Incomplet Design History
37 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 months ago - ★★★★★ - 6 ratingsThe nature of history is that it is never “complete”, new information is gained every day that changes our understanding an interpretations of history. The mission of Incomplete Design History is to explore areas of graphic design history that are overlooked or ignored; to expand our knowledge in the field and to include all sides of the story. Incomplete design history seeks to be inclusive, inclusive not only of people but of ideas and technologies that advance the field of graphic design. History is messy. History is incomplete.
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Episodes
Clip Art
December 07, 2023 06:00 - 19 minutes - 18.2 MBFrom its origins in the 1950s from the pages of books to software like MacDraw in the 1980s to CD Roms, and finally moving online in the 1990s, Clip Art’s evolution took place along with that of graphic design. Even though clip art was mostly created by unnamed designers and illustrators and sold in packages or libraries, there are many important figures we know of whose clip art contributed to the history of graphic design. Joan Shogren, an early computer art pioneer and clip art designer; ...
When Book Design Gets Weird
November 30, 2023 06:00 - 21 minutes - 19.9 MBMost books, not all, but most, follow conventions of book design that have been in place for literally hundreds of years. With very few exceptions, it wasn’t until the 1960s when authors began to play around with story structure that there were any books that also played with the structure of the book itself. And it was later still that graphic design started adding another layer to the storytelling in popular literature. The colors, the typography, the page layouts all came to be used in se...
Tarot Decks
November 23, 2023 06:00 - 37 minutes - 33.9 MBThe History of Tarot decks intersects with symbology, or the study of symbols as well as their history, mass production of text and images, and popular culture, all of which are fields of study in the history of graphic design, and yet this subject has not been included in mainstream histories of design. Is this a reflection of the mystical, romanticized history of the cards, and one that implies a connection to divination or fortune telling? It is also a history that connects with the histo...
Representation
November 16, 2023 06:00 - 20 minutes - 18.9 MBThe history of graphic design has traditionally skewed toward designers from white hegemony. Where white men (and some women) tend to fill the pages, webpages, and galleries that celebrate design. As humanity evolves, we must realize the value of making space for more diverse voices in the design world. This episode elevates Black designers who have successfully fought against the forces of white supremacy and oppression to take back control of representation. Starting with Abolitionist broa...
George Herriman & Krazy Kat
November 09, 2023 06:00 - 22 minutes - 21 MBGeorge Herriman was a cartoonist, illustrator, and pioneer of the cartoon comics genre, and is perhaps most known for his long-running and wildly popular comic strip Krazy Kat. Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, and John Jacob Astor, a wealthy business tycoon, were some of the famous fans of Herriman’s comics. Astor went so far as to name his dog Ignatz for the mouse that was Krazy Kat’s constant companion. Herriman’s work was not only popular but also influential and ...
T.C. Cannon
November 02, 2023 05:00 - 22 minutes - 20.5 MBAn indigenous cowboy-artist from small-town Oklahoma, Tommy Wayne Cannon was born to Caddo and Kiowa parents in the Fall of 1946. Growing up he attended school in Gracemont and took an interest in the arts. As an adolescent, Cannon was self-taught in the arts and entered his works in regional art competitions through the Southern Plains Indian Museum. His success in these competitions, as well as his proficiency in multiple mediums, won him a scholarship to the Institute of American Indian A...
Women in Book Design
October 26, 2023 05:00 - 28 minutes - 26.4 MBWomen have long been a part of bookmaking, design, and publishing, dating as far back as handmade illuminated manuscripts, created before the printing press. In the 18th and 19th centuries, women were known to run some very successful book binderies, including Jane Steel, Katherine Waghorn, Jane Aitken, and Lorina Watkins. Most often women took over when their husbands or fathers died. Other women supported their husbands' work by setting type, such as Bertha Goudy, wife of noted book and ty...
Underground Comix Part 2
October 19, 2023 05:00 - 29 minutes - 26.9 MBIf it seems like the underground comix scene was a raucous and raunchy boys club, that’s fairly accurate. However, there were plenty of women artists who reacted against the sexist depictions of women in comix, of which there was plenty. Their complaints about how women were being portrayed was seen to be just more censorship heaped on the male comix artists. Rather than just be quiet and go away, women like Trina Robbins, Willy Mendes, Linda Barry, Mary Fleener, and many others started draw...
