In the Classroom: Social Justice Posters: Books

A fresh look at typographic design as an art and as a storytelling device that expresses narratives, emotions, and voice Stretching the boundaries of typographic expression, Type Tells Tales is a sensational showcase of type that is integral to the message it conveys, with the capacity to emote, engage, and guide the reader from one thought to the next. Navigating the far reaches of graphic design, Steven Heller and Gail Anderson reveal how type can render a particular voice or multiple conversations, how letters in various shapes and sizes can guide the eye through dense information, and how type can become both content and illustration, as letters take the form of people, animals, cars, or planes. The book's 332 illustrations - including 290 in color - feature historical examples by F. T. Marinetti, Bruno Munari, and Francis Picabia, among others, as well as by contemporary designers such as Richard Eckersley, John Hendrix, Maira Kalman, and Corita Kent. The book firmly locates the letter in the realm of artistry, finding exciting common ground among the pursuits of design, illustration, writing, and typography. 

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia accompanies an exhibition of the same title examining the art, architecture and design of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. The catalogue surveys the radical experiments that challenged societal and professional norms while proposing new kinds of technological, ecological and political utopia. It includes the counter design proposals of Victor Papanek and the anti-design polemics of Global Tools; the radical architectural visions of Archigram, Superstudio, Haus Rucker Co and ONYX; the media-based installations of Ken Isaacs, Joan Hills and Mark Boyle and Helio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida; the experimental films of Jordan Belson, Bruce Conner and John Whitney; posters and prints by Emory Douglas, Corita Kent and Victor Moscoso; documentation of performances staged by the Diggers and the Cockettes; publications such as Oz Magazine and The Whole Earth Catalog and books by Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller; and much, much more. While the turbulent social history of the 1960s is well known, its cultural production remains comparatively under-examined. In this substantial volume, scholars explore a range of practices such as radical architectural and anti-design movements emerging in Europe and North America; the print revolution in the experimental graphic design of books, posters and magazines; and new forms of cultural practice that merged street theater and radical politics. Through a profusion of illustrations, interviews with figures including Gerd Stern and Michael Callahan of USCO, Gunther Zamp Kelp of Haus Rucker Co, Ken Isaacs, Ron Williams and Woody Rainey of ONYX, Franco Raggi of Global Tools, Tony Martin, Clark Richert and Richard Kallweit of Drop City, and new scholarly writings, this book explores the hybrid conjunction of the countercultural ethos and the modernist desire to fuse art and life.

The third book in a series from the seminal West Coast art and culture magazine, Juxtapoz Poster Art focuses on the art of screen print posters. In the past 10 years screen printing has ballooned in popularity and a new class of artists has emerged. These artists stepped away from the psychedelic posters of the '60s and developed their own aesthetic - incorporating everything from hand-drawn type to found objects. Their posters have become sought-after collector's items for art and music fans alike.

From band posters stapled to telephone poles to the advertisements hanging at bus shelters to the inspirational prints that adorn office walls, posters surround us everywhere--but do we know how they began? Telling the story of this ephemeral art form, Elizabeth E. Guffey reexamines the poster's roots in the nineteenth century and explores the relevance they still possess in the age of digital media. Even in our world of social media and electronic devices, she argues, few forms of graphic design can rival posters for sheer spatial presence, and they provide new opportunities to communicate across public spaces in cities around the globe.             Guffey charts the rise of the poster from the revolutionary lithographs that papered nineteenth-century London and Paris to twentieth-century works of propaganda, advertising, pop culture, and protest. Examining contemporary examples, she discusses Palestinian martyr posters and West African posters that describe voodoo activities or Internet con men, stopping along the way to uncover a rich variety of posters from the Soviet Union, China, the United States, and more. Featuring 150 stunning images, this illuminating book delivers a fresh look at the poster and offers revealing insights into the designs and practices of our twenty-first-century world.

By the spring of 1970, Americans were frustrated by continuing war in Vietnam and turmoil in the inner cities. Students on American college campuses opposed the war in growing numbers and joined with other citizens in ever-larger public demonstrations against the war. Some politicians--including Ronald Reagan, Spiro Agnew, and Richard Nixon--exploited the situation to cultivate anger against students. At the University of California at Berkeley, student leaders devoted themselves, along with many sympathetic faculty, to studying the war and working for peace. A group of art students designed, produced, and freely distributed thousands of antiwar posters. Posters for Peace tells the story of those posters, bringing to life their rhetorical iconography and restoring them to their place in the history of poster art and political street art. The posters are vivid, simple, direct, ironic, and often graphically beautiful. Thomas Benson shows that the student posters from Berkeley appealed to core patriotic values and to the legitimacy of democratic deliberation in a democracy--even in a time of war.

The best way to learn history is to visualise it! Since 1998, Josh MacPhee has commissioned and produced over 100 posters by over 80 artists that pay tribute to revolution, racial justice, women's rights, queer liberation, labour struggles and creative activism. These essential moments are presented as a visual tour through decades and across continents, from the perspective of some of the most interesting and socially engaged artists working today. Includes work by Cristy Road, Swoon, Nicole Schulman, Christopher Cardinale, Sabrina Jones, Eric Drooke and Klutch.