Upcoming Past
Oct 24th, 2024

Co-Director Brockett Horne shares a presentation on PGDA within a panel, Making the Most of Archives, moderated by Art Historian Jenny Carson

Oct 20th, 2024

We are hosting a scan-a-thon at Chess Club Portland OR encouraging everyone to preserve their graphic design treasures (what have you been hoarding or what have you discovered when researching for projects?). @BriarLevit will give a brief talk on why participation in the @peoplesgdarchive matters at 3pm. Come browse the Volumes Design Library and Chess Club’s new shop!

Oct 11th, 2024
  • Co-organizers: Jarrett Fuller & Louise Sandhaus
  • Moderator: Jarrett Fuller
  • Panelists:
  • YuJune Park & Casper Lam, Synoptic
  • Elizabeth Goodspeed, Casual Archivist
  • Louise Sandhaus, The People’s Graphic Design Archive
    Over the last decade, there's been a massive rethinking of how we talk about design history, from who gets to be included in community archives, from the role of canons to whether there even is a canon. This has been important work on diversifying our history and highlighting those who had been left out. But what do these new histories mean for us today? How do they reshape what and how we design in the present? And perhaps most importantly, how does design history help us create better design futures? This panel will share examples of democratized/community-based/crowd-sourced activities that utilize radical approaches to create a new understanding of our past to inspire potential trajectories for imaginative cultural forms for tomorrow.
Sep 23rd, 2024
OCADU Design Methods class

Presentation on Building a People's Design History and an exercise for students in looking for and spotting works that serve as “germs” that inspire the growth of one's imagination.

Sep 6th, 2024

Brair Levit provided a presentation on collecting at The Legacy Conference at East Carolina University in Greenvile, NC. The conference aims to examine the past, present, and future of design to deconstruct our past, understand our current realities, and speculate on our future possibilities. What design legacies have shaped our present and what new legacies do we hope to set forward? We look to the future with a critical and curious eye, imagining new paths forward to shift our future outcomes. We question: What happened then, how does that shape now, and what do we hope for next?

Jul 27th, 2024

A two-day celebration of publications featuring some of Portland's best booksellers, an opportunity to upload your favorite magazines to The People’s Graphic Design Archive, a panel discussion, and an installation with hundreds of publications to interact with.

Jul 26th, 2024

A presentation by Co-Director Briar Levit called Preserving your Research for The People!

Jun 16th, 2024

Preserving Design: A Hands-On Introduction to The People’s Graphic Design Archive with Morgan Searcy, Alan Caballero LaZare, Briar Levit
This session will include a brief overview of The People’s Graphic Design Archive (PGDA), a crowd-sourced digital-first archive, and an opportunity to contribute (and take home a piece of) the Archive. This session will provide a collection of vintage stamps and tickets for participants to upload in real-time. We will discuss tagging and descriptions of everyday design materials’ typographic and design elements to ensure preservation and accessibility.

Jun 6th, 2024

Join Amy Papaelias and Jessica Barness to explore what Radical Scholarship looks like and add items to The Archive.

May 20th, 2024

Co-director Brockett Horne guided a panel called "Collecting Graphic Design: the State of Affairs" that featured the People's Graphic Design Archive and panelists Mary Yang of Boston University, Archana Shekara of Illinois State University and Roshanak Keyghobadi of Farmingdale State College.

Mar 22nd, 2024

Join us for a lightning talk at Boston University's Art Book Fair, Multiple Formats! March 22, 12–2pm, 808 Commonwealth Ave, room 410

March 15, 1–3pm EDT

Radical Scholarship Design refers to the design of academic artifacts that establish or explore new disciplines emerging from social and political movements over the past sixty years. This Add-a-thon is to collect and imagine what radical scholarship looks like.

Nov 29th, 2023
Lecture at California State University, Fresno

Graphic designer and design educator, Virginia Patterson, invited PGDA’s co-director, Morgan Searcy to speak on her career in design, progressive politics, and involvement with PGDA apart of Fresno State’s 2023 GD History Lecture Series.

Oct 14th, 2023
AIGA 2023 Conference

Our Histories: From the Past to the Future, a main-stage panel discussion, delves into how design history is being written today. Panel was moderated by Michael Bierut design with panelists Morgan Searcy (PGDA co-director), Silas Munro, and Mark Sanders.

