Incomplet Design History

George Herriman was a cartoonist, illustrator, and pioneer of the cartoon comics genre, and is perhaps most known for his long-running and wildly popular comic strip Krazy Kat . Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, and  John Jacob Astor, a wealthy business tycoon, were some of the famous fans of Herriman’s comics. Astor went so far as to name his dog Ignatz for the mouse that w...

An indigenous cowboy-artist from small-town Oklahoma, Tommy Wayne Cannon was born to Caddo and Kiowa parents in the Fall of 1946. Growing up he attended school in Gracemont and took an interest in the arts. As an adolescent, Cannon was self-taught in the arts and entered his works in regional art competitions through the Southern Plains Indian Museum. His success in these competitions, as well as...

Women have long been a part of bookmaking, design, and publishing, dating as far back as handmade illuminated manuscripts, created before the printing press. In the 18th and 19th centuries, women were known to run some very successful book binderies, including Jane Steel, Katherine Waghorn, Jane Aitken, and Lorina Watkins. Most often women took over when their husbands or fathers died. Other women...

If it seems like the underground comix scene was a raucous and raunchy boys club, that’s fairly accurate. However, there were plenty of women artists who reacted against the sexist depictions of women in comix, of which there was plenty. Their complaints about how women were being portrayed was seen to be just more censorship heaped on the male comix artists. Rather than just be quiet and go away,...

Comix, spelled with an x at the end instead of c, is a uniquely American movement and brings to mind eccentric, explicit, and subversive comics aimed at an adult audience. Having roots in the explicit Tijuana Bibles of the 1920, the lurid horror comics produced by EC, and the later wackiness of MAD Magazine, Comix creators defied censorship laws and American moral standards to create their unique...

During the 1960s, the Chicano Movement or "El Movimiento" gave way for Chicano artists, designers, and printmakers to emerge. The Chicano Movement united Chicanos, Americans of Mexican heritage who chose that label, in a new shared identity to fight for social and political empowerment. One of the creatives that made their mark in support of this movement was Yolanda Margarita López, a feminist pa...

There is a rich history of Black films and filmmaking in the United States that stems from the history of segregation, which created a need for separate films for separate audiences. Since mainstream Hollywood ignored Black audiences, Black filmmakers took the lead in making all Black or “colored” cast films for their audiences. These films have become known as race films. The goal was to shoot fi...

Edward Gorey was probably best known as an author and illustrator of more than 100 books in his lifetime. Collector's items today, his books have become icons in and of themselves, darkly humorous and humorously dark. The books defied genres and publishers sometimes had a hard time determining how to market them. They were illustrated yes, but the dark and sometimes gruesome tales certainly weren’...

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The Black Panther Party was founded during the turbulent times of the sixties that saw many changes in America. Newton at first led the party with an ideology called their Ten Point Program, and with the idea that arming Black communities was essential for their protection and sur...

In 1922 William Harmon, a white real estate mogul from Ohio, started the Harmon foundation which, among other things, supported Black artists. His hope for the foundation was that it would help these artists gain recognition and help them to sell their work, regardless of their skin color. The foundation organized exhibitions and awards for Black artists, all with the explicit intent to stimulate...

Posters as political tools are nothing new. In the Middle East, two revolutionary movements led to some of the most potent and vibrant posters in design history. The Iranian Revolution and the expulsion of Palestinians due to civil war and the continued fight to reclaim Palestinian homelands from Israel. These posters effectively gave voice to the struggles of ordinary people resisting the influen...

Sylvia Harris has been described as a public designer, her own words, and a citizen designer, but whatever you want to call it, Harris was dedicated to designing for the good of the people. She was committed to creating designs that helped people to navigate their world. Harris grew up in Richmond, Virginia where she experienced the desegregation of her school, which likely had a significant impac...

There is a long history of racism behind famous brands, characters, and design that often goes unnoticed. Blatantly racist caricatures began with minstrel shows and the use of blackface, where white actors would use black makeup and overdrawn lips to depict Black people. These drove stereotypes that would be used in film, television, and branding. White actors depicted other minorities in an ill m...

