A richly illustrated book focused on Black designers, how they shaped the history of modern design, and how their designs in turn influenced modern Black life.
In 20th-century Chicago, generations of Black artisans, craftspeople, art educators, clothing makers, commercial illustrators, sign painters, furniture makers, beauticians, graphic designers, art directors and screen printers made and remade the city into an energetic center for modern design. Ambitious, enterprising and resolutely modern, these Black designers were workers and intellectuals, activists and entrepreneurs. They created works for commercial and everyday use and helped to build community institutions such as the South Side Community Art Center and businesses like the Johnson Publishing Company. Their works ranged from branding and housewares for major corporations to pamphlets and posters made in the name of civil rights and Black Power. Together, they made Black Chicago into a dynamic design scene, working against racism in their professions while embracing the possibilities of design as a medium of social change.
This book is the first to chronicle their collective history while also celebrating their influence on design as well as African American culture more broadly. Based on extensive archival research and building on a major 2018 exhibition, “Black Designers in Chicago” presents essays by experts in African-American history and design. The book features illustrations of a stunning variety of works—from graphic design to screenprints to textiles and household wares—placing African Americans at the center of modern design history, while highlighting the role of design in the cultural history of Black Chicago.
Reviews
“Like the city of Chicago, this master work shows as much as it tells about the central role of Black creatives in the making of the modern design industry and its aesthetic. From the book’s typography to the text itself, we get to see and feel the force of Chicago’s South Side hiding in plain sight, on the history and future of the point at which commerce meets creativity.” — Davarian L. Baldwin, author of “Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life”
“This exhaustively researched and astonishingly textured chronicle treats design not only as a set of objects with representational value, but also, thrillingly, in relation to the social worlds in which it works and the world-making it enacts. Centering artisans, craftspeople, commercial artists, and other makers, ‘Black Designers in Chicago’ introduces exciting new figures and offers fresh, nuanced perspective on the dynamic interplay between entrepreneurship, creativity, and revolution in modern design and modern life.” — Maggie Taft, author of “The Chieftain and the Chair: The Rise of Danish Design in Postwar America”
“’Black Designers in Chicago’ celebrates the makers who shaped the look and lived experience of modern Black life through the lens of the city of Chicago and its people. Dingwall, Hartt, and Schulman bring their work to life―bold, soulful, and rooted in community―revealing how design can be a transformational force that shapes identity, expression, and collective possibility.” — Silas Munro, author of “Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest”
About the authors
Chris Dingwall is an assistant professor of design history in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He was co-curator of “African American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce, and the Politics of Race” at the Chicago Cultural Center.
David Hartt lives and works in Philadelphia, where he is an artist and associate professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. He was the exhibition designer of “African American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce, and the Politics of Race” at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Daniel Schulman is executive director and curator of the Statsinger Cohen Foundation in Chicago. He was co-curator of “African American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce, and the Politics of Race” at the Chicago Cultural Center and director of visual art for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.