An innovator best known for her supergraphics, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon fought against the sexism of her time, letting her work do the talking.
Barbara entered the world of graphic design due to necessity – her husband had just passed away and she had a child to feed. She got in touch with Armin Hoffman through a friend, and the connection brought her to study at the Basel Art Institute in Switzerland.
After her studies, she moved back to San Francisco; inspired by the Constructivists and Swiss Modernism, she integrated their style with some of her own “californian cool”. She immediately got work from many architects by marketing herself as a graphic designer, not an artist like the majority of women were.
Eventually she decided to go back to school for a degree in architecture, as she wanted to better understand the clients she was working for. At Berkeley, she also fell in love with writing, and now has multiple books of her own published – although she keeps her laptop for writing and writing only, saying, “I’m horrified when I see the work that’s online; I hate it! I hate the confusion of typefaces they use!”
Sources:
https://www.foldmagazine.com/multi-hyphenate-pioneer-barbara-stauffacher-solomon