Dana Tanamachi

Dana Tanamachi is an American typographer and artist. She is a designer of fonts. She has designed for Nike, Michelle Obama, Google, Instagram, Target, O The Oprah Magazine, Ralph Lauren, and Time Magazine. She designed postage stamps for the United States Postal Service. HOW Magazine says she is a "Young Creative to Watch" and she won the Art Director's Club Young Gun award. Print Magazine named her "queen of hipster graphic design." 

Tanamachi is famous for using chalk to make her designs and fonts.Wall Street Journal Video Center. 

 Early life 
Tanamachi was born in Houston in 1985.Taketa, K. (2018, December 14). Honoring Creativity - Using her grandmother as inspiration, award-winning artist/ designer Dana Tanamachi is ready to make her 'mark' on the world.. Pacific Citizen (Los Angeles, CA), p. 16. Available from NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. Her grandmother was put in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. She did a lot of art while she was in the camp and Tanamachi loved her artworks.

Tanamachi took drawing and design classes in college. She graduated from University of North Texas in 2007 with a design degree. She moved to New York a few months after graduation. 

 Career 
She started working for SpotCo, an advertising company. There, Tanamachi designed logos, posters, and billboards for Broadway shows. 

One day, she was at a friend's house and drew a picture on their chalkboard. Many people took pictures of it. She started drawing on that chalkboard for every party her friends had. People liked her drawings so much that Desiron, a furniture store in New York City, hired her to draw a design for them. Her next job was designing for Google. In 2010, she went to work for Louise Fili Ltd. There, she designed for Ralph Lauren. 

Tanamachi left Louise Fili Ltd. to start Tanamachi Studio. In 2013, she designed the logo for the Nike women's marathon in San Francisco. She also designed logos for the Nike “Youthful Authentic, Celebration, We Run”.  She has also designed for West Elm, Tanamachi collaborated with MiiR to create a line of reusable mugs that celebrated the world being strong enough to overcome COVID-19. She also worked for Michelle Obama.

Tanamachi worked with two very famous designers, Louise Fili and Steven Heller, to write the book Scripts: Elegant Lettering From Design's Golden Age. She also was the judge for Print Magazine's Typography & Lettering Awards.

 References 

Category:Living people
Category:1985 births
Category:Artists