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
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.
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
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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.
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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
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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)
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Turned on to Rainer Banham, introducing Wild to the idea of design as a playful, cultural, and intellectual practice. (29:07)
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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
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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)
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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
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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)
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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
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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)
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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)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
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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)
- “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.”
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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)
- “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.”
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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)
- “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.”
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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)
- “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.”
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On the future of design amid technological change:
- “That AI doesn't kill it.”
(55:46, Louise Sandhaus)
- “That AI doesn't kill it.”
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)
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)
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
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.