Sheila Levrant De Bretteville

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is a graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design. In 1990 she replaced Alvin Eisenman as director of the Yale University Graduate Program in Graphic Design. This appointment was met with opposition from designer Paul Rand, who left the department and convinced colleague Armin Hofmann to do the same. Rand detailed his reasons for his opposition in the essay "Confusion and Chaos"

In 1971 Levrant de Bretteville founded the first design program for women at the California Institute of the Arts, and two years later co-founded both the Woman's Building, a public center for women's culture, and its Women’s Graphic Center in Los Angeles. In 1981 she initiated the communication design program at the Otis College of Art and Design.

De Bretteville has worked extensively in the field of public art creating works embedded within city neighborhoods. One of her best-known pieces is "Biddy Mason: Time & Place,” an 82-foot concrete wall with embedded objects in downtown Los Angeles that tells the story of a former slave who became a midwife in Los Angeles and lived near the site.In “Path of Stars,” completed in 1994 in a New Haven neighborhood, de Bretteville documented the lives of local citizens—past and present—with 21 granite stars set in the sidewalk.

Here is part of an interview with Sheila Levrant De Bretteville. Her work focus' very much on feminism, I don't want to go off on this tangent in the essay but this bit is relevant:

Q: How does Feminism relate to the issues facing contemporary practicing woman artists and designers?
Sheila: I still see some of the same issues making women’s experience more complex and difficult, primarily our relationship to the intensity of the demands we put on ourselves, and the work we do when we have small children. My office at Yale has also been a pumping station for the many new mothers who teach and come to critiques at our graphic design program here at Yale. My predecessor neither had a private office, nor understood why I felt I needed one, although he gave me one because I requested it. In addition to the production of milk and tears, there has also been a change in the tone and content of conversations in my office. These have included parenting and the passing on of kid’s clothes, as well as form making and in depth discussions of design, pedagogy and career issues. There are also the sleepless young fathers among our faculty and critics, and the changing patterns within their lives with little children that have to be taken into account as well. Much of what I know about teaching and organizing a program comes from being a parent myself, and from asking questions as a way to tease out the voices of others, rather than making a series of pronouncements, which is the way critiques take place at many schools.

See the full interview here:
http://www.notesondesign.net/people/interviews/sheila-de-bretteville-designer-educator-feminist/

“On both coasts of the United States, de Bretteville has used typography and environmental design to enhance communities. Her aesthetically rich, metaphoric projects are meaningful to a diverse range of local populations.”
Ellen Lupton, National Design Triennial catalogue