How did you become interested and immersed in graphic design? Was there a particular experience that influenced you toward learning about graphic design—researching and teaching its history?
My parents were both graphic artists. It was Lorraine Wild’s “Historical Survey of Graphic Design” course at CalArts, which I took during my graduate studies, that really turned me on to design history.
When you realized after completing your book “Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design, 1936–1986” (2014) that expanding the depth and scope of graphic design history was critically necessary, what were some of the fundamental steps you took in establishing your idea?
I actually wrote the LA County Museum of Art a letter about the idea. I presented the letter at a small gathering of designers. The letter was meant as a way to capture my ideas—I never really intended to send it!
Through The People’s Graphic Design Archive, you and your team are disrupting “the graphic design canon” ← How do you define this? And how is the Archive evolving it for the better?
What is meant by the term “canon” is still not clear to me. I believe that what we mean by it, though, is the common understanding of our history. Hopefully, The People’s Graphic Design Archive (PGDA) shows that what belongs as part of that history is much more expansive than the very limited history we’ve been taught.
What were the essential forces that formed and shaped ultimately the common, mainstream, popular state of the graphic design canon?
This can be complicated to answer! To my knowledge, the first course in graphic design history was taught by Lou Danziger and Keith Godard at CalArts, starting in 1971, according to Godard. (My correspondence with him about this course can be found in the Archive!) The idea was to show students what “excellence” in graphic design looked like. Excellence that meant good ideas and beautiful, well-crafted, formal outcomes. The course was possible in the first place because books, showing the newest work going on in graphic design, were becoming more available, although still hard to get. Nevertheless, Lou Danziger had a great collection, and it was the work in these books that was photographed and then shared.
But it’s probably Philip Meggs’ “A History of Graphic Design,” published in 1983, that became a classroom bible for graphic design history’s canon.
Wondering if without the existence of information technologies, particularly self-service content management systems and sprawling social media, and their resulting, residual effects → Would the vision, revelation of The People’s Graphic Design Archive not have been feasible?
Definitely, the PGDA, as a crowd-sourced virtual archive, is only possible because of the internet!
Went to experience the exhibition by The Art Institute of Chicago of work by Artist Barbara Kruger. In her video installation “Untitled (Artforum)” (2016/2020), there was this passage: “It’s clear that identity is back, and more urgent than ever. How can we think through new paradigms? How can we reimagine old ones.” Aligns with The People’s Graphic Design Archive, to me. Thoughts?
Definitely agree that PGDA imagines a new paradigm of what constitutes graphic design history.
Are there publications from the graphic-design-canon era that you still find enduring, relevant?
There are books that I love, like my copy of Walter J. Diethelm’s “Signet Signal Symbol,” published by ABC Verlag [1962–1989], Zurich, in 1970, that I still return to!
How did you discover Notion? How did you determine it to be the proper platform for organizing, presenting and storing the first generation of The People’s Graphic Design Archive?
We were turned on to Notion by Stephen Coles and Nick Sherman who are part of the Fonts in Use team and are the developers, with Rob Meek, of the permanent site for PGDA. Notion is an excellent wiki/database software and has been invaluable for us to realize our prototype. The permanent platform should up and running by early next year.
Being a crowd-sourced effort, what have proven to be effective ways for stimulating, achieving and managing a community to help advance The People’s Graphic Design Archive?
Social media and presenting at events have been effective, particularly reaching the design-educators community. We still have work to do and we’ll be going full blast once we have the permanent site.
How has COVID-19 affected your creativity and work?
Perhaps it’s given us focus, as there’s been SO much online activities, events, conversations and meetings of which we’ve been a part of. It was probably the wake-up call for broader social equity that had the biggest effect. People saw the need for a history of graphic design in which everyone had a voice and could be represented.
In engaging and managing all of the moving parts of being a Graphic Design Educator, Author and Founder to live and keep yourself busy, especially during this pandemic, how do you take care of yourself?
TV-candy nightly. “The Great British Bake Off” is a case in point. I also love to bake myself and find cooking relieves a lot of stress.
Oprah asked First Black First Lady Michelle Obama to answer these two questions which are echoed for your opinions:
a) What’s your no-fail, go-for-it motivational song?
Right now, it’s Esperanza Spaulding’s “Formwela 10.”
b) What should be required reading for every human?
Jonathan Porritt’s “The World We Made: Alex McKay’s Story from 2050” offers vision and hope for our future. It’s a fictional story told from the future by an educator to his students of how the sustainable and equitable world was realized.
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📷 All images courtesy of Louise Sandhaus, except for “Signet Signal Symbol”—photographed by design and brand studio DAMS.
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