April Greiman (born March 22, 1948) is an American designer widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European New Wave design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s." According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design training with West Coast postmodernism.
Greiman finds the title graphic designer too limiting and prefers to call herself a "transmedia artist". Her work has inspired designers to develop the computer as a tool of design and to be curious and searching in their design approach. Her style includes typelayering, where groups of letterforms are sandwiched and layered, but also made to float in space along with other 'objects in space' such as shapes, photos, illustrations and color swatches. She creates a sense of depth and dynamic, in particular by combining graphic elements through making extensive use of Apple Macintosh technology. Los Angeles Times called her graphic style "an experiment in creating 'hybrid imagery'".
Early life and education
Born on March 22, 1948, April Greiman grew up in New York City. Her father was an early computer programmer, systems analyst, and founder and president of The Ventura Institute of Technology. Her only sibling, Paul, became a meteorologist and specialist in climatic and atmospheric interplanetary modeling.
Greiman first studied graphic design as an undergraduate at the Kansas City Art Institute, from 1966–1970. She then went on to study at the Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule Basel, now known as the Basel School of Design (Schule für Gestaltung Basel) in Basel, Switzerland (1970–1971). She was also a student of Armin Hofmann and Wolfgang Weingart, and she was influenced by the International Style and by Weingarts' introduction to the style later known as New Wave, an aesthetic that moved away from a Modernist heritage.
Career
After completing her studies at the Kansas City Art Institute, Greiman worked as a freelance designer and worked directly with the curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Greiman moved to Los Angeles in 1976 where she established the multi-disciplinary approach where she "...blends technology, science, word and image with color and space...". She directed her first design studio April Greiman, Inc. from 1978–2004. During the 1970s, she rejected the belief among many contemporary designers that computers and digitalization would compromise the International Typographic Style; instead, she exploited pixelation and other digitization "errors" as integral parts of digital art, a position she has held throughout her career.
Upon her relocation from New York City to Los Angeles, she met photographer-artist Jayme Odgers, who became a significant influence on Greiman. Together, they designed a famous Cal Arts poster in 1977 that became an icon of the California New Wave. In 1982, Greiman became head of the design department at the California Institute of the Arts, also known as Cal Arts. In 1984, she lobbied successfully to change the department name to Visual Communications, as she felt the term “graphic design” would prove too limiting to future designers. In that year, she also became a student herself and investigated in greater depth the effects of technology on her own work.