The tragic murder of Allen R. Schindler inspired Marlene McCarty and Donald Moffet to take a stand against anti-gay violence through graphic design.

In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. This post originally appeared  on June 15, 2015. Founded in 1992, the Women’s Action Coalition (WAC) staged public demonstrations or “actions” to raise the visibility of women in art, culture, and society. The organization was founded in response to the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill congressional hearings, which riveted...

This bold poster was printed by the Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, 1975. The elegant design uses direct, straightforward symbols to clearly communicate a message of unity, a popular design approach amongst political and activist posters from the 1960s and 1970s. In this example, the simple repeat of...

Fearing the Nazis were secretly producing atomic weapons, President Roosevelt collaborated with Canada and Britain to launch the Manhattan Project in 1942, an experimental nuclear weapon initiative.[1] The Manhattan Project was, by morbid standards, “successful”; the only two nuclear attacks in the history of the world were executed by the United States in August of...

The CDC acknowledged the first cases of what is now accepted to be HIV on June 5, 1981 in a “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” (MMWR), which documented instances of a rare lung infection known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) in five young, previously healthy gay men. The virus swiftly spread, and by 1989 the...

Founded in 1992, the Women’s Action Coalition (WAC) staged public demonstrations or “actions” to raise the visibility of women in art, culture, and society. The organization was founded in response to the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill congressional hearings, which riveted national attention on sexual harassment. Many women in New York’s creative community took part in WAC,...

In 1992, Karrie Jacobs and Steven Heller published Angry Graphics, a chronicle of oppositional images created during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. (An excerpt from Angry Graphics appears in the publication How Posters Work.) These passionate works were born in the heat of that period’s wars, epidemics, and economic upheavals. Jacobs...