Power Up: Constructing a Community-built History Using The PGDA, a workshop led by PGDA co-directors Louise Sandhaus and Brockett Horne

Apr 12th, 2023

This ‘Standing-Room Only Lecture’ at Katherine Small Gallery, Somerville, MA, by PGDA co-director, Brockett Horne uses The People’s Graphic Design Archive as a case study for thinking about the past and future design history through collecting.

Apr 8th, 2023

AIGA Baltimore Community Meeting, included a conversation about inclusive graphic design history with Brockett Horne, designer, educator, writer, and co-director of The People’s Graphic Design Archive.

Mar 23rd, 2023

AIGA Boston + ICA Presents Louise Sandhaus, followed by a conversation with Doug Scott and Ramon Tejada, moderated by Anne Thompson. How we understand design history is changing. The canonical narrative rooted in the Bauhaus is shifting through a messy but exciting process in which so much more is recognized and included. Louise takes us on her journey to understanding the problem and possibilities that resulted in the founding of The People’s Graphic Design Archive and offered new potentials for understanding the past and vibrant new futures going forward.

Feb 27th, 2023

In collaboration with co-director, Morgan Searcy, students worked in groups with Robert Finkel’s Auburn University Spring Graphic Design History Course to search family archives and their surroundings in the Southeast. Students identified, researched, and uploaded original design artifacts to The PGDA. See some of the student’s discoveries.

Feb 1st, 2023
Lecture: College of New Jersey

PGDA co-director, Morgan Searcy, was invited by Jason Alejandro, a graphic designer and educator, to speak on her professional experience and The PGDA with the College of New Jersey’s Winter 2023 History of Graphic Design class.

Jan 15th, 2023
Workshop with Emily Carr Students

Student introduction to archives and an Add-a-Thon, January 2023

Nov 15th, 2022

This presentation by Louise Sandhaus at Roski School of Fine Arts, UCS (University of Southern California) looked at the inspiration, evolution, and future of the crowdsourced virtual archive, The People’s Graphic Design Archive.

November 13, 2022 from 1:00–2:30pm PT / 4:00–5:30pm ET

Type Directors Club conference. Led by established and emerging Native designers, Ezhishin aims to facilitate conversations around the typographic needs of First Nation/Native American communities. This event, co-hosted by PGDA and Leo Vicenti, invites the community to expand the history of Native North American Design.

November 12, 2022 from 11:20–12:20 PT / 2:20pm–3:20pm ET

Type Directors Club conference. Led by established and emerging Native designers, Ezhishin aims to facilitate conversations around the typographic needs of First Nation/Native American communities. PGDA will participate in “Panel IV: Archives,”

moderated by Neebin Southall, we'll join Menaja Ganesh from Letterform Archive, Jim Gerencser from the Carlisle Indian School Project, and Ryan Flahive from Institute of American Indian Arts.

October 29, 2022 from 3pm–4:30pm ET/2pm–3:30pm CT/12–1:30pm PT
Latinx Add-A-Thon

Una reunión comunitaria en zoom para ampliar la historia de Latinx Design. Zoom event hosted by Ramon Tejada.
A community meeting in zoom to expand the history of Latinx Design. Drop in anytime!

October 20, 2022, 10:30-11:35am, Room 611

Louise Sandhaus and Annabelle Gould will share a short overview of The People's Graphic Design Archive and the Design Teaching Resource. Then we'll demonstrate how educators can share projects on the Design Teaching Resource that use the People's Graphic Design Archive in the classroom.

This presentation is part of the 2022 AIGA National Conference in Seattle, Washington where the Design Educators Community will host SURFACE, a mini-conference.

September 3, 2022 from 12pm–3pm PT
Graphic Design Roadshow

This event invites the public to bring their own Punk and New Wave graphic design treasures to get historical information about their item and add it to The Archive.

Oct 5th, 2021
Rutgers University Department of Art & Design

with Louise Sandhaus

Open to public, details to come

September 20–24, 2021

with Brockett Horne, Briar Levit, and Louise Sandhaus

Details to come

Aug 2nd, 2021

Design History Emergency: Expanding and preserving graphic design history in our own backyard
with Brockett Horne, Briar Levit, and Louise Sandhaus

Jul 19th, 2021

with Brockett Horne

Jul 1st, 2021

Teaching with The People’s Graphic Design Archive Spotlight
with Louise Sandhaus

Jun 19th, 2021

The People’s Graphic Design Archive: A Walk-Thru
with Brockett Horne, Briar Levit, and Louise Sandhaus