Collab & Consult

Cuba and Puerto Rico are the two wings of a bird, they receive flowers and bullets over the same heart. —Lola Rodriguez de Tió The poster—an important medium for social, political, cultural, and economic communication—was adopted in the twentieth century by two prominent Caribbean nations, Puerto Rico and Cuba, governed under opposite political systems. The visual languages of Puerto Rican and Cuban carteles represent the historic reality of the "sister islands" as they struggle to define their identities within two contrasting political relationships with the United States: the colonial status of Puerto Rico and the United States' embargo against Cuba.

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The flag of Puerto Rico features five horizontal stripes in blue, red, and white. The flag is recolored with a digital vibrancy.

Caribbean Contrast: Puerto Rican and Cuban carteles and their representation of distinct political relationships with the United States

with José R. Menéndez
Cuba and Puerto Rico are the two wings of a bird, they receive flowers and bullets over the same heart. —Lola Rodriguez de Tió The poster—an important medium for social, political, cultural, and economic communication—was adopted in the twentieth century...

Previous Workshops

A painting with 4 figures, one of them being a baby. On the left we see a dark older woman raising her hands in relief. A lighter and younger woman sits next to her. It can be assumed they are related. She holds a baby with pink white flesh. There is a man sitting next to her smiling.

On Queerness & Race in Brazilian Art & Design

with Anna Parisi, Juan Pablo Rahal, Silas Munro
Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, is “full of potential and imagination.” It is a land brimming with regional customs and traditions and multiple histories and encounters both clash and coalesce. This pair of lectures dig through layers of...

Free

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A display of Libros para el Pueblo book covers from Libros para el Pueblo, published in Puerto Rico, 1949-1960s

Diseñando Identidad: Community Education, Design, and Politics in Puerto Rico

with Laura Rossi García, Jason Alejandro
In the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Rico’s first elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín, developed a radical educational program that leveraged design, film, and art to provide basic education for predominantly rural Puerto Rican communities. DIVEDCO (the Division of Community Education), a...

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Zoomed in photo of a mural. At the bottom of the mural is 7 bodies that are emerging from the dirt. The full body is not shown, just bits and pieces. Above we can see a bird made of red and yellow light spreading its wings. A naked female figure and a figure suited in metal knight clothes look at it. They also stare left, where the back of a woman is seen, Her pose looks like she is praying with arms raised. She is facing a mechanical structure that has various flags above it.

Arte y Diseño Latinx: Comunicación Cotidiana

with Ramon Tejada, Carlos Avila
Comunicacion Cotidiana is a hybrid conversation that analyses the distinct ways in which people in Latin America use imagery, typography, and local materials to communicate with distinctive nuances that reflect keen awareness of audience, location, and language. In our Charla/Chat, we...

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A diagram with a photo on the left side labeled A, and an illustration on the right labeled B. A. is an aerial photograph of an African settlement. From the top view we see swirls in how the buildings have been mapped out across the land. B. illustrated the fractal pattern that the settlement has composed.

Radical Design Pedagogy: Towards an Autochthonic Black Aesthetic for Graphic Design Pedagogy

with Audrey Bennett
Since Cheryl D Holmes Miller's 1987 Black Designer's Missing in Action, there have been far too many calls for increased access and visibility of Black folx in Graphic Design education and the field at large. In 1998, Sylvia Harris offered educators...

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Billboard featuring the phrase "There Are Black People in the Future" the letters are all capitalized in a white color, on an all black background. It highlights Black representation, empowerment and hope.

Behind and Ahead of the Times: Histories and Futures of Black Futurity

with Lauren Williams, Silas Munro
The Black experience(s) in the United States cannot easily be extracted from how we are collectively situated in time: it is shaped simultaneously by the weight of past and present oppressions and the precarity of our futures. White supremacy would...

