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Auburn University

Robert Finkel, Sep 8th, 20233 min read

In my first year of teaching, I was assigned to teach Graphic Design History course. As a new professor fresh out of graduate school and with only a few years of professional practice before that, I relied on the traditional graphic design history texts.

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Featured Contributor — Roshanak Keyghobadi

Sep 1st, 20233 min read

Beginning this spring, designer educator Roshanak Keyghobadi began effortfully researching Iranian graphic design history and adding this material to The People’s Graphic Design Archive. Using our new Collections feature, she built collections that include Iranian Women in Graphic Design, Iranian Poster Design, and Iranian Typography. This interview shares her project and process and will hopefully inspire others to do original research on previously overlooked histories... and to create collections of their own.

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PGDA as an oral history repository of design for film

Tony Best, Jul 15th, 20232 min read

In April 2022, archivist Tony Best interviewed the prolific title designer Dan Perri to discuss his early years in the business, as the “go-to-title design-guys for ‘70s low-budget films..., and the formation of his first creative services firm, Perri & Smith (1971-1973).” For Best, The People’s Graphic Design Archive provided a home for the raw transcript and audio where researchers could locate this compelling history. Capturing and sharing oral histories is vital to expanding first-hand knowledge and understanding of graphic design's history. In this blog post by Best, he shares his passion for Perri’s work and describes the nature of the interview.
If you want to find out more about conducting oral histories, you can use our resource,
Conducting an Interview Fast & Easy, in the Resources section of our site. —The PGDA editors

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Featured Contributor - Alan Marshall

Morgan Searcy, Jun 9th, 20239 min read

Alan Marshall, known as the pseudonym typografix and a frequent contributor to The People’s Graphic Design Archive, shared his passion for the platform and shed light on his frequent contributions as an uploader. During our conversation, Alan provided valuable insights into some of his uploads to The Archive.

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Visualizing Archives

Leah Day, May 2nd, 20236 min read

We got in touch with Leah Day in the Spring of 2022 on her thesis research on ‘Visualizing Archives’. Leah's findings and charts have been on our minds as The People’s Graphic Design Archive (PGDA) continues to expand on a more complete version of graphic design history. This piece summarizes Leah's research and is a great resource for others entering the digital design archive space.

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Value(s) Added: Amplifying The PGDA

Susan Yelavich, Apr 4th, 20236 min read

Does it make sense to talk about justifying submissions to an archive as radically inclusive as The People’s Graphic Design Archive? Would asking us to explain our choices contradict PGDA’s deliberately messy democratic nature, where all posts are created equal?

At a time when democracies around the world are literally under siege, invoking such egalitarian ideals may seem grossly disproportionate—or worse, callously flip. It would be if it were not for the fact that an archive identified as the “People’s” unquestionably has politics. It follows that if we understand ‘politics’ as deciding how to make decisions for groups, then every upload is a decision made for the PGDA’s constituency.

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Guest Curator Andrea Yepes

Morgan Searcy and Brockett Horne, Mar 30th, 20233 min read

Design journalist Andrea Yepes based in Envigado, Colombia offers her favorite items from the Archive and unique ideas about making design history.

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Featured Contributor - Elizabeth Resnick

Morgan Searcy, Mar 1st, 20233 min read

It has been nearly six months since The People’s Graphic Design Archive’s (PGDA) permanent site launched. Since then, it has been exciting to watch PGDA contributors uploading work from an array of backgrounds and experiences.

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Tagging the People’s Graphic Design Archive

Johanna Drucker, Feb 24th, 20238 min read

Whether in commercial and academic circles, user contributions generate real value on the basic principle that “discoverability” is enhanced by adding tags to content. Still, some tags may be more useful than others and so here are a few thoughts on the process. A collection the size of the People’s Graphic Design Archive is just too large to look through in its entirety, especially if you are looking for specific materials. Tags serve to sort the mass of stuff into smaller groups. The application of individual knowledge is a gift to others.

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Making Black Cultural Heritage Visible

Louise Sandhaus, Feb 1st, 20231 min read

I want to draw attention to archivist and curator Dorothy Berry’s passionate essay “The House That Archives Built.” In this writing, she unpacks her fraught relationship with institutional archives and with the professional discipline in which she was trained that can render Black cultural heritage invisible.

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Guest Curator: Jennifer Kinon

Morgan Searcy, Jan 17th, 20233 min read

Leading business, design and strategy at Champions, Jennifer Kinon selected a few women-designed logos submitted to The People’s Graphic Design Archive and questioned what the data implies about the Archive and the broader profession.

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Add-a-thons Bring Energy to The Archive

Brockett Horne, Dec 20th, 20221 min read

Two recent events have resulted in an expansion of unique, relevant new content for The Archive. Ramon Tejada, affable designer with a magic ability to encourage collaboration, hosted a virtual Latinx Add-a-thon in October for community members to upload new works. Ramon guided a vibrant conversation about Latinx design and history as users shared their passion projects and uploaded almost 50 new works.

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Changing the Paradigm for how Graphic Design Histories are Taught

Alan Caballero LaZare, Dec 7th, 20226 min read

In 2021, I was hired by George Mason University to redesign the Graphic Design History course to reflect the needs of our students and the world in which they now find themselves. Continuing the status quo was no longer an option. The students demanded more, expected more, and deserved more than a regurgitation of the same narratives and limited perspectives preserved in the single lone voice of a default textbook based on a stale historical canon.

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Guest Curator: Bobby Joe Smith III

Brockett Horne, Nov 11th, 20225 min read

Bobby Joe Smith III, Black and Lakota graphic designer, media artist, and educator living in Los Angeles drops insight on archives and shares a few favorites from The People’s Graphic Design Archive.

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Case Study: Documenting & Preserving a Design History Treasure Trove Made Easy!

Louise Sandhaus, Nov 7th, 20224 min read

Packing up Margo Halverson's office at Maine College of Art & Design became a case study for organizing, documenting, and uploading large bodies of material to The People’s Graphic Design Archive (PGDA). She helped us figure out a process that was fast and easy!

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Women’s History Month at The Archive

Brockett Horne and Morgan Searcy, May 6th, 20216 min read

For our first March in existence we featured and honored all women

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Black History Month

Brockett Horne and Morgan Searcy, Mar 4th, 20217 min read

In February, we featured all Black designers on our social media accounts, twitter, instagram, and facebook. As we were planning for our

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PGDA Collage

PoWOWer to the People!

Louise Sandhaus, Jul 6th, 20206 min read

WOW! That was pretty much my daily reaction when I started researching California’s contribution to graphic design

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