April Greiman Analysis

April Greiman is a Designer born in metropolitan New York City in 1948, and is widely recognized as one of the first designers to use computer technology as a design tool.
She currently teaches at Woodbury University, and has received four Honorary doctorates and also the American Institute of Graphics Arts Gold Medal.

Her design education began when she decided to apply for an Art school, Rhode Island School of Design however she failed in part of the application where she had to draw a pair of old boots, however it was pointed out that her portfolio was very strong in Graphics and they suggested she applied for a Graphics Design course which led her to apply at Kansas City Arty Institute, where she began to study Graphic design between 1966 and 1970, there she was introduced to the principles of Modernism by Inge Druckrey, Hans Alleman and Chris Zelinsky who had all studied at the Basel School of Design, which pushed Greiman to make the decisions to move to Switzerland to study at the allgemeine Kunstgewerberschule basel 1970 to 1971, she was a student of Wolfgang Weingart and Armin Hoffman, who are both well known Graphic Designers she was highly influenced by the International style as she explored it in great depth, the International style is a major architectural style said to have emerged in the 1920's & 30's.
She moved to Los Angeles in 1976, in the 70's many contemporary designers believed that digitalisation and computers would endanger the International style, yet Greiman did not agree with this belief and made sure made use of and other digitalisation "errors" as essential parts of her digital art.

In 1982 she became head of the design apartment at the California institute of the Arts, whilst there she devoted her time to exploring design education as she had access to state of the art video and digitizing equipment, using video and analogue computer to combine different elements through the new media, she knew that the new and upcoming technologies in graphic design would soon be put into every day design practice.

In 1986 Greiman was invited to design and showcase her own work in issue #133 of design quarterly, entitled 'Does it make sense?", instead of the standard thirty two page sequence she reformatted the magazine as a poster that folded out to almost three by six feet which showed a life size image of her digitized naked body against a background of symbolic images and text

In 1995 Greiman designed a postal stamp to celebrate the Nineteenth Amendment to the United states constitution for women's voting rights, which was used by the U.S Postal service, in 2006 her digital photography work 'Drive-by Shooting', was exhibited at Pasadena Museum of California Art, it a project she had began over 26 years before it was shown, using a 5mm Nikon, then a Polaroid SX-70

"Hand Holding a Bowl of Rice" was the biggest piece of work she had created  in 2007 which was a public mural spreading over seven stories on two builds which marked the entrance to the Whilshire Vermont Metro station in Los Angeles.