Curating Color

Curating Color began as an exploration into the lack of diversity in the graphic design field. This timeline display was created to provide the needed representation for significant Black graphic designers who paved the way for people like me. According to the 2017 AIGA Design Census, 86% of professional designers are White and only 2% are Black. This statistic provided the necessary spark to create a project that could aid the devastatingly low percentage of black designers in the field.

A major contributing factor to the low percentage is a lack of role models. Finding information on black graphic designers is not as easy as it seems; these designers and their accomplishments are often overlooked due to their lives and work not being as well documented as White design leaders in this industry. Even throughout my college-level design education, there was still a lack of knowledge about Black graphic designers and their contributions to the history of graphic design. The goal for this project was to highlight the prominent contributions of Black designers throughout design history and share that information with as many people as possible.

I started with historical research. I did in-depth research of several Black designers with the aid of BGSU’s Pop Culture Library and a myriad of print and digital resources. I wanted to understand the impact these designers have created in both Black culture and the graphic design industry, then utilize that information to create a project that could disseminate the history back to the general public in an impactful, creative way.

At the start of this project, I researched projects and exhibitions that utilized topics such as diversity or inclusion to see how they communicated their message to an audience on a larger scale. This led to exploration into how different designers have tackled the idea of representing historical figures through a variety of methods including infographics, installations, poster series, videos, books, etc...

Throughout the summer of 2017, I carried out a series of experimental projects to explore different methods of uniquely presenting information to an audience that could keep them engaged and leave them informed. I focused on creating projects and graphics that could be replicated at a larger scale for an exhibition style setting.