Designer, Educator, and Filmmaker Briar Levit on Uncovering Untold Stories From Design History

“Design was not a solo thing done in a cafe. There were a lot of people that came together to make things happen.”

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University and graduate of Central St. Martins College of Art & Design. Originally from the California Bay Area, she was previously the Art Director of Bitch magazine as well as an independent book designer. Levit’s feature-length film, Graphic Means, is a documentary about graphic design production methods between the eras of the letterpress and the desktop computer. Her current work is focused on helping expand the design history canon to include lesser-heard stories, highlighting the work of women and people of color as well as previously-considered banal work yet still tells critical stories about design and the cultures at large. Together with Louise Sandhaus (CalArts) and Brockett Horne (MICA), she maintains The People’s Graphic Design Archive, a user-submitted archive of graphic design. This year, Levit is releasing her first book, a set of essays titled Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History, for Princeton Architectural Press. We caught up over the winter holidays to talk about her numerous projects, Russian Constructivist women, Soviet cartoons, and the value of a rewriting of design history. (Interview has been edited for brevity.)