Susan Jackson Keig was one of the most celebrated graphic designers in Chicago, but a career in art was not always her first choice. Kicked out of an all-male engineering class at the University of Kentucky when her professor declared “this is no place for a woman,” Keig pursued a degree in art and design, tapping into a passion that she held since a young age. Raised on her family farm in Kentucky, Keig began keeping a scrapbook about architecture at the age of twelve. She excelled in school and enrolled in post-graduate studies at the Corcoran Art Gallery School until 1940, when she was recruited to join the cryptanalyst division of the US Army Signal Corps in Washington, D.C. During the war, she and fellow code-breakers successfully cracked the Japanese code—a major contribution to securing victory.
After the war, Keig wed her first husband, Allen Chancellor Karsten, an officer in the US Army. The couple moved to Evanston, Illinois in 1945 and Keig accepted the position of art director for the firm Science Research and Associates. As director at SRA, Keig developed and designed the groundbreaking book Get THE Job, a guide for servicemen returning home from overseas. From 1945-46, she attended the New Bauhaus at the Illinois Institute of technology under the direction of László Moholy-Nagy, and would later teach at the Illinois Institute of Design herself.
Keig receiving an award in 1953 from the Society of Typographic Arts
In the 1950s, Keig served as the president of the Chicago Society of Typographic Arts, maintained a position at the firm of Dekovic-Smith and taught pottery classes at Hull House in the evenings. In 1958, she married her second husband Peter Keig and the couple welcomed their son two years later. In the late 1960s, Keig was named vice president of Goldscholl and Associates, a firm known for their progressive hiring practices and for designing the iconic logos of Motorola, Alcoa and Vienna Beef. She started her own practice, Susan Jackson Keig Design, in the mid-1970s and would continue maintain clients and develop projects until her death, ten days before her 100th birthday.
Staff photo of Goldscholl Associates, 1963
With awards numbering more than 250, Keig’s career highlights are too many to list, but include becoming an AIGIA Fellow, lecturing at the most prestigious design programs in the nation, and being named a Distinguished Alumnae of the University of Kentucky. For nearly fifty years, Keig maintained a residence in the Mies van der Rohe designed 860 Lake Shore Drive building and filled her home with an eclectic collection modern design and original artwork. Wright is pleased to offer a selection of works from the collection of this visionary designer in American Design.
I feel that as designer, we are a rather privileged group. The world is our office—literally no confines to what we might do.