Underground Comix Part 1
October 12, 2023 05:00 - 35 minutes - 32.3 MBComix, spelled with an x at the end instead of c, is a uniquely American movement and brings to mind eccentric, explicit, and subversive comics aimed at an adult audience. Having roots in the explicit Tijuana Bibles of the 1920, the lurid horror comics produced by EC, and the later wackiness of MAD Magazine, Comix creators defied censorship laws and American moral standards to create their unique artistic visions and thrived as a part of the Counterculture movement of the 1960s. In some resp...
Yolanda Margarita López
October 05, 2023 05:00 - 22 minutes - 20.3 MBDuring the 1960s, the Chicano Movement or "El Movimiento" gave way for Chicano artists, designers, and printmakers to emerge. The Chicano Movement united Chicanos, Americans of Mexican heritage who chose that label, in a new shared identity to fight for social and political empowerment. One of the creatives that made their mark in support of this movement was Yolanda Margarita López, a feminist painter, printmaker, educator, and film producer. She was best known for her works focusing on the...
Black Film Posters
September 28, 2023 05:00 - 27 minutes - 25 MBThere is a rich history of Black films and filmmaking in the United States that stems from the history of segregation, which created a need for separate films for separate audiences. Since mainstream Hollywood ignored Black audiences, Black filmmakers took the lead in making all Black or “colored” cast films for their audiences. These films have become known as race films. The goal was to shoot films for and about Black folks that were positive and uplifting, to counteract the stereotyped po...
Edward Gorey
September 21, 2023 05:00 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBEdward Gorey was probably best known as an author and illustrator of more than 100 books in his lifetime. Collector's items today, his books have become icons in and of themselves, darkly humorous and humorously dark. The books defied genres and publishers sometimes had a hard time determining how to market them. They were illustrated yes, but the dark and sometimes gruesome tales certainly weren’t children's books. This contribution was undoubtedly significant, but this was not the limit of...
Black Panther Newsletter
December 01, 2022 06:00 - 26 minutes - 24.7 MBThe Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The Black Panther Party was founded during the turbulent times of the sixties that saw many changes in America. Newton at first led the party with an ideology called their Ten Point Program, and with the idea that arming Black communities was essential for their protection and survival. Through community assistance programs and armed community patrols to prevent police bruta...
Harmon Foundation
November 24, 2022 06:00 - 17 minutes - 16.3 MBIn 1922 William Harmon, a white real estate mogul from Ohio, started the Harmon foundation which, among other things, supported Black artists. His hope for the foundation was that it would help these artists gain recognition and help them to sell their work, regardless of their skin color. The foundation organized exhibitions and awards for Black artists, all with the explicit intent to stimulate their success. Despite its good intentions, the foundation met with criticism from the Black com...
Poster Design of the Islamic Revolution
November 17, 2022 06:00 - 29 minutes - 26.7 MBPosters as political tools are nothing new. In the Middle East, two revolutionary movements led to some of the most potent and vibrant posters in design history. The Iranian Revolution and the expulsion of Palestinians due to civil war and the continued fight to reclaim Palestinian homelands from Israel. These posters effectively gave voice to the struggles of ordinary people resisting the influence and meddling of various Western powers. For Iran, that meant keeping the dream of an Islamic ...
Sylvia Harris
November 10, 2022 06:00 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBSylvia Harris has been described as a public designer, her own words, and a citizen designer, but whatever you want to call it, Harris was dedicated to designing for the good of the people. She was committed to creating designs that helped people to navigate their world. Harris grew up in Richmond, Virginia where she experienced the desegregation of her school, which likely had a significant impact on her entire life. As a Black designer who was educated and entrenched in modernist design p...
BIPOC Racial Caricatures in Branding & Design
November 03, 2022 05:00 - 23 minutes - 21.7 MBThere is a long history of racism behind famous brands, characters, and design that often goes unnoticed. Blatantly racist caricatures began with minstrel shows and the use of blackface, where white actors would use black makeup and overdrawn lips to depict Black people. These drove stereotypes that would be used in film, television, and branding. White actors depicted other minorities in an ill manner. From Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese man, Mr. Yunioshi, to Claudia Cardinale playing Ind...
Abolitionist Newspapers
October 27, 2022 05:00 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBThe birth of the Black newspaper in America took place in the form of abolitionist newspapers that spoke out against enslavement. These papers were an essential part of the Abolitionist movement in America, and many of them gave the Black community an important voice on issues that directly affected them and their communities. These newspapers spread Enlightenment-era ideas of equality and the rights of Black Americans and fought back against the negative and disparaging news that was regula...