Free

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Poster for the Kips Bay Boys Club in 1982 by Buddy Esquire. The poster is on yellowed paper, its design is ornate featuring graphic elements as frames for text and photo. The style is reminiscent of the art deco style. At least 3 different fonts are used on the poster, a sans serif for smaller information, cooper black for known performer names, and another display font that has swashes on some of the letterforms. The poster is visually loud, and organized.

Funk, Blaxploitation, & Hip Hop Aesthetics

with Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton, Pierre Bowins, Silas Munro
From the bass heavy riffs of Curtis Mayfield’s SuperFly 1973 soundtrack to the scratch and synthesized Brox rhythms of 1970s and 1980s DJ’s like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash—the histories of Black music and Black design have been intermixed. Many scholars have foregrounded Phase...

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The cover of Ebony magazine from August 1969. The Ebony logo is featured top left, white letters all capitalized encased in a red rectangle. Huey Newton is the subject of the cover. His likeness is painted with black and various shades of grey. The brushstrokes are large, the colors are painted purposefully splotchy. The title of this issue reads “The Black Revolution’.

Black Revolutions: Organizing the Production of Black Design

with Chris Dingwall
The cover of the August 1969 issue of Ebony declared the age of The Black Revolution. As a commodity, however, the issue of Ebony embodied the ethos of Black capitalism. The flagship publication of the Johnson Publishing Company, was the largest Black-owned...

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A green book cover with black text and a decorative frame. In the top left and right corners of the frame it reads “EST 1936”, and “1940 edition. Centered starting from the top of the frame is the title of the book, “The Negro Motorist Green Book”. Under the title is an illustrated scroll with the words “hotels, taverns, garages, night clubs, restaurants, service stations, automotive, tourist homes, road houses, barber ships, beauty parlors”, and ”prepared in cooperation with the United States travel bureau” under the scroll. Victor H. Green is the publisher of the book, it was twenty-five cents at the time of its release.

Iterative Identity: Art Deco, World’s Fair, and American Limits on Humanity

with Omari Souza
One of the key promises of the American Dream made by the automobile industry in the 1930s–1950s was the individual freedom of a car owner on an open road. This was marketed with innovations in advertising, exhibition design, and product...

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Historical Black and White sign reading “I AM A MAN”. It is now yellowed with time. The typeface on it is Thick, the forms feel long. “AM” is underlined.

Strikethrough: Typography Messages of Protest for Civil Rights

with Colette Gaiter
In the 1960s and 1970s of this country, everyday activists took to the streets with placards in their raised arms with urgent messages made visible in typographic form. This selection of protest graphics will focus on a Black experience. However,...

Free

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An abstract painting that shows three young black girls wearing dresses, stretching their arms to write numbers on a chalk board. The chalkboard has a bluish tone, the background is brown. One girl wears a reddish brown dress, another in yellow, and the last girl is in light blue.

The Great Migration: Harlem Artists Guild, and the 306 Group

with Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton
The harsh impact of Jim Crow laws in the South of the United States triggered a mass exodus of  Southern Black Americans to northern cities seeking equality and economic opportunity. Cities like Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia were well known...

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A book cover with a deep violet background, featuring red decorative elements. It reads “FIRE!! Devoted To Younger Negro Artists” The bottom of the cover has triangles as a decorative framing device. Between the text and triangles is a silhouette of a sphinx. It is framed by two abstract shapes on each side of it.

Black Queer Stories in Print: 19th Century to the Harlem Renaissance

with Jon Key, Silas Munro
In the 1830’s The Sun Newspaper ran a story never shared before in print: a man by day and woman by night who was on trial in New York for theft. Mary Jones/Peter Sewally was one of the earliest known...

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A spiral illustration featuring red, yellow, and blue lines. It Reads “Assessed Value of Household and Kitchen Furniture Owned By Georgia Negroes.” All the lines represent real data from a study. Each line represents a year, staring at 1875, and increasing by 5 until 1900. The digram shows that from 1875 - 1900 the amount of Black people who owned furniture grew exponentially, one can assume probably the quality of furniture owned also increased as time went on.

