Same as the old boss: I don’t think so; if you can’t demonstrate to her that you can truly innovate, don’t even bother applying for the job

How often have you heard such stratospheric expectations for anyone whose job it is to actually get directly involved in making things themselves (and the collaboration involved doesn’t make it sound any easier). She clearly believes she’s not being unreasonable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQWVyUVA3C8

The woman in the video is none other than the legendary designer Jennifer Morla.

Here is her biography, from her Wikipedia entry:

She is an American graphic designer and artist based San Francisco, California.

“I always strive to find the appropriate narrative, so that the solution doesn’t turn into a stylistic conceit”

She studied conceptual art at Hartford Art School, University of Hartford and received her BFA in Graphic Design from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Massachusetts.

She is President and Creative Director of Morla Design San Francisco (1984-present), was Chief Creative Officer of client Design Within Reach (2006-2008), and is an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts (1992-present).

Prior to opening Morla Design, she was the Art Director at Levi Strauss & Co. and Senior Designer at PBS Television, San Francisco.

In 2010, She was awarded the graphic design industry’s highest award of recognition the AIGA Medal.

In 2008, under her creative and marketing direction, Design Within Reach was awarded the AIGA Corporate Leadership Award for the successful interaction between aesthetics and business pragmatics.

Her work has been published extensively, including multiple pieces in Megg’s History of Graphic Design, (5th Edition) and the History of Posters.

She has been featured in numerous national and international magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Graphis Communication Arts, IDEA (Japan), Linea Graphica (Italy), A Diseño (Mexico) and Novum (Germany).

Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (2 acquisitions), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (44 graphic design acquisitions and 1 new media acquisition), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (1 acquisition), the Denver Art Museum (8 acquisitions) and the Library of Congress (1 acquisition).

She has also had solo exhibitions at the SFMoMA (1999) and DDD Gallery (1994) in Japan.

Her work has been displayed in group shows at SFMoMA, the Grand Palais in Paris, the Brandenburg Art Gallery in Berlin, the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, the Denver Art Museum and the in Paris, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.

She served on the National Board of Directors for the AIGA 1997-1999, was past president of AIGA San Francisco Chapter[13] (1992), is an AIGA Fellow (2008), and is on the Accessions Board for Architecture and Design at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art (1995-present).

Since 1992, she has taught Senior Graphic Design Thesis at California College of the Arts.

She lectures internationally and is a selected member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).

In 1984, she formed Morla Design, offering a broad range of creative services encompassing corporate identity, print collateral, environmental design, book design, packaging, web and multimedia design.

Clients include The New York Times, Levi Strauss & Co., Apple Computer, Herman Miller, Inc., Stanford University, Gap, Inc. and Luna Textiles.

She has worked extensively with conceptual art venues designing identities, books and posters for Sculpture Center, Capp Street Project, and New Langton Arts.

As an artist, her large-scale, encaustic paintings and multi-ton steel sculpture are shown at K. Kimpton Gallery in San Francisco.

The Jennifer Morla video was introduced by Aquent and is part of a series called “Design thinking out loud” on the AquentWebsite on YouTube.

Oh, and here’s your ‘homework’:

Her video is aimed at reflecting ‘design thinking’: discuss how it helped you appreciate what this concept implies

(you can use the comments to submit your homework)

Once you’ve done your homework, you can watch the video below (but not before you’ve done you’ve done your homework, this next video may influence your answers).

Here are some details about TED (taken from their website):

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’.

Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives.

At TED, the world’s leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Talks are then made available, free, at TED.com.

TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Two major TED events are held each year: The TED Conference takes place every spring inLong Beach, California (along with the simulcast conference, TEDActive, in Palm Springs), and TEDGlobal is held each summer in Oxford, UK.

TED’s media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks videos are posted daily, and the Open Translation Project, which allows any TEDTalk to be translated into any language by volunteers worldwide.

TED has also established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals win “one wish to change the world”; TEDx, which supports individuals and groups in hosting local, self-organized TED-style events around the world; and the TED Fellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.