"Often times they say that design is seductive propaganda, but it's not always trying to pull the wool over somebody's eyes. Design has to excite, but it also has to inform in a way that engages. I try to involve the audience in the design process, whether they know it or not."

The interior of the SOMA office of Morla Design is exactly what one hopes to find behind the massive, almost medieval, black door that momentously shuts behind you. The stark white walls of the office hub are adorned with cryptic posters with black and white letters arranged in patterns that subvert the alphabet and all the accepted rules of grammar. Welcome to the ingenious world of design according to Jennifer Morla.

When one is confronted with her designs, it often takes a few minutes to regain one's bearings. The everyday and routine are literally turned upside-down. Morla says, "The nature of design is it takes two. Pose the problem. We will solve it." She once designed small posters and programs for the upstairs and downstairs galleries at the Capp Street Project. The problem posed: the upstairs gallery was not getting as much pedestrian traffic as the downstairs one. The design solution: the posters and programs held information for both shows, on one divided page. One artist's work was printed upside-down, so the reader would instinctually turn and look to see what the other gallery offered, without giving preferential treatment to one over the other. This is how she involves her audience: "I try to be egalitarian as to how the information is dispensed."

Design is an invisible art and yet, as she points out, we don't go through a single day without experiencing the work of someone's thought-out designs. Despite this invisible cloak, Ms. Morla has made a national name for herself and the company she started by speaking at design conferences and encouraging other women to do the same. She has created work for Levi's, The Discovery Channel Store and Wells Fargo Bank. More recently, she had an exhibition of her work at SFMOMA. The mother of two children, Morla decided to establish her career before starting a family. A choice, she notes, that men do not have to face.

On the responsibility that designers have toward the audience: "The first question that should come to your mind when a work proposal is submitted is: 'Is this necessary?'" In looking through the varied styles of her designs, one responds to her work with a resounding "yes."

Check out the experimental Morla Design Web Site at http://www.morladesign.com and examine "the properties of web communications."