Louise Sandhaus is a distinguished author, professor and founder of her eponymous design studio. She won the American Institute of Graphic Arts medal in 2022 for her exceptional achievements.

Most recently, she founded "The People's Graphic Design Archive," which she describes as a "crowd-sourced virtual archive" to preserve the ephemeral nature of beautiful design.

Her book, "Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936-1986" received glowing reviews from many publications, including the New York Times and Guardian of London. She taught for years at Cal Arts and was director of their graphic design program from 2004-2006. Sandhaus has designed many museum exhibits, and one of her designs is in the permanent collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She was also a key exhibition designer in the millennial project of the LA County Museum of Art, "Made in California."

Louise talked about growing in a mixed design household: her mother loved older, upholstered furniture and her father sleek, modernist and minimalist design. We also talked about our shared love of the work of writer and critic Reyner Banham, whose influential book on Los Angeles, The Architecture of Four Ecologies, which argued that the oft-maligned city was beautiful in its design and far ahead of its time.

We also talked about our shared love of elegant typography, Theosophist history, overlooked designers and how California leads the world of design because of how we are constantly reinventing ourselves.

We did not talk about cheese cultures, bauxite refining or the return of mullets to men's hair trends.

You can learn more about Louise and her work, https://peoplesgdarchive.org/ or LSD-Studio.net.\