Deborah Evelyn Sussman (May 26, 1931 – August 19, 2014) was an American designer and a pioneer in the field of environmental graphic design. Her work incorporated graphic design into architectural and public spaces.
Early life and education:
Deborah Sussman was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 26, 1931. Her father was a skilled commercial artist.
Sussman took classes at the Art Students League and attended summer school at Black Mountain College in 1952. She studied acting and painting at Bard College in New York. In 1951 she attended the Institute of Design in Chicago where she studied graphic design. She later went on to earn a Doctorate of Humane Letters fromBard College in 1998.
Career:
Sussman's career started in the offices of Charles and Ray Eames, where she worked as an office designer beginning around 1953. She spent about 10 years with the Eameses and became art director for the office, designing print materials, museum exhibits, films, and showrooms for furniture. She designed instructions for the card construction game House of Cards and traveled to Mexico to document folk culture for the Eameses' 1957 film Day of the Dead. She won a Fulbright Scholarshipthat allowed her to study at the Ulm School of Design in Germany.
Sussman started her own practice in 1968. She met architect and urban planner Paul Prejza in 1972 and married him that year. Sussman and Prejza formed the firm Sussman/Prejza & Co. in 1980 in Culiver City, CA. They specialized in urban branding and designed the look and architectural landscape of the 1984 Summer Olympicsin Los Angeles. In 1983, Sussman helped found the AIGA chapter of Los Angeles with Saul Bass and others.
In Stylepedia, authors Steven Heller and Louise Fili wrote that the graphical elements of that Olympics "epitomized a carnivalesque modernity" and placed the work in the Pacific branch of the New Wave design movement. The firm also designed Hasbro's New York facility, and has worked with the City of Santa Monica, the Museum of the African Diaspora, Disney World, and McCaw Hall. The company was later renamed Sussman-Prejza.
Sussman was known for her bold and colorful work that sometimes integrates typography in the environmental landscape. She was awarded an AIGA medal in 2004. In 2013 the WUHO Gallery hosted the first retrospective of Deborah Sussman's early work, spanning her days at Eames Studio up to the 1984 Olympics.
Work:
1984 Olympic Games:
Before Sussman became involved, a red, white, and blue "star-in-motion" logo for the games has been designed, but it was considered inappropriate to express a nationalistic U.S. presence. Sussman and her designers, along with the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee decided a new logo should specifically express the Los Angeles and Southern California — particularly Mexico, Japan, Indonesia, and India — culture. By combining the traditional elements of the U.S. flag with new colors and forms, they achieved what architect Jon Jerde referred to as "Festive Federalism." In total, there were 150 designs creating the visual language for the 1984 games. This work won Time magazine's award for "Best of the Decade."
Death:
Sussman died of breast cancer at the age of 83 on August 19, 2014.

Source: wikipedia.org