The birth of the Black newspaper in America took place in the form of abolitionist newspapers that spoke out against enslavement. These papers were an essential part of the Abolitionist movement in America, and many of them gave the Black community an important voice on issues that directly affected them and their communities. These newspapers spread Enlightenment-era ideas of equality and the rig...

This episode considers the 2016 proposal to place the likeness of Harriet Tubman on the U.S. $20 bill. The first use of paper money dates back to 1000 CE and has been cited as the first instance of widespread access to printed images. Money is an invented concept, it has value because societies collectively agree that it does, but historically images, symbols, and seals have been used to help auth...

Angel De Cora was an artist, illustrator, and educator from the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Around the age of 14, she was enrolled in the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute as a part of the U.S. Government’s cultural assimilation program for Indigenous American youth. While at Hampton, she found her love for art. She went on to study under notable artists such as Dwight W. Tryon at Smith C...

John H. Johnson was the man driving the publishing empire that included Ebony, Jet, Tan, and Ebony Jr. Black-owned abolitionist newspapers certainly predated all of Johnson’s publications, however, Ebony was the first mainstream news and culture magazine by and for Black Americans. Much like its predecessors, Johnson’s magazines pushed back against the negative images and stereotypes of Black Amer...

There are not a lot of definitive details known about the life of Sequoyah and what information we do have is often conflicting, like was his anglicized name George Guess or George Gist? Did he possibly go by both? Sequoyah has been called an enigmatic figure and a genius because despite all unknowns about his life, what most historians can and do agree on is that he is the sole creator of the Che...

Often the images and fonts meant to Africa are stereotypical and reduce the diversity and complexity of a vast continent to simplified imagery and types. Like Rudolf Koch’s typeface Neuland, used in the logo for Disney’s The Lion King, which wasn’t even supposed to be representative of anything other than Koch’s own religious fervor. The origin and development of typography in Africa is far more d...

An indigenous artist from Oklahoma, Alex C. Mackintosh was born in 1907 with Creek and Scottish ancestry. He attended the Chilocco federal Boarding school for Native Americans in Newkirk Oklahoma, it was there that he took on the name Acee Blue Eagle to honor his heritage. The name “Blue Eagle” was reportedly from his mother’s family; this matrilineal approach to last names is traditional and acce...

Eiko Ishioka was a graphic, costume, and set designer. She was born July 12, 1938 in Tokyo, Japan. Growing up, her life always fused western and Japanese culture. She graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1960 and immediately started working for the largest cosmetic company in Japan, Shiseido. There she revolutionized the poster with her bold use of diverse models...

Margo Chase became a graphic designer almost by accident. In college, Chase was determined to become a veterinarian and in an attempt to get a higher GPA, signed up for a graphic design course. She discovered her love of solving problems creatively and attempted to combine her two loves of science and design by getting a masters degree in medical illustration. Chase realized she wouldn’t have the...

Jacqueline Casey was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1927 and  grew up with a passion for art. While her parents encouraged her to study bookkeeping, she pursued art against their wishes by entering the Massachusetts College of Art. It was at MassArt that Casey met and befriended Muriel Cooper. In 1949, Casey graduated from MassArt with a degree in fashion design and illustration. She entered the...

Bonnie MacLean’s story has rather humble beginnings. She was largely a self-taught artist and graphic designer. Originally from Philadelphia, she relocated to San Francisco in 1963, during a pivotal time in US history. MacLean started her career as an assistant to Bill Graham before he began working as a concert promoter for the Filmore. She would eventually take over as the in-house poster design...

Ray Eames was a graphic designer and abstract artist at the height of the post war era. She studied abstract art with Hans Hoffman for six years before meeting and moving to California with her husband, Charles Eames, in 1941. Ray was not professionally trained as a designer but was deeply involved in the design process. She combined her abstract sensibilities with her interest in structure and fo...