Gail Swanlund

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Gail Swanlund's creative work has been exhibited at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), CAM Raleigh, Pomona College, the Biennial of Graphic Design in Brno, Czech Republic, and elsewhere.

Her work may be found in public collections, including Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Merrill C. Berman Collection, and SFMoMA.

Until recently, she held a seat on the board of DesignInquiry, a vanguard educational non-profit organization whose mission is to cultivate the collective goal of extra-disciplinary discourse, productive counter-production, and research of design. She is currently a visiting critic for the organization, and the instigator of the DI satellite, DesignInquiry Wild & Free.

Swanlund received her MFA from CalArts where she is a former Co-Program Director and Faculty in the Art School’s Graphic Design Program. She also lectures and co-teaches courses and workshops with faculty from other schools and across the Institute at CalArts.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS SELECT
  • 2024   17th Annual Dia de la Mujer Art Exhibition, The Front gallery, San Ysidro, and IMAC (Casa de la Cultura Altamira) in Tijuana for World Design Cities (WDC24)
  • 2020   “Writing Writing,” Alphabetum VII, West Den Haag, Netherlands.
  • 2019   DesignInquiry : Futurespective,  Maine College of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME.
  • 2017   Friendly Layers, Pomona College, Claremont, CA.
  • 2017   Inside/Outside: Working our way out of the damaged now (Design as dialectics), San Francisco State University Design Gallery, San Francisco.
  • 2015   Experimental Thinking, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, AU.
  • 2015   Pushing the Press: The Typecraft Design Library, A+D Museum, Los Angeles.
  • 2015   Exhibited as part of Machine Project—The Platinum Collection (Live by Special Request), Tang Museum Saratoga Springs, NY.
  • 2013   “Colossal,” Love Letters, Signs of Our Times: Text Based Art in the 21st Century, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA.
  • 2013   “Suddenly Revealed,” Letterfirm, Reading Frenzy, Portland, OR.
  • 2013   “80 of 1000,” This Will Destroy That!, Design Matters Gallery, Los Angeles.
  • 2012   Work from California, 25th International Biennial of Graphic Design, Prazák Palace, Moravian Gallery, Brno, Czech Republic.
  • 2011   Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern, Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC.
  • 2011   Exhibited as part of Machine Project Summer Jubilee at the Walker Art Center, “The American Lawn and How to Cut It,” Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
  • 2011    Getting Upper, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena
  • 2009   Park Life: The New Utopia, Studio Number One, Los Angeles.
  • 2008   Doubles Pages Exhibition, École des Beaux Arts de Rennes, France.
  • 2008   Exhibited as part of Nothing Moments, Pacific Design Center and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; London; Miami.
  • 2007   Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié expose 13 affiches de Francis Baudevin, Documentation Céline Duval, Daniel Eatock, Experimental Jetset, Christoph Keller, Mevis & van Deursen, Jonathan Monk, Dave Muller, Regular, Yann Sérandour, Jon Sueda, Gail Swanlund, Jian-Xing Too, Vier5, Atelier Cardenas Bellanger and Galerie de Multiples, Paris.
  • 2007   California Design Biennial, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena.
  • 2006   California Design Biennial, Pasadena Museum of California Art,Pasadena.
  • 2006   RESULT FORMED BEFORE, with Jon Sueda, Martin Venezky, Brian Rottinger and Steven Feuer. FLUXUS-inspired installation for the “DRAW A LINE AND FOLLOW IT” exhibition at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles.
  • 2006   Graphic Design in the White Cube, organized during 22nd International Biennale of Graphic Design in Brno, Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic.
  • 2005   Belles Lettres, SFMoMA, San Francisco.
  • 2005   California Dream, Centre du Graphisme, Paris, France
  • 2005   Experiments, New Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection, SFMoMA, San Francisco.
  • 2005   The Architecture of Graphics: Designs for SciArc, SFMoMA, San Francisco.
  • 2005   Icons: Magnets of Meaning, SFMoMA, San Francisco.

WRITING RECENT
  • “The Way You Think About it,” After The Bauhaus Before the Internet, edited by Geoff Kaplan, MIT Press. 2022
  • “Illuminated Unstuck Souvenir Index," Denise Gonzales Crisp and Gail Swanlund, B. 10 The Nest L LL 07 15 22, edited by Scott Massey, Slanted Publishers UG, Karlsruhe, Germany. 2022
  • “Seaming,” Writing Writing, edited by Ian Lynam, Aphabetum, Den Haag, Netherlands. 2021
  • “TalkWalking in Los Angeles,” Slanted 35, Denise Gonzales Crisp and Gail Swanlund. 2020

BIBLIOGRAPHY SELECT
  • Betsky, Aaron, and John Stilgoe Icons: Magnets of Meaning, San Francisco: SFMoMA.
  • Breuer, Gerda and Meer, Julia, Women in Graphic Design/Frauen und Grafik-Design 1890–2012, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Berlin:jovis Verlag, "A–Z/A–Z," 567–568.
  • Bouvet, Michel, East Coast West Coast, Graphistes aux états-unis, Paris: Textuel.
  • Gerber, Anna, All Messed Up: Unpredictable Graphics, London: Collins Design.
  • Littlejohn, Deborah, editor, “Marking the Place,” Metro Letters, Design Institute, University of Minnesota: Minneapolis.
  • Lutz, Anita; Gerber, Anna; Klanten, Robert; Helige, Hendrick, Influences: A Lexicon of Contemporary Graphic Design, Die Gestalten Erlag GmbH & Co, KG, Berlin.
  • Poynor, Rick, “Critical Omissions,” Print, October 2008, 33–34.
  • Steiner, Achim and Genmari, Jennifer, Art in Action: Nature, Creativity and Our Collective Future, Natural World Museum, 40.
  • Sueda, Jon; Lynch, Megan; and Smith, Stuart, Work from California, 25th International Biennial of Graphic Design, Prazák Palace, Moravian Gallery, Brno, Czech Republic.
  • Weissman, Benjamin, “The Cabin Drawings,” Believer Magazine, January 2012, 40–44.
  • Vanderlans, Rudy, Emigre: Essays, Texts and Other Writings About Graphic Design No. 32.
    ———, Emigre: No. 70, Selections from Emigre Magazine #1–69, Berkeley: Ginko Press,  138–139, 428.
  • Worthington, Michael and Khan, Yasmin, “A Subjective Family Tree of (mostly) American Graphic Designers (1960–2011), Print, 65, April 2011, 50–53.
  • Zoo 11, ed. Liz Brown, London: Purple House Limited, 88–89.

recent LECTURES
  • “Slow Studies: On the Value of Observation in a Distracted World,” USC Roski Talks

  • “Slow Studies: On the Value of Observation in a Distracted World,” New Jersey Institute of Technology, Albert Dorman Honors Colloquium. 
  • “Designers/Writers Roundtable: Parallel Practices or Double Metier?” New Jersey Institute of Technology.





all work copyright ©2026 Gail Swanlund and collaborators as noted