floating in space

After returning from Europe, April Greiman settled in Los Angeles, where she worked as a freelancer and developed her style: the signature layering of type, exaggerated spacing, random collages and geometric shapes. This would eventually cease to be a mere echo of Weingart’s Swiss Punk and become her own contribution to West Coast postmodernism.

 

it makes sense if you give it sense. i love this notion, which exists in physics as well, that the observer is the observed, and the observed is the observer. the tools and technologies begin to dictate what and how you see something.
—april greiman

April Greiman, self-titled Bullethead. An artist with shaved head looking into camera
April Greiman, self-titled Bullethead

April Greiman, self-titled Bullethead, 1997.

beyond design

Despite having all the skills, April Greiman doesn’t like to be called a graphic designer. She conceives of herself as an artist, teacher, thinker and desert explorer (why limit yourself to one designation?). More importantly, why limit others? In the early 1980s, Greiman became head of the graphic design department at the California Institute of the Arts, and one of her first suggestions was to change the department name to “visual communications.” The point of the gesture became obvious only later, as the world came to realize that technology had redefined the profession once and for all. 

3d Glasses, April Greiman—Reinhold

3d Glasses, April Greiman—Reinhold, 1986. Photo courtesy of Cooper Hewitt.

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