was born 1928 in San Francisco, California, USA, where she died in 2024

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon was an American artist and graphic designer best known for her large scale interior ‘supergraphics’ and exterior signage at Sea Ranch, a private estate with a utopian vision in Sonoma County, California. After studying dance and painting as a teenager, Solomon moved to Switzerland in the 1950s where she was the first American at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, studying with acclaimed designer Armin Hofmann. The design she encountered there was modernist, and in 1962 she returned to the United States, bringing with her this approach to design and opening her own studio on Montgomery Street, San Francisco. Following that, she became involved with Sea Ranch, where she was responsible for the logo and branding as well as interiors. It was at Sea Ranch that she created ‘supergraphics’. Solomon earned a Master’s degree in Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley in 1981, publishing her thesis, Green Architecture & The Agrarian Garden. She then became enamoured with book form, recognising it as a way of connecting across philosophy, semiotics, design, and art, without boundaries. She has published several art books as part of her oeuvre.