Women Graphic Designers: New Research

 

Wednesday, March 4

11:00 am - 12:15 pm

AB 110

 

Elizabeth Resnick, Professor Emerita and former Chairperson, Graphic Design Department, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston and Anne Berry, Professor and Director of the School of Design, University of Illinois Chicago, College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts will share examples of their recent publications, featuring the historical work of designers, including Jacqueline Casey, Lora Lamm, Bonnie MacLean, Sylvia Harris, Michele Washington, and Folayemi Wilson, among others.

 

Women Graphic Designers: Rebalancing the Canon is a book of compelling illustrated stories examining the resilient and determined lives of 44 women graphic designers — from Europe, Asia, North America, South America, South Africa, and Australia — who worked professionally from the twentieth through the early twenty-first century. Written by a stellar cohort of international design academics, practitioners, and design historians, each of the 42 stories weaves the disparate threads from a hidden history of women in graphic design through rigorous research, unpublished and published first and second-person encounters, and interviews, with the subjects, family members, or close associates. Each story unfolds through a chronological order of biographical and autobiographical events, revealing the invisible and making it visible.

 

One of the relatively few black design practitioners who came to prominence in the 1990s, designer, strategist, and educator Sylvia Harris is remembered for both her career achievements—co-founding the public information design firm Two Twelve and serving as creative director for the 2000 U.S. Census among them—and opening doors for newer generations of black and brown designers. Driven by a commitment to improve the lives of others, she was the embodiment of a true citizen designer.

 

Elizabeth Resnick, ed., Women Graphic Designers: Rebalancing the Canon (Bloomsbury, 2025).

 

Anne H. Berry, Kareem Collie, Penina Acayo Laker, Lesley-Ann Noel, Jennifer Rittner, and Kelly Walters, eds., The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression & Reflection (Allworth Press, 2022).

 

Supported by the Elizabeth Allen Visiting Lectures in Art History Series

School of Art and Design, Northern Illinois University

Free and open to the public. Contact: rhouze@niu.edu