Black Data: W.E.B. Du Bois and Data Visualization

with Jason Forrest, Silas Munro
Known for being a prolific author, renowned sociologist, fierce civil rights advocate for people of color, founder of the NAACP, and historian, WEB Du Bois was also a pioneer of data visualization. The American Negro was one initiative of the...

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A Music sheet cover with 3 black human figures wearing suits illustrated as minstrels. They are smiling, 2 carrying canes. Their poses look as if they are in a smooth walking stride. On the top third in a red block with white text outlined by a green stroke it reads, “The coontown chappie”. Below the block on the left side in the same black color as the figures skin, it reads “march and two step” and the right side reads “ composed by Chas Russell”

Blackface and Minstrelsy Tradition

with Kelly Walters
This lecture will explore a brief history of Black representation as it appears in music publishing during the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. Following Emancipation, White entertainers and musicians adopted Black stereotypes into minstrel show performances. Minstrel shows...

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Historical handbill advertisement for an abolitionist lecture. It reads “OUTRAGE. Fellow citizens. An ABOLITIONIST of the most revolting character is among you, exciting the feelings of the north against the south. A seditious lecture is to be delivered THIS EVENING. At seven o’clock, at the Presbyterian Church in Cannon-street. You are requested to attend and unite in putting down and silencing by peaceable means this tool of evil and fanaticism. Let the rights of the states guaranteed by the constitution be protected. Feb 27,1837. The Union Forever!

Designing Emancipation

with Pierre Bowins
From the early 1830s to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation outlawing slavery in 1863, Boston was the center of the American anti-slavery movement. Organizations such as the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society posted broadsides throughout the city to publicize the day’s...

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A mural on the side of a building in Los Angeles. The mural shows La Virgen de Guadalupe appearing in front of a farmer who sits at a stream. In the background there is cacti, cows, and plowed farmland with mountains in the distance.

Pecha Kucha: Latinx Diaspora in America

with MJ Balvanera, Pilar Castillo, Roberto Rodriguez, Shannon Doronio (Chavez)
In a Pecha Kucha format we examine four distinct perspectives on design by Latinx designers with roots in Latin America and Los Angeles. The talks include: Pilar Castillo — Plantation to Paradise, Designing the Caribbean: explores the role of design and advertising...

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A digital artwork showing the Aztec Goddess Coatlicue. She is a green and yellow snake figure with a necklace composed of 4 hands and a skull. The snake motif is used throughout her clothing, with snake head shoulder pads, a skirt composed of snakes, wrapped by a 2 headed snake belt. and snake boots with teeth at the end where toes would be located.

Some Theoretical Considerations in Reading Latin American Design History

with Ahmed Ansari
A talk in two parts focusing on certain conceptual and theoretical considerations in response to reading design histories of Latin America. Through the lenses of Latin American philosophers, critical theorists, and writers, we will make observations on local art, design,...

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A red, yellow green, and greyish blue artwork. In the center illustrated in red are small figures of people head to toe stacked on top of each other in a boat shape, referencing the Brooks slave ship diagram. Semi transparent colors overlay on top of the ship. Within the art is a frame of thick lines for decorative purposes. Dots also show up on the right edge as a decorative framing device

Systems of Slavery and White Supremacy

with Ziddi Msangi
Slavery was a designed system that expanded into a mechanized and colonial tool of European empires. The proliferation of design products marketed to Africans on the continent, such as the Dutch wax prints of the company now known as Vlisco,...

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A tan leather colored bark-cloth with dark brown lines dividing the cloth into square sections, with various motifs composed of lines inside of them.

Afrikan Alphabets & African Diasporic Design Lineage

with Saki Mafundikwa
Counter to colonial notions of the savage or primitive African, there is a complex, rich and multi-cultural history of African design. From the research of graphic designer Saki Mafundikwa on Afrikan alphabets and graphic languages, this opening video will set...