Harriet Tubman & the $20 Bill
October 20, 2022 05:00 - 26 minutes - 24.1 MBThis episode considers the 2016 proposal to place the likeness of Harriet Tubman on the U.S. $20 bill. The first use of paper money dates back to 1000 CE and has been cited as the first instance of widespread access to printed images. Money is an invented concept, it has value because societies collectively agree that it does, but historically images, symbols, and seals have been used to help authenticate money within the culture that it serves. Images of gods, monarchs and historical figure...
Angel De Cora (Hinook-Mahiwi-Kalinaka)
October 13, 2022 05:00 - 25 minutes - 23.6 MBAngel De Cora was an artist, illustrator, and educator from the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Around the age of 14, she was enrolled in the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute as a part of the U.S. Government’s cultural assimilation program for Indigenous American youth. While at Hampton, she found her love for art. She went on to study under notable artists such as Dwight W. Tryon at Smith College and Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute. De Cora was later featured in Harper’s Monthly Magaz...
Ebony & BLK Magazine
October 06, 2022 05:00 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBJohn H. Johnson was the man driving the publishing empire that included Ebony, Jet, Tan, and Ebony Jr. Black-owned abolitionist newspapers certainly predated all of Johnson’s publications, however, Ebony was the first mainstream news and culture magazine by and for Black Americans. Much like its predecessors, Johnson’s magazines pushed back against the negative images and stereotypes of Black Americans found in many other papers and magazines. Ebony was inspired by LIFE magazine and printed ...
Sequoyah & The Cherokee Syllabary
September 29, 2022 05:00 - 29 minutes - 26.9 MBThere are not a lot of definitive details known about the life of Sequoyah and what information we do have is often conflicting, like was his anglicized name George Guess or George Gist? Did he possibly go by both? Sequoyah has been called an enigmatic figure and a genius because despite all unknowns about his life, what most historians can and do agree on is that he is the sole creator of the Cherokee Alphabet. The alphabet is more accurately called a syllabary, and Sequoyah is the only fig...
Afrikan Alphabets
September 22, 2022 05:00 - 21 minutes - 19.5 MBOften the images and fonts meant to Africa are stereotypical and reduce the diversity and complexity of a vast continent to simplified imagery and types. Like Rudolf Koch’s typeface Neuland, used in the logo for Disney’s The Lion King, which wasn’t even supposed to be representative of anything other than Koch’s own religious fervor. The origin and development of typography in Africa is far more diverse and interesting. It is also, unfortunately, inextricably tied to the colonization of the ...
Acee Blue Eagle
September 15, 2022 05:00 - 24 minutes - 22.5 MBAn indigenous artist from Oklahoma, Alex C. Mackintosh was born in 1907 with Creek and Scottish ancestry. He attended the Chilocco federal Boarding school for Native Americans in Newkirk Oklahoma, it was there that he took on the name Acee Blue Eagle to honor his heritage. The name “Blue Eagle” was reportedly from his mother’s family; this matrilineal approach to last names is traditional and accepted in many indigenous cultures. After graduating from Chilocco he would go on to attend the Ba...
Eiko Ishioka
November 25, 2021 06:00 - 17 minutes - 16 MBEiko Ishioka was a graphic, costume, and set designer. She was born July 12, 1938 in Tokyo, Japan. Growing up, her life always fused western and Japanese culture. She graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1960 and immediately started working for the largest cosmetic company in Japan, Shiseido. There she revolutionized the poster with her bold use of diverse models and progressive feminist messages that defied tradition. Ishioka later worked as a creative dire...
Margo Chase
November 18, 2021 06:00 - 12 minutes - 11.1 MBMargo Chase became a graphic designer almost by accident. In college, Chase was determined to become a veterinarian and in an attempt to get a higher GPA, signed up for a graphic design course. She discovered her love of solving problems creatively and attempted to combine her two loves of science and design by getting a masters degree in medical illustration. Chase realized she wouldn’t have the creative freedom she wanted and dropped out of school to become a full time designer. Some of he...
Jacqueline Casey
November 11, 2021 06:00 - 14 minutes - 13.7 MBJacqueline Casey was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1927 and grew up with a passion for art. While her parents encouraged her to study bookkeeping, she pursued art against their wishes by entering the Massachusetts College of Art. It was at MassArt that Casey met and befriended Muriel Cooper. In 1949, Casey graduated from MassArt with a degree in fashion design and illustration. She entered the workforce which was very gradually becoming more accepting of women and worked in fashion desig...
Bonnie MacLean
November 04, 2021 05:00 - 16 minutes - 15.3 MBBonnie MacLean’s story has rather humble beginnings. She was largely a self-taught artist and graphic designer. Originally from Philadelphia, she relocated to San Francisco in 1963, during a pivotal time in US history. MacLean started her career as an assistant to Bill Graham before he began working as a concert promoter for the Filmore. She would eventually take over as the in-house poster designer from Wes Wilson, who is often cited as a strong influence on MacLean’s work. Her previous des...
