Art Metropole

#15219

Strikethrough!: Typographic Messages of Protest

Date

2022

Publisher

Letterform Archive

Format

Monographs

ISBN

9781736863305

Size

20 × 25 × 3 cm

Length

280 pp

Genre

Typography, Activism, Graphic Design

In chapters exploring the many ways to voice dissent (RESIST!, VOTE!, STRIKE!, TEACH!, and LOVE!), Strikethrough charts a typographic chant of resistance across more than a century of protest graphics—from nineteenth-century antislavery broadsides to the colorful affiches of the Paris 1968 uprising, and from the revolutionary Black Panther newspaper to the public awareness posters of the AIDS crisis.

Author Silas Munro, cocreator of the first BIPOC-centered design history course, presents a vibrant collection of broadsides, signs, banners, posters, ephemera, and archival photographs, highlighting the vital roles of letterforms in messages of social change. Informed by Black musical traditions of call and response, Strikethrough amplifies design dialogues that echo across works by feminist, queer, and antiracist activists, anticolonial resisters, labor organizers, environmental defenders, and others. An introduction by Colette Gaiter, plus an essay on protest type and lettering by Stephen Coles and ten profiles of activist-designers including Corita Kent, Ben Shahn, Carlos Cortez, Favianna Rodriguez, and fierce pussy, dig deep into the storied legacies of graphic opposition.

Published in connection with Letterform Archive’s latest gallery exhibition, cocurated by Munro and Coles, this hardcover catalog features state-of-the-art color reproductions and stochastic printing, a custom typeface by Trés Seals based on historical protest lettering, and a bright five-color design by Munro’s design studio Polymode. Revealing how messages make their way to the masses via marker, screen print, spray paint, collage, and both physical and digital type, Strikethrough calls on us all to make our own demands for change.

Artists and designers include: Atelier Populaire, See Red Women’s Workshop, Carlos Cortez, Emory Douglas, Fierce Pussy, Ganzeer, Milton Glaser, Guerrilla Girls, Jenny Holzer, Corita Kent, Tibor Kalman, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., Herb Lubalin, Phase 2, Favianna Rodriguez, Ward Schumaker, Ben Shahn and Wes Wilson.