able to see their own work again within that historical continuum, not for its own sake, but so that they can have more to think about for themselves, themselves in order to arrive at hopefully some additional or more interesting ideas or that they have insights about their own work. So she doesn't like sprout theory to them. She really helps them to see their own work and what they're doing and where the potentials might be for that work. And it's not by telling a student what to do, but helping the student to become more aware of their own work.

[A]

Yeah, that makes sense. And that's so incredible that she does that and that she's really helping designers, students too, to become more thoughtful about their work or even critical about their own work and bring in their own experience to it. And, and this idea of each individual has so much to bring to their own design practice, too. And that adds so many more layers than just regurgitating the same things and leaning into trends and things like that. And I think it really helps push design further into a place where it's not going to settle into, like, a lot of the same things. And it pushes away from falling into these trend traps that design tends to.

[B]

Do, and probably more so than ever. And that's what I think so important what you're getting at here is that it is the students, if they have a clear perspective and point of view, they're able to see their work where it sits culturally, to be able to, like, think about what it is that they are doing. That's what leads to the kind of not invention for its own sake, but that really responds to a particular problem or issue or possibility in the work. And that's why I think for so many students who have studied with Lorraine and studied at CalArts, that the work is often very distinctive.

[A]

And beyond all of her writing and design thinking and educating and all of that, she still identifies as a designer first.

[B]

Absolutely. Absolutely.

[A]

And she's built up a design studio, as you're pointing out, called Green Dragon Office, and they've produced over 70 critical art and architecture books and catalogs for museums. And she's done a lot of work. But I don't think she thinks of herself as like a star designer necessarily, but as someone who's like, really directing the work and collaborating. And that's what she really emphasizes in her career.

[B]

She's just brought so much to both education and to practice. She should be like a superstar and on everybody's lips. But it is the flashier big moves where she is more quiet. And again, the work has an intelligence to it that may not always be recognized. And it's not the thing that a publication is going to publish because there's no sort of like, flash or glitz or crazy newness. I think she has also been looked in her contribution to shifts in design that happened in the 80s with postmodernism. I do not think she has fully gotten her due, so I'm so happy that we're talking about her.

[A]

You bring up such a good point, too. It's this question of what deserves the attention and who deserves the attention, and why. And why do we give attention to certain designers within the design industry? And it again goes back to this idea of what she's pushing against herself is this idea of a star designer. And when I Google her name, for example, I think this is. Is really telling. And look at Google Images. There isn't a whole lot of her work to see. And that's what we're doing with a lot of the Paul Rands and things like that, where you Google their name and you're gonna see all of this same work that we keep passing around as this is their catalog or this is their portfolio. And so, like, I wish that there was more of that, but I also understand that's like, kind of part of her ethos too. And so. But she's even earned awards and accolades over the years, and she has an AIGA Medal, which is a really big deal. And I think that medal probably is mostly because of her design writings and pushing the design industry as a whole and challenging it, in a sense.

[B]

So one of the things that she would interestingly challenge is referring to design as an industry, that it's become defined on those terms. I think it's very telling. I was like, thinking as we were talking, also next week is Typographics in New York, and that's one of the conferences that remains what feels like outside of design as an industry, where so much of that design thought about more expansively as a cultural practice as well as as an industry.

[A]

I feel like you could do a whole episode on that, that thought too. It's true that there's, like, a greater context to graphic design as a whole and the people that are consuming it, like, everyone's consuming it. And everyone has. And even more so today, everyone has a thought or an idea about graphic design, and people are becoming more critical of it that aren't designers. And so it is true that, you know, it's everywhere. It's in everything kind of an idea, too.

[B]

And I think, because this is an old story, but the democratization of the tools of producing graphic design are so accessible that it's become in many ways an essential skill, in the same way that having some writing skills is essential. Everybody decides as long as they have Canva. Yeah, that's it. But it's also becoming increasingly difficult to recognize work that doesn't fit the kind of stylistic modalities that become increasingly the way in which you communicate the work is just meaningless to them because it just doesn't fit into how you're used to seeing this kind of a business representative. I hear more and more about designers in corporate situations dealing more at the kind of, like, systematic and strategic level. It's not about, like, the distinctive look of the work.

[A]

That's so true. There's so many great thoughts in there. And. But I guess my last question for you today is thinking about Lorraine Wilde's work and your work, and you guys have a lot of parallels together of, like, your design thoughts and writings and your contributions to design and all of that, too, or at least from my perspective, I see a lot of parallels that. Between the two of you. But what do you hope for the future of graphic design?

[B]

That AI doesn't kill it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Speaking of the democratization of design, you.

[B]

Know, I just remember thinking in the, you know, probably some point in the 90s, becoming aware that there were algorithmic ways of thinking about design, that a style could get quantified. There was a group out of San Francisco, and I cannot remember what the name of them was, but I thought that what they were doing, they had created, like, programmed something. So if you wanted something in the art deco style, it could spit out the website and the brochure and the whatever into that style that you want.

[A]

And that trend again.

[B]

Yeah, there was no. There didn't need to be the human intervention. Like, the style had been defined and it could be applied. I thought this is already happening, that designers have been turned into machines, and now you don't even need to turn it a human into machine. The machines are the machines. And so I hope that is because things tend to polarize and there's trends. Maybe people are going to want, you know, things like, more human than ever. And you see it in zine culture and the kinds of making practices that people want, things that are tangible and smell and.

[A]

Yeah, that's so true. I love your wisdom in all of this, too. And so thank you so much for joining me this week. Thank you. So great to chat with an icon like you and talk about Lorraine Wilde. So again, thank you.

[B]

You're welcome. Thanks for the invitation.

[A]

Thank you. Thank you so much to Louise Sandhouse for joining me today and for sharing such a personal look at Lorraine Wilde's career. I loved hearing how their paths intertwined and how a chance meeting at CalArts helped shape Louise's own trajectory and how both of them have been pushing against narrow definitions of design ever since. What stood out to me most in this conversation is Lorraine's refusal to separate making and writing and teaching. She really is all about combining all of them. And she insists that design isn't just about style, but about meaning and culture. And it's not just about having a voice either. But even if you have something to say, that's the lesson we can all carry forward, especially in today's world. If you liked this episode, be sure to check out some of the other ones I mentioned at the beginning, like my conversation in episode five with Lisa Congdon, and we talk about Louise's book, or my interview with Briar Levitt, or even Michael Beirut, who had a very similar life or career trajectory as Lorraine. And if you're enjoying the show, please consider leaving a review. I'm really trying to get to 100 five star ratings and I feel like I'm almost there. And so thank you to everyone who's rated the show left a review. It really helps others discover this podcast, and you can also find links to Lorraine Wilde's writings and her Green Dragon Office work in the show notes. And of course, you'll also find some of Louise's work in there too. Thank you so much much for listening. And as always, let's redesign history by celebrating women.