Bonnie Maclean
November 04, 2021 05:00 - 16 minutes - 15.3 MBBonnie Maclean’s story has rather humble beginnings. She was largely a self taught artist and graphic designer. Originally from Philadelphia, she relocated to San Francisco in 1963, during a pivotal time in US history. Maclean started her career as an assistant to Bill Graham before he began working as a concert promoter for the Filmore. She would eventually take over as the in-house poster designer from Wes Wilson, who is often cited as a strong influence on MacLean’s work. Her previous des...
Ray Eames
October 28, 2021 05:00 - 17 minutes - 15.8 MBRay Eames was a graphic designer and abstract artist at the height of the post war era. She studied abstract art with Hans Hoffman for six years before meeting and moving to California with her husband, Charles Eames, in 1941. Ray was not professionally trained as a designer but was deeply involved in the design process. She combined her abstract sensibilities with her interest in structure and form. The Eames are most well-known for developing molded plywood chairs and other furniture that ...
Louise Jefferson
October 21, 2021 05:00 - 15 minutes - 14.2 MBLouise Jefferson was a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, and civil rights activist. Born in Washington, DC, Jefferson spent much of her career in Harlem, New York. It was there that she became the first female African-American art director in publishing. While working as the art director for the Friendship Press, she also did freelance work for civil rights publications such as Opportunity (which encouraged young Black writers) and Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP. Sh...
Elaine Lustig Cohen
October 14, 2021 05:00 - 14 minutes - 13.4 MBElaine Lustig Cohen got an unconventional start as a graphic designer. After deciding not to pursue a career in art education, she began working as an assistant to her first husband, noted modernist designer Alvin Lustig. Her early work in the industry was far from glamorous, as she was mostly doing paste-up and assembling Alvin’s designs. She described her position as more of an “office slave”. As Alvin began to lose his sight due to complications with diabetes, he began to rely on Elaine a...
Deborah Sussman
October 07, 2021 05:00 - 13 minutes - 12.6 MBDeborah Sussman is known as a leader of environmental graphic design, a relatively new field at the time that had a surprising number of women leading the charge. Sussman had a passion for the arts and attended some of the finest art and design institutions in the nation, including the Black Mountain College, the Institute of Design in Chicago, and Bard College in NYC. Sussman interned at the Eames office then later started her own successful design studio with her husband Paul Prejza, Sussm...
Tomoko Miho
September 30, 2021 05:00 - 13 minutes - 12.2 MBTomoko Miho was a Japanese-American graphic and industrial designer. Born Tomoko Kawakami in 1931 in Los Angeles, California, she learned her first design principles from the family flower business. Tomoko lived in LA until her family was forcibly interned in 1942. The Kawakami family spent three years of their lives imprisoned without reason or evidence at the Gila River War Relocation Center. Like most internment camps, Gila River was overcrowded and unhygienic, conditions that contributed...
Mary Blair
September 23, 2021 05:00 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBMary Blair was a fine artist, commercial artist, concept artist, and Disney Imagineer. After graduating from Chouinard and marrying Lee Blair, Mary was set to build a career as a regionalist watercolor painter like her husband. Due to World War 2, fine art was not working out, and the two entered the world of commercial art and animation. Both landed positions at Ub Iwerks Studio. In 1940, Blair joined Walt Disney studios as a sketch artist. The job frustrated her, and she quit shortly after...
Bea Feitler
September 16, 2021 05:00 - 12 minutes - 11.1 MBBea Feitler was a graphic designer, art director, educator, and a mentor to young professionals. Originally from Brazil, Feitler eventually found her home in New York City and made a name for herself in the magazine industry. Early on in her career she was named co-art director of Harper’s Bazaar along with Ruth Ansel—both having served as graphic designers under art director Marvin Israel (1924–85) who had been one of Feitler’s instructors at Parsons. Known for taking chances, Feitler and A...
Varvara Stepanova
September 09, 2021 05:00 - 14 minutes - 13.6 MBVarvara Stepanova was a leader of the constructivist movement and co-author of the constructivist manifesto. Described as “a frenzied artist,” she designed books, magazines, posters, advertisements, as well as textiles, clothing, and costumes. On top of that, she was an author and poet. Her design style and aesthetic was avant garde, modern, and often characterized by simplicity and geometric forms and patterns, but Varvara was never content with stasis. She constantly evolved her style and ...