Marilyn Langfeld, graphic designer/art director
Marilyn has seen and participated in several graphic revolutions during her career. It all began by chance, when Marilyn found a job at a small printing company in Atlanta, Georgia. There she learned how to shoot film, strip negatives into flats, burn plates, and run small presses, skills that have served her well as her career moved from printing to graphic design.
After resettling in California, Marilyn put those skills to work at Community Type & Design, a graphic design studio best known for books designed and produced for Andrew Fleugelman of the Headlands Press, Inc. Marilyn worked on "A Traveler's Guide to El Dorado & the Inca Empire" and "Familiar Subjects, Polaroid SX-70 Impressions" for the Headlands Press, as well as Medical Self Care Magazine, edited by Tom Ferguson. She also worked on an edition of the Whole Earth Catalog. In those days, the only computers being used were the typesetting machines, which produced long strips (or galleys) of photographically processed type that was then manually pasted into place.
When Marilyn opened her studio in San Francisco she had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of clients including Manuel Neri, Pacific Bell, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Sola Optical, Harper&Row, the San Francisco Foundation, Altos Computers, the Shanti Project, MotionAnalysis Corporation, California Nurses Association, Addison Wesley and Benjamin Cummings. The range of projects included advertising, annual reports, marketing brochures, publications design, exhibit displays and presentations, posters, multiprojector slide displays, corporate videos, product introductions. During this time, personal computers and the Apple Laserwriter were invented and PageMaker was created, revolutionizing the field of graphic design.
The World Health Organization invited Marilyn to work with them in the late 1980s. This was a fruitful association. She designed five issues of the World Health Report, two celebrations of World Health Day, multiple progress reports for TDR (Tropical Diseases Research), EMC (Emerging Diseases), GPA (Global Programme on AIDS), advocacy campaigns for TB control, active aging, Health InterNetwork, child health, safe motherhood. In addition she created a visual identity campaign for the International Trade Center, UNCTAD/WTO. Included were a new symbol and its applications, new designs for the flagship magazine International Trade Forum, books and other publications, initial designs for the ITC web site and multiple displays. The creation of the World Wide Web, the latest revolution in communications, unfolded during her time in Geneva.
Now Marilyn lives in the Metropolitan Washington DC area. A member of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington (ADCMW) and the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce, Marilyn continues to serve clients in Geneva as well as MD/DC/VA. She works with the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA), Van Eperen Public Relations, Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus as well as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS and ITC.