Binders shelved throughout her office hold presentations she’s made on some of her large-scale projects—a way-finding system for Columbia University’s five campuses and an audit of communications for the Ford Foundation—that also show her pared-down aesthetic. Shapes and sans serif fonts simplify hours and months of research, and communicate with a gestalt-like logic: An upside down triangle shows off research statistics, and ovals compose a flow chart for a way-finding plan.

But for all her modern sensibility, her references are more varied than she would have you believe: Bold shapes and patterns are found in her favorite postal stamps with Native American rugs or the African baskets and textiles hanging on her wall. Her nod to a multicultural aesthetic is partly a reflection of being African American. “I try to make work that benefits everybody. It doesn’t just benefit a small, narrow group. I make sure that information and organizations include the general public. My background gives me that perspective—it’s my way of actually giving back.”

AN EDUCATION IN DESIGN
Over the years, Harris has changed the way she thinks about design. In the past, good design was creating accessible institutions: a well-designed hospital map or a more accurately branded nonprofit. But now she says, “I’m beginning to think that part of my job is educating and making shifts in the role of design in these institutions: shifting it up—from just something they have to get done to the strategic part of the way they do business.”

This attitude was important when the American Civil Liberties Union hired Harris to change its approach to branding—from a stodgy, faceless nonprofit to a brand that communicated to a young generation. Harris started on the ACLU branding in the same way she attacks all projects: She first assesses it, then puts together a team tailored to its needs. She used four people with varied specialties from research, design, and organizational management. “The ACLU has 50 chapters—we were doing a brand identity for 50 organizations around the country,” Harris’ voice raises on the word fifty. “We knew it would be an organizational problem.” That was only one barrier. “They were very suspicious of design and branding in general,” she says. “They were trying to be brand-free; they associated it with their commercial adversaries.”

Harris had to educate the ACLU on the power of design—that a logo could reflect its history, its place among peer organizations, its mission, and what it will be in the 21st century. She gave a real-time online educational seminar on the merits of the new identity. “All but I think two affiliates switched to the new identity, which is unheard of. I think it’s a record in branding large institutions,” Harris brags.

Now, the ACLU’s logo is gray and blue, a hip composition of the Statue of Liberty cropped to show just the crown and eyes. It’s neither a cheesy use of patriotism nor is it cluttered by the nonprofit’s long name. Instead, a sans serif font spells out the acronym, and a stylish Liberty looks toward the future of America.

DESIGNING CITIZENS
Harris’ reach goes beyond her work as a professional designer. In fact, teaching at Yale inspired the census revision. She handed the class an assignment—to redesign the census. She took the class’ results to the government, who immediately extended an invitation for Harris to join as the first graphic designer ever on the census committee. In turn, of course, Harris hired many of her students to do the nuts-and-bolts design work.

She also frequently lectures to the academic design community. In a 2002 AIGA conference, Harris enlightened young designers about the opportunities in the nonprofit world. It was a call to arms for burgeoning designers to do more work in the public realm. “There are problems that need to be solved in the public sector that are not just waiting for a client to come and ask them to tackle some of these issues, but to initiate,” says Harris.

Her example was prescription labels—how difficult they are to read, how confusing they are. A couple years later, Deborah Adler went after the problem in a well-publicized redesign of the prescription bottle for Target as part of her SVA thesis project. The first time the packaging has been changed since the 1940s, Adler’s redesign was lauded. “That was exactly the [kind of] idea I was talking about,” says Harris, “seeing a problem and not just waiting but taking initiative.”

Still Harris doesn’t downplay what initiating these projects takes. “On commercial projects, the criteria for deciding everything is really clear, but in the public realm that’s less the case. People are often in public work not for the money, but also for political reasons, or for spiritual and emotional reasons. You’re not just dealing with ‘Am I doing this right? Is it going to get this job done and make money?’ But you’re dealing with my opinion versus your opinion, and it’s much murkier,” she says. So why does she do it? For this designer, it’s not the final product, but digging through the murkiness that reaps rewards.

SYLVIA HARRIS | www.sylviaharris.com | 718.783.5425