Working on the front end of projects for the public realm is an odd niche, one she carved out by taking her experience in interface design, her job nearly 25 years ago, and bringing it over to graphic design. Now Harris has dozens of design plans under her belt: branding and wayfinding plans for several institutions, visitor experience for The Women’s Museum in Dallas, and her personal favorite, Voting By Design, a research project supported by the University of Minnesota that culminated in a poster illustrating how design can increase voter turnout.

But aside from a long bio and an inventive use of experience, Harris’ success in information design lies in her personality: a quickness to smile and a passion for attacking things chaotic, complicated, and big.

 
THINKING BIG
Even at a young age, Harris had this passion. As a 20-something, she came out of Yale graduate school in 1980 and immediately launched Two Twelve Associates, an interface design company that handled Citibank among other commercial and nonprofit enterprises. But for Harris, the corporate jobs always seemed small: Their narrow scope focused on the bottom line. Instead she excelled in her work with nonprofits where she saw an expanse of untapped design jobs rolling out before her, jobs others were hesitant to take because the process of designing for people—without the clear-cut objective of money—seemed huge and mystifying.

“It troubled me that I would spend six months working for a corporate project,” says Harris. “It was only seen by a few hundred people or something—a report that only a few would read. I preferred working on projects that would effect thousands.” Abruptly, in 1989, she dropped everything and hopped on a plane for a nine-month trip to Africa and Asia. Harris remains vague on her reasons for abandoning her career. “I wasn’t thinking about design, I was just looking at how people were living and just experiencing the world. Although, I think the little problems I was focused on back then became even smaller. The world’s a really big place—seeing that made me want to work on problems that were larger and had a bigger impact.”

GIVING BACK
It’s this pressing need to influence people that makes Harris seem like she’s in constant contradiction: She’s altruistic in her hope to help people and yet grandiose to want to influence thousands with her design. One of the first hints of her ethical slant is Harris’ dedication to family. Her office space is on the top floor of a brownstone walk-up in Brooklyn that she shares with her husband, her daughter, and a rabbit, who she’s quick to say are as important as her design work. An indication that she loves her own design is the office space itself: a page from a home design magazine, immaculate white walls and white shelves with her work and ephemera hanging throughout.

Her office, a tidy space of perfunctory design tools—large computer monitor, industrial printer, and desks—is cut by a wall of bold, colorful textiles from her travels in Africa, snapshots of a smiling daughter, and picture frames with postal stamps that she selected as a member of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee.

Harris enthuses over one stamp of pink and orange sugar hearts that seem to pop off the page with the words I [heart] you. “I pushed those!” she exclaims. “They said no one would buy them because they’re too sophisticated. I was like no, they’re very Martha Stewart. People love them. People buy them. That really made a big case for moving stamps toward a more stylish approach versus the sentimental.”

This sums up her approach to design planning: stylish, pleasing, but more intellectual than emotional. “I’m a modernist,” Harris says. “Everything I do is based on clarity and simplicity and getting the design out of the way so people can get the information they want.”