Briar Levit | |
|---|---|
 Levit speaking at TypeCon in Portland, Oregon in 2018 | |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Saint Martin's School of Art |
| Occupation | Professor of graphic design |
| Notable work | Baseline Shift (book), Graphic Means (documentary film) |
Briar Levit is an American design educator, art director and graphic designer. As of June 2025, she is a professor of graphic design at Portland State University. [1] Levit directed and produced Graphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production, a feature documentary about graphic design production methods before desktop publishing. [2] [3] [4] She is the editor of a book of essays Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History (2021) [5] [6] [7] and author of Briar Levit: On Design, Feminism, and Friendship (2024). [8]
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 [5] [9] [10] and Brockett Horne.
Levit grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. [5] She is a graduate of San Francisco State University [1] and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. [3] Levit came to prominence in graphic design as art director of Bitch, [11] [12] 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. [13] [12] It includes interviews with Steven Heller, Ellen Lupton, April Greiman, [3] Ken Garland, Adrian Shaughnessy, Tobias Frere-Jones and Art Chantry. [14] It was shown at the ByDesign film festival in Seattle, [14] [15] Dundee Design Festival, Design Manchester festival, and Birmingham Design Festival. [13] [16] An independent film funded through a Kickstarter campaign, [17] [18] [19] it was made with an all-female production team. [13]