History of Communications Design/
Graphic Design and Illustration
Engaging with subjects from early moveable type to data storytelling on social media, this course charts a history of graphic design and illustration through recurring themes in its production, consumption, and reception. We investigate graphic design and illustration fields’ relationship to their diverse cultural, economic, and political, contexts. Weekly classes foreground the role of designers and illustrators, as well as their clients, critics, and historians, in occupying and mediating positions of social power.
From left to right: El Lissitzky, illustration from About Two Squares, 1922, book. Maya Jay Varadaraj, It Was All Touch and Go for a While, 2020. W.E.B. Du Bois, Assessed value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Georgia Negroes, 1920, chart for the Negro Exhibit of the American Section at the Paris Exposition Universelle.