Jennifer Morla (born 1955 in Manhattan, New York, USA) is an American graphic designer and artist based San Francisco, California.
Jennifer Morla 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.
She was a 2012 invited artist at The Workshop Residence, where she investigated typographic forms as applied to felt floor coverings and wall panels. In 2010, Jennifer Morla 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.
Jennifer Morla's work has been published extensively, including multiple pieces in Meggs' History of Graphic Design, (5th Edition) and The Poster: 1000 Posters from Toulouse-Lautrec to Sagmeister. 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 (50 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).
Jennifer Morla 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.
Jennifer Morla served on the National Board of Directors for the AIGA 1997-1999, was past president of AIGA San Francisco Chapter (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, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., 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, Jennifer Morla’s large-scale, encaustic paintings and multi-ton steel sculpture are shown at K. Kimpton Gallery in San Francisco.