Jayme Odgers was a designer, photographer, and painter.

With his work, he helped establish a new style of California design called “Pacific Wave.” Odgers was known for his New Wave design and experimental collage photography in the 1980s. His collaboration with April Greiman introduced the postmodern ethos to graphic design.

Early on, Jayme Odgers felt he didn’t belong or fit in anywhere, which led him on a lifelong search for his authentic self. He wanted to make the many visual images in his head a reality.

He studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Later, he studied “Kalte Kunst” under Paul Rand and initially followed these strict principles in his design. In the mid-70s, the “less is more” dictum of modernism lost its appeal, and Odgers followed this trend.

Between 1962 and 1986, Jayme Odgers produced mainly commercial work that defied typical commercial design standards. Between 1964 and 1966, he was employed as an assistant to Paul Rand and collaborated with him on some of his work. From 1968 to 1972, he ran his own design studio with 12 other employees. The Knoll brand wanted to recruit Odgers as a designer, but his studio was too small for this client, and he had no intention of expanding it. In the end, he followed Timothy Leary’s advice and dropped out.

He did not work for four years but went in search of himself. He enjoyed his freedom, both in life and in his work.

In 1976, Jayme Odgers returned to society and, at the request of Lou Danziger, began teaching under him at the California Institute of the Arts.

His first collaboration, after creating a flyer for the CaIArts together, with April Greiman were the so-called “spacemats.” These came about because Greiman commented on the laminated collages in Odgers’ portfolio with “These look good enough to eat off; they’re placemats!” Together, they worked in the complete opposite of “less is more.” They described many of their works as “blendos,” as they often mixed everything they could get their hands on in terms of techniques and materials. They often jokingly said, “more is more.”

In his later life, Jayme Odgers focused on photography and painting and turned away from design altogether. Nevertheless, he continued to admire design and greatly appreciated the work of Wolfgang Weingart, for example.

Jayme Odgers’ works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Arco Center for the Visual Arts, the Albright Knox Museum, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and are represented in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, England, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City, the White House in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (kl)