Jennifer Morla (born 1955, New York City) is an American graphic designer and professor based in San Francisco.[3] 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[4] before receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design in 1978 from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Massachusetts.[5] She is also mother of 2 girls. Morla married Nilas de Matran, an architect.[3]
She was influenced to undertake her career as an artist through visits to the MOMA 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.[6]
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.[7]
In 1981, she was hired as the head of the art department of Levi Strauss & Co. Her job role consisted of designing the store environment, logos, packaging, and labels for the advertising purposes of the brand.[8]
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.[12] 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.[13] Morla joined Design Within Reach in 2006 and developed campaigns emphasizing sustainability.[14]
Her design work is featured in museums such as the SFMoMA[16] and referenced in books such as Meggs' History of Graphic Design,[17] and was the object of a monography in 2019.[8] It is archived at the San Francisco-based Letterform Archive.[17]
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[7]
^Jong, Cees de; Purvis, Alston; Lecoultre, Martiin (October 2010). The Posters: 1,000 Posters from Toulouse-Lautrec to Sagmeister. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN978-0810995888.
