Briar Levit
Briar Levit is an American design educator, art director and graphic designer. Levit directed and produced Graphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production, a feature documentary about graphic design production methods before desktop publishing. She is the editor of a book of essays Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History (2021) and author of Briar Levit: On Design, Feminism, and Friendship (2024).
Briar Levit
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- Name
- Briar Levit
- Occupation
- Professor of graphic design
- Education
- Saint Martin's School of Art
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Documentary summary
Briar Levit is an American design educator, art director and graphic designer. Levit directed and produced Graphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production, a feature documentary about graphic design production methods before desktop publishing. She is the editor of a book of essays Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History (2021) and author of Briar Levit: On Design, Feminism, and Friendship (2024).
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wikidata · Q135003500 · wikipedia · Briar Levit
In this article
Biography
Biography
Levit is a co-director and co-founder of The People’s Graphic Design Archive, a crowd-sourced digital collection of graphic design, with designers Louise Sandhaus and Brockett Horne. Levit grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a graduate of San Francisco State University and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. Levit came to prominence in graphic design as art director of Bitch, a quarterly feminist magazine published between 1996 and 2022. Levit's 2017 film Graphic Means focuses on “cold type” graphic production, spanning techniques like photosetting, strike-on, and rubdown lettering like Letraset. It includes interviews with Steven Heller, Ellen Lupton, April Greiman, Ken Garland, Adrian Shaughnessy, Tobias Frere-Jones, Dan Rhatigan and Art Chantry. It was shown at the ByDesign film festival in Seattle, Dundee Design Festival, Design Manchester festival, and Birmingham Design Festival. An independent film funded through a Kickstarter campaign, it was made with an all-female production team.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Briar Levit • Occupation — Professor of graphic design • Education — Saint Martin's School of Art • Notable Works — Baseline Shift (book), Graphic Means (documentary film)
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Briar Levit Portland State University. www.pdx.edu.
- 2.Graphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production. www.dexigner.com. 2017-07-16.
- 3.Singer, Patrick. Graphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production opening November 14th at Parkland -. Smile Politely — Champaign-Urbana's Culture Magazine. 2017-10-12.
- 4.Sinclair, Mark. Watch the trailer for new film Graphic Means. Creative Review. 2016-03-07.
- 5.Heller, Steven. The Daily Heller: Designing Women Get Their Due. PRINT Magazine. 2021-10-14.
- 6.50 essential books every graphic designer should read. Creative Boom. 2022-01-20.
- 7.Baseline Shift. Communication Arts. 2022-08-29.
- 8.Eye Magazine Blog Serendipity and self-discovery. Eye Magazine.
- 9.Making the “infinite” crowd-sourced People's Graphic Design Archive. Design Week. 2022-10-06.
- 10.The People's Graphic Design Archive Is Rethinking How We Talk About Design History. Eye on Design. 2021-04-19.
- 11.Designer, Educator, and Filmmaker Briar Levit on Uncovering Untold Stories From Design History. Eye on Design. 2021-02-03.
- 12.Eye Magazine Feature We Made This: Technical challenge. Eye Magazine.
- 13.“People are amazed by what designers could once do with their hands”. Design Week. 2016-03-16.
- 14.Graphic Means, a documentary on the evolution of graphic design production, premieres this week. www.itsnicethat.com.
- 15.James, Andrea. New documentary on the history of graphic design and technology. Boing Boing. 2017-04-20.
- 16.Sinclair, Mark. Graphic Means screenings in Manchester, Birmingham and London. Creative Review. 2017-10-18.
- 17."Graphic Means" Documentary Shows How Designers Did It Before Digital. Core77.
- 18.New film explores the difficulties designers faced before computers. www.itsnicethat.com.
- 19.This Is What Graphic Design Was Like Before Computers. Hypebeast. 2016-03-10.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
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