Celebrating the African-American Practitioners Absent From Way Too Many Classroom Lectures by Madeleine Morley, Eye on Design, 2018, Typography as a Radical Act in an Industry Ever-dominated by White Men by Silas Munro, Eye on Design, 2019 and Design Gets More Diverse by Alice Rawsthorn, NYTimes, 2011
Questions/Prompts
Here are the questions to which you should respond in your reading response. Be sure to reference and cite the three essays, but form and share your own opinions too.
- What stood out to you the most in this week’s readings?
- How do we change the commercial design field to include a diversity of voices and visions?
- What will the commercial design field and the study of design history look like in 20 years?
Response
What stood out to me the most in this week’s readings is the more we are able to research and go back to older times, the more I realize how much things from a different culture were hidden due to art and design mostly being populated by white people to take titles as “famous starters of the art world”. Based on my reading in Madeleine Morley’s article, A handful of African-American designers stem from white companies as their starting point. A lot of methods or skills had origins coming from black artists or even other types of races. Skills and letterforms have a story for their creation. But it has been mostly completely overshadowed by white creators as if they were the ones to have been the ones to come up with it. “I can’t help but suspect their experience informed their understanding of design, and that they were unaware of designers that came before them like Reginald Gammon and Grafton Tyler Brown.” (Morley 5)
How we can change the commercial design field to include a diversity of voices and visions by not only further digging into past artists to put them in their deserved spotlight, but also to shine more light on other creators that are usually shoved to the side. Tre Seals had created typefaces that reflect more diverse perspectives after noticing there was a severe lack of them. if no one else has done it, he decided that it was going to be himself to open that kind of door. ““This is a type foundry for creatives of color who feel they don’t have a say in their industry. This is for the creative women who feel they don’t have a say in their industry.” (Munro 2)
The commercial design field and the study of design history will have a drastically different look for the next 20 years. More designers are reaching for more diverse options instead of depending on white-focused companies, all it will take is to be the one to keep expanding that kind of spread. However, consumers also have an impact on this kind of development, it tends to vary in reaction if they don’t bother looking behind the design and why it even exists the first time instead of just accepting the style “If consumers understood design half as much as they understand technology, they’d be able to make better conscious (and possibly world-changing) decisions,” (Munro 13)
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