Written by Tatiana Schlossberg To those of us who don’t design anything, it’s easy never to think about design at all. If the design is good, then we probably don’t even see it because it’s too intuitive or easy to use or we are too distracted by the elegance or beauty to imagine that a...
Designers can find inspiration from varying forms of creative expression. Looking at the batik murals of the American artist and designer Lydia Bush-Brown (1887–1984), her sources seemed clear. Sketches capturing scenes from her travel in the 1920s to Syria and Italy can be found repeatedly in her work. Murals featuring Syrian villages on terraced hills,...
What emoji do you use to represent yourself? For Rayouf Alhumedhi in 2015, at the time a 15-year-old Saudi student living in Berlin, there wasn’t an emoji to represent her. Rayouf is Muslim and wears a hijab. In a group chat, each of Rayouf’s friends (who don’t wear headscarves) used the female emoji to represent...
Art Sims (American, born 1954) has designed graphics across entertainment media, but his most famous and prolific work is that for film posters. His collaboration with Academy Award–winning filmmaker Spike Lee (American, born 1957), in particular, has produced some of his most iconic designs. Sims was first drawn to Lee’s work after seeing Lee’s first...
Broadside: A single sheet of paper printed on one side only. For centuries, broadsides were a popular ephemeral format for distributing news, announcements, advertisements, or commentary in the form of ballads. Between 1966 and 1975, Broadside Press in Detroit, Michigan published 81 books and dozens of poetry broadsides written and designed by Black writers and...
Graphic design serves a powerful role in establishing the visual identity of theatrical performance. Cooper Hewitt’s collection offers highlights of graphic design for the work of Black playwrights and composers. Narratives addressing riots and rage; exploring triumph, history, and oppression; or featuring funk, soul, and divas interact with typography, image, and space to tell a...
Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy (who died in 2010) was an artist, designer, and activist. Cooper Hewitt is collecting album covers designed by this important designer, who contributed to the Black cultural scene in the late 1960s. Abernathy was part of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) in Chicago. BAM, a national movement founded after the assassination of...
In September this year, we launched Cooper Hewitt’s Responsive Collecting Initiative (RCI), a new effort at the museum to solicit, review, and ultimately add objects to the museum’s permanent collection that tell design stories about the historic moments we are living through. Back in March, we found ourselves in lockdown like the rest of the...
‘Tis the season for virtual holiday parties. ❄ Following the first installment of our virtual wallpaper series, 7 Funky Backgrounds For Your Next Virtual Happy Hour, we’ve pulled a new selection from Cooper Hewitt’s vast collection of wallcoverings for you to use to spruce up your video conference background. Download your favorite wallcoverings below. We’ve...