SHEILA DE BRETTEVILLE

Sheila de Bretteville is best known as an American graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her strong belief in the importance of feminist principles and participation in graphic design. In 1971, de Bretteville founded the first design program for women at the California Institute of the Arts. Two years later, she co-founded the Woman's Building, a public center in Los Angeles dedicated to women's education and culture. In 1973, de Bretteville founded the Women’s Graphic Center and co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop along with Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven. Both are based at the Woman's Building.

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In the early 1970s, Sheila de Bretteville created a poster called ‘Taste and Style Aren’t Enough’ for CalArts in Valencia, which was new at the time. Its low-tech, vernacular look was meant to challenge and contrast the high-finish corporate aesthetic that was widely accepted by most graphic designers at the time. In the 1980s at the University of California at Berkeley, Bretteville gave her students projects that encouraged them to go against the rules of graphic design and to express their own personal values through their designs.

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De Bretteville became chair of the graphic design program at the Yale School of Art in 1990. She believes that designers should interact with their audience and should consider the social consequences of their practice. According to De Bretteville, producing design in collaboration with one’s audience is a feminist act, because it makes use of values of intimacy and co-operation associated with women’s culture. She and her students have studied the ways the media marginalised groups with certain sexual, ethnic, racial and class identities, and have produced projects with communities in New Haven, the harsh urban setting from which Yale has traditionally stood aloof as a bastion of privilege.​

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De Bretteville encouraged self-reflective subject matter that connected the student to the content, and the content to the form. From the early 1970s to the present, she has consistently communicated to her students that their content is worthy. She has increased the value of plurality, interpretation and collaboration in design, values that inspired others to obtain new perspectives when it comes to design.