sea ranch and supergraphics

Barbara’s first major job as a designer was to develop the corporate style of the Sea Ranch community in Sonoma County, California. She started with the iconic ram’s head logo, moved on to brochures and pictures for magazines, and, finally, in 1966 created Supergraphics—an abstract mural blending Swiss style, wooden architecture, and bright Bay Area colors. Supergraphics was featured in Life magazine and sparked a wave of imitations. Initially just the name of the Sea Ranch mural, supergraphics later became a common noun, denoting any mural spreading beyond one wall to playfully interact with the architecture of a building.

i do what the walls tell me to do. —barbara stauffacher solomon

OfD restaurant in Sweden. Supergraphics

Interior of OfD restaurant, Sweden. The elongated black C is a mural by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon. Image via OfD.

scanlan’s monthly magazine

At the beginning of the 1970’s, Barbara became an art director at Scanlan’s Monthly magazine, a controversial and short-lived San Francisco counter-culture publication. It was strongly anti-Nixonian and shut down after only eight issues after being boycotted by printers and undergoing an FBI investigation for “un-American” activities. It was one of several publications to feature Hunter Thompson’s early “gonzo” journalism, most notably his famous article, “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.” Design-wise, Scanlan’s Monthly featured spacious, Swiss-influenced layouts with lots of Helvetica, shockingly different from most other left-wing publications of the day.