African American Culture and History: an AIGA Design Journey

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.

Leroy Winbush moved to Chicago from Detroit as a teenager and became a graphic designer there in 1936, one week after he graduated from high school. At the time, the profession had only a few black practitioners.

Music was an important influence on Winbush's career as well as a beloved hobby: as a teenager, he performed at Chicago's Century of Progress exposition with his band the Melody Mixers, and he later designed album covers for the Ramsey Lewis Trio and other groups signed to Mercury Records.

—Lauren Weinberg

Seymour Chwast supported the civil rights movement and its young martyrs. For this issue of Push Pin Graphic he published songs and images of the Old South juxtaposed as a counterpoint to photographs of activists (plus Emmitt Louis Till, an innocent teenager) killed by white racists. The entire issue was a bold commentary on the doctrine of “separate but equal” that prefigured the landmark civil rights legislation enacted during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Push Pin’s members supported (and worked for) civil rights, yet this unique and poignant Graphic was one of the rare political statements made by a graphic design studio at that time.

—AIGA Design Archives

Emory Douglas was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1943. At age 8, he and his family moved to the Bay Area. Art and design would not be serious pursuits for Douglas until his teens, when his criminal behavior landed him in the Youth Training School in Ontario, California. Sometime after he left the center, his counselor encouraged him to enroll in commercial art classes at the City College of San Francisco.

Douglas is recognized for his fearless and powerful use of graphic design in the Black Panther party’s struggle for civil rights and against racism, oppression, and social injustice.

—Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Emory Douglas realized The Black Panther needed potent images to cut through the high illiteracy rates in poor communities. At his disposal were affordable graphic arts technologies—mimeographs, photostats, prefabricated presstypes and screentones, along with offset printing for the newspaper. Embracing inexpensive and available means of commercial art production, Douglas turned his artwork into a powerful visual megaphone.

—Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Diane and Leo Dillon first crossed paths in 1953 while attending college together. They met at the beginning of a vital time for change; the following decades would precipitate a revolution towards progressive values, civil rights, and social equality—and the design profession would not be excluded. This was an era when all the faces in children’s books were white, but thanks to the Dillons, that was about to change.

—Saundra Marcel

Diane and Leo Dillon are recognized for being among the most talented and versatile artists of their genre, and their work is praised for its vibrancy and ethno-racial diversity of subject matter.

Their range also included African folk tales, Scandinavian epics, fantasy, fiction, and science fiction. They chose their subject matter with intention, selecting books with a spiritualist quality and messages about acceptance and individuality.

—Saundra Marcel

Ed Towles’ high school art teacher helped him get his first big break with a partial scholarship to the New York Phoenix School of Design, majoring in magazine and book illustration.

He became art director of Black Enterprise magazine in 1971, a role he held until 1982. It was a pivotal juncture in his career and an opportunity to develop a mainstream magazine for an African American market. “It allowed me to use all my skills as a designer and artist to create the editorial page,” Towles says. Under his direction, Black Enterprise became known for its high standards and for cultivating a talented group of emerging artists and photographers who helped the magazine win a host of awards and industry recognition.

—Joseph Ford

Art Sims's career started modestly, with the “Draw Me” test featured in magazines and on TV back in the 1950s and '60s designed to uncover artistic talent. His mother, a grade-school teacher, nurtured his creativity, guiding him through school and instilling a love of learning. He excelled and earned a scholarship to Michigan State University.

Sims's work for Spike Lee included the iconic posters for Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, as well as the incendiary poster for Bamboozled in 2000, which was attacked for its racial stereotypes.

—Holly Willis

Sam Cooke’s SAR Records Story was a tribute to Sam Cooke for his contributions as a songwriter, producer, and performer. SAR was born out of the vision of Sam Cooke and J.W. Alexander, who sought a way to broaden the appeal of gospel music while introducing the techniques of gospel into the world of pop.

The packaging incorporates a black-and-white illustration with minimal type on the exterior. The interior repeats the illustration and subtly includes Sam Cooke’s signature in black on black. The book continues with classic black-and-white photographs and screens of metallic bronze.

—AIGA Design Archives

During the early part of her career Gail Anderson was seen but not much heard, which doesn't mean she wasn't outspoken. In fact, typographically speaking she was incredibly eloquent. At Rolling Stone magazine, where she held numerous positions from 1987–2002, starting as an associate and becoming senior art director, Anderson lent her flair to much of the conceptual typography that defined the magazine's feature pages.

—Steven Heller

Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD) is a first-voice museum established in San Francisco whose focus is on the African Diaspora. The operative word, “diaspora,” is defined as both “to scatter” and “to sow,” and for the museum refers to the voluntary and involuntary dispersal of the African people from their ancestral homelands, as well as the subsequent new cultural forms that they have created around the world.

The many discussions and design investigations led to consensus on using an amalgamation of dots to viscerally convey the idea of the diaspora. The final design balances aesthetics and utility/readability at multiple scales.

—AIGA Design Archives

The artist Kara Walker is best known for her provocative black cut-paper silhouettes that confront slavery, sex, violence, and racial stereotypes.

The formal language of Walker’s work consists primarily of compositions using intricately cut black shapes arranged in narratives. To complement this, the structure of the book’s typography is based on rectangular blocks: body copy sits in justified columns while overprinted black boxes with different finishes for display type. This allows the large background type to read as either figure or ground depending on the way the light hits it, making reference to Kara’s flip of the Victorian tradition of using white silhouettes.

—AIGA Design Archives

Stealth was designed to promote The Map Office (Map) at the opening of the 2007 summer-season exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, a contemporary art institution that focuses on artists of African or African-American descent.

The poster’s folded form evokes that of the stealth bomber, which is a feat of engineering and design genius—a visually striking object that has been built to be invisible. What emerges as you look at the piece is a quote from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which relayed the feeling that Map was looking for in the piece—“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me”—highlighting the ideals of graphic design and the strength of its bond to the creation of identity.

AIGA Design Archives

Congo Square, believed to be the birthplace of jazz, is a historic site next to the French Quarter, where African slaves performed music and dance on Sunday afternoons for over a hundred years.

This musical celebration of Congo Square was composed by Wynton Marsalis and master drummer Yacub Addy. It was premiered at Louis Armstrong Park, the site of Congo Square, in New Orleans by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Ghanaian drum group Odadaa!

—AIGA Design Archives

For the launch of Centric, an upscale channel targeting adult African-American and multicultural audiences, the goal was to create a brand experience that reflected the central role that African Americans have in the culture. The logo, which used an array of colors converging on a deep brown core, to the vignettes representing a slice of life of the audience, communicates the brand essence in an authentic and aspirational way without invoking clichés.

AIGA Design Archives