Barbara Stauffacher Solomon is a designer based in San Francisco that specialized in designing Supergraphics. Besides being a graphic designer, she has also trained as a classical dancer, an artist, architect and historian.
Before diving into the projects that made Barbara become famous, we must understand her styles. Her work often mixes between Swiss Modernism and Californian Pop into a style called California Cool. In other words, it is a kind of style that evolves a lot of geometric shapes combined with the signature colors of Californian Pop such as blues, yellows, reds, greens and oranges. The colors all represent California at its best.
Barbara became well known after her supergraphics design had been published in Life magazine. Although she was hired only to design a logo and brochure; However, as one thing led to another, she got commissioned to decorate the inside of one of Sea Ranch’s areas. In my opinion, I think the most important lesson here is not about Barbara’s skills but her passion as a designer. She always treats design as a mystery that needs to be solved.
Overall, Barbara is a very good example for the young designers working among all forms of design to learn from because she has shown the world that you don’t need to be exceptional to become successful. Design at the end of the day is just design, our purpose as designers is to make things easier to understand, not the other way around