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“The Room of Silence,” is a short documentary about race, identity and marginalization at the Rhode Island School of Design by Eloise Sherrid.

Sadie Red Wing (sadieredwing.com) is a Lakota graphic designer and advocate from the Spirit Lake Nation of Fort Totten, North Dakota. Red Wing earned her BFA in New Media Arts and Interactive Design at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She received her Master of Graphic Design from North Carolina State University. Her research on cultural revitalization through design tools and strategies created a new demand for tribal competence in graphic design research. Red Wing urges Native American graphic designers to express visual sovereignty in their design work, as well as, encourages academia to include an indigenous perspective in design curriculum.

AIGA is proud to present this exhibition as part of its national Diversity & Inclusion Initiative, which encourages diversity in education, discourse, and practice to strengthen and expand the relevance of design in all areas of society. Selected from AIGA's prestigious Design Archives and Design Journeys series, this collection celebrates African American history and culture throughout the last century of communication design.

Just over fifty years ago, at the apex of the civil rights movement in the US, Dorothy Jackson interviewed five Black designers about “the frustrations and opportunities in a field where ‘flesh-colored’ means pink”. The article for Print was perhaps the first in the mainstream trade press to directly address the impacts of racism in the profession and describe the experience of Black practitioners in their own words. What has changed since then? What remains the same? We asked today’s design leaders to compare their experience to the 1968 discussion and imagine what’s next.

‘As, Not For: Dethroning Our Absolutes’ is an exhibition of work by African-American graphic designers that seeks to “question, inspire, activate, and challenge the design community and beyond with the objective of promoting deep history, design theory and aesthetics of African-Americans,” according to curator Jerome Harris, a graphic designer and Maryland Institute College of Art teaching fellow.

A visual collage of mini-testimonials related to the conditions necessary to decolonize design and practice respectful design. Videos curated by Dori Tunstall, Sadie Red Wing, Neebinnaukzhik Southall, Nida Abdullah, and Matt Munoz.

A weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world with host Hrag Vartanian, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic.

A brand dedicated to honoring, uplifting, and celebrating Blackness and Brownness in the arts and culture sector.

Founded in 2018, November has worked at the intersection of design, culture, and typography with a wide range of clients and collaborators. November has designed identity systems, printed matter, books, covers, and multi-script typefaces for clients in fashion, news, art, film, and technology. In addition to its studio practice, November’s founders explore their interest in Indian design and cultural history through the initiative November Library, an archive and research project on the history of India’s visual culture.

Artists, curators and writers discuss the projects that have informed their thinking around decolonizing culture. Follow links for parts two and three, or read the print version in the Harris Art Library Current periodicals.

On the Unsung Chinese and Korean History of Movable Type.

People and cultures have always exchanged and borrowed ideas from each other to create new forms of art and symbolic expression. Whether intentionally or not, most if not all human creations reflect varied sources of inspiration. Why, then, are some products negatively labelled “cultural appropriation” or their creators accused of disrespecting the very cultures they found inspiring? And why do products inspired from Indigenous cultural heritage seem to spark particularly strong reactions and pushback? This guide unpacks these important questions. It provides advice to designers and marketers on why and how to avoid misappropriation, and underlines the mutual benefits of responsible collaborations with Indigenous artists and communities.

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Blacks Who Design highlights all of the inspiring Black designers in the industry. The goal is to inspire new designers, encourage people to diversify their feeds, and discover amazing individuals to join your team.

People of Craft is a growing showcase of creatives of color and their craft in design, advertising, tech, illustration, lettering, art, and more. It’s time to redefine what a creative looks like.

This page is an attempt to answer the frequent question “Where are the Black type designers?” The definition of type designer varies, from professionals who make a majority of their income in typeface design to those who have simply created a single font. This list applies the broadest definition; it includes anyone who identifies as Black and has worked in type design at some point in their career.

Founded in 2019 by book artist and printmaker Tia Blassingame, the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective brings scholars of Book History and Print Culture into conversation and collaboration with Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) book artists, papermakers, curators, letterpress printers, printmakers to build community, support systems.

Black Women of Print promotes the visibility of Black women printmakers, via accessible educational outreach, to create an equitable future within the discipline of printmaking.

This is a bibliography meant to help instructors of design history decenter whiteness in their classes. It’s a Google Doc and anyone is welcome to use it for non-commercial purposes: i.e., to share it, download it, contribute to it, participate in editing it, copy it, or repurpose it.

This reader is an attempt to gather materials to begin the process of puncturing and making design narratives inclusive. It is about reading, engaging and learning with others and from others. It is far from complete, actually, it will never be finished. We have so much to read and consider to expand design.
¡Adelante!

Much of the academic and professional discourse within the design disciplines over the last century has been bereft of a critical reflection on the politics of design practice, and on the politics of the artifacts, systems and practices that designerly activity produces. Our premise is that— notwithstanding important and valued exceptions—design theory, practice, and pedagogy as a whole are not geared towards delivering the kinds of knowledge and understanding that are adequate to addressing longstanding systemic issues of power.

The Design Justice Network is an international community of people and organizations who are committed to rethinking design processes so that they center people who are too often marginalized by design. We work according to a set of principles that were generated and collaboratively edited by our network.

The collaborative model of this class mirrors the collaborative history of design that it seeks to illuminate and discuss. Our vision is to create a learning and research environment that is inclusive and honors the collective work of many BIPOC-design and ally-design educators and researchers.

The Native Graphic Design Project is intended as a way to increase the visibility of Native, Native American, First Nations, American Indian, AmerIndian, Aboriginal, Metís, Native Alaskan, Indigenous, Indígina, and Inuit people working in the field of graphic design.