History

Common|Books

Covering Black America

Decades ago, the great artist, poet, musician, and author Gil Scott-Heron famously proclaimed, “The revolution will not be televised.” He was right...It was, however, delivered monthly to newsstands and Black homes within …

Steven Heller|Essays

Milton Glaser’s First Last Hurrah

Sketch & Finish illustrates Glaser’s teaching agenda, which is to say, one makes sketches to explore the unknown.

Patrick Fry|Books

Magic Papers

Magic is largely a solitary endeavour, but the channels of its tips and tricks had a little-known heyday around a hundred years ago.

Steven Heller|Essays

Lou Rogers: Suffragist Cartoonist

Rogers was an outspoken reformer, using her voice and body as weapons in the battles for the vote and other fundamental human rights that were denied women.

Kathleen Meaney|Essays

From A to B (Africa to Bauhaus)

We can trace African innovation through modern art, but how about through modern design?

Steven Heller|Interviews

Crowd Sourcing Graphic Design History

The People’s Graphic Design Archive: preserving cultural artifacts and digital history of our profession.

Steven Heller|Essays

Social Distance Learning: The Remote Generation

Distance learning is meant to convey knowledge and teach skills that will allow students and aspiring professionals to make marks that communicate messages, ideas and impressions . . . to others.

Steven Heller|Essays

Archival Gold

Archives are more than warehouses, they are greenhouses for the nurturing of narratives. Out of archival seeds mighty stories grow.

Steven Heller|Essays

Robert Massin

Steven Heller remembers Robert Massin.

Steven Heller|Interviews

Arthur Szyk Forever Relevant!

“To call [Arthur] Szyk a ‘cartoonist’ is tantamount to calling Rembrandt a dauber or Chippendale a carpenter.”

Steven Heller|Interviews

Posters of Caution and Hope From Chernobyl

An interview with Oleg Veklenko, a Ukrainian graphic designer conscripted into the cleanup and mitigation near the exploded Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the first “hottest” two months of accident.

Steven Heller|Essays

The Printing Cut That Tore The Union Asunder

In almost every American type foundry specimen catalog published during the antebellum period, were functional little spots or “cuts” that were mostly innocuous pictures of sundries, consumables, professional signs, and …