2015 AIGA Medalist: Marcia Lausen

“When I knew Marcia as a student at Yale, she was very diligent, quiet, and had a distinctive giggle,” says Philip Burton, a former professor of Lausen’s and now the graphic design chair of the School of Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He reencountered Lausen in Chicago in the mid-1990s, and by then she had become a “force to be reckoned with,” according to Burton. By that time she had tried out several different positions in Chicago, including a stint working in advertising at Leo Burnett, before partnering with Yale classmate David Williams to launch an independent studio. Lausen, Williams, and Burton would meet Wednesday evenings for dinner at Sole Mio, a favorite Italian restaurant of theirs. At their usual table by the window, they discussed their careers and debated design issues over good food and good wine. It was at one of these dinners that Burton proposed that Lausen teach in the design program at UIC.

Burton’s tableside suggestion was the start of an academic trajectory that would come to define Lausen’s career as well as her design philosophy. She began as an adjunct professor at UIC and in 1997 cofounded the Chicago office of Studio/lab (the original office was established in San Francisco by Greg Lynch and Lausen’s Yale classmate and Bodoni book co-owner, Susan Verba). The company’s name was a nod to the duo’s respective backgrounds: Verba’s in engineering and Lynch’s in fine arts (the “lab” also referred to their Labrador retriever that hung around the office). With Lausen at its helm, the Chicago branch operated independently, but collaborated often with the West Coast outpost.

So began Lausen’s dual career as practitioner and professor. This life suited her, as there has typically been little distinction in Lausen’s mind between school and practice. “I treat the office as a classroom and treat the classroom as a studio,” she says. Several former students have gone on to become Studio/lab employees and praise Lausen’s ability to frame a design problem as well as create an environment where others on the team feel confident enough to play a leading role. Meeyoung Melamed, a student turned staffer, notes that Lausen is generous about crediting each person who works on a project. “She really puts design in front of everything; it’s not about seeing her name plastered everywhere.”

Lausen’s advocation of design above all is clear in projects like Studio/lab’s environmental graphics and wayfinding for the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, a library, college, and gallery in Chicago. Though Studio/lab had little experience in environmental graphics at the time, the building’s architects were sold by Lausen’s approach. Studio/lab created a system of overlapping type that has a flickering effect—a reference to Spertus’ flame logo—and integrated it seamlessly throughout the building’s light-filled lobby. The awards jury for the Society for Experiential Graphic Design was dazzled by the project. One judge commented, “The beauty in the typography and the elegant simplicity are truly enchanting.”

Lausen’s ability to forge into unknown territory with finesse has served her well, both at Studio/lab and at UIC. She became a leading advocate for creating a separate School of Design within the College of Architecture and the Arts at UIC, a herculean effort that involved many layers of bureaucracy and faculty approvals over the course of several years. During this period the college’s dean, Judith Kirshner (now deputy director of the Art Institute of Chicago) said:

“One of the things that was very striking about the whole process was Marcia’s ability to convince her colleagues—art historians with doctorates, artists who have won MacArthur grants, architects who have built great buildings—that design is a knowledge system for the way one looks at the world. Marcia showed us that design is more than mere ornamentation, that design doesn’t come after the problem solving, but that design is central to the way one addresses not just design problems, but also environmental, cultural, political, and social problems.”

The School of Design gained its independence in August of 2013, and Lausen is now its director.

This potent combination of diplomacy and tenacity enabled Lausen’s work on Design for Democracy’s first ballot and election project, a seven-year endeavor that began with the contested presidential election of 2000 and public scrutiny of Florida’s infamous butterfly ballot. At the time, Chicago used a similar ballot and Lausen, who believed that the ballot issue was fundamentally a design problem, decided to take action and rally the support of AIGA. With her UIC students, she redesigned the ballots for Cook County, Illinois, and in 2004 was named a “Master of Design” by Fast Company for her efforts. Lausen’s 2007 book, Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design, documents the process.

Along with this major civic effort, Lausen and Studio/lab have worked on an identity for the Alzheimer’s Association, packaging for Mattel’s Hot Wheels toy cars, publications for the American Institute of Architects, and branding for Motorola, among many other projects. Having recently participated in a competition to redesign public spaces on Chicago’s Navy Pier, Lausen says she feels prepared for Studio/lab’s role in helping to develop UIC’s proposal for the Obama Library, which has been chosen as one of four finalists (the winner will be announced this spring).

Back in Lausen’s own library, the Bodoni books rest easy, their days as collateral long behind them.