Prototype name: The People’s Graphic Design Archive
Artists: Brockett Horne, Briar Levit, Louise Sandhaus, Morgan Searcy – all she/her
Year: 2022
Materials: digital prototype
The People’s Graphic Design Archive (The PGDA) is a crowd-sourced platform designed to make graphic design history more inclusive and accessible. Unlike traditional collections curated by academic institutions,
The PGDA invites anyone to upload materials, challenging the gatekeeping of design history. As part of the C/Change project, the exploration centered around how artificial intelligence can encourage broader participation in shaping this historical record.
The PGDA focuses on using AI tools like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to help tag items in the archive for easier access. However, traditional OCR tools struggle with the unconventional and experimental typography found in many graphic design artifacts. Instead of viewing this as a limitation, the project embraced “failed” OCR as a way to recognize non-standard texts and visual elements, which are often the hallmark of creative design. Additional experiments involved AI tools for color extraction and style identification, all aimed at improving accessibility and discoverability within the collection.
The purpose of this project is to democratize graphic design history, breaking down barriers to access and ensuring that diverse voices and narratives are represented in the archive.
Looking ahead,
The PGDA aims to evolve into a collaborative resource that engages a broader community, including academic researchers, enthusiasts, and grassroots archivists. By leveraging AI, the archive hopes to deepen its role as an inclusive platform, contributing to the wider discourse on design, technology, and public history.
Explore the prototype
Brockett Horne is a designer, educator, and writer. Her creative work encourages audiences to question their own ways of consuming design. Clients include the Baltimore Museum of Art, Johns Hopkins University, Decentering Whiteness working group, and Harvard University. She has won multiple design awards and presents her work internationally. Her research interests include: typography and power, packaging in the early 20th century, and monograms. With Louise Sandhaus, Briar Levit, and Morgan Searcy, she is Co-Director of
The Peoples Graphic Design Archive, a crowd-sourced online platform that enables new and expanded stories about graphic design history. This experimental project asks each of us to write history instead of reserving narratives for only those with special training or access to exclusive tools. The project has received multiple grants and has been presented internationally.
She served as department chair of Graphic Design at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore for more than a decade, but now enjoys teaching exclusively in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center. @brocketthorne or
brocketthorne.design
Briar Levit is a Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University. She studied at San Francisco State University for her undergraduate degree in graphic design and at Central Saint Martins in London for her MA in Communication Design. Levit spent her early career in publishing as Art Director of the magazine, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, as well as an independent book designer. Her self-initiated publications are walking books that challenge the existing hiking guide genre.
In 2017, Levit released the feature-length documentary, G
raphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production, which follows design production from manual to digital methods and looks at both the social and formal implications this transition had for the graphic design discipline. Graphic Means screened in 23 countries and continues to be shown in classrooms and institutions across the nation and the world.
The research for Graphic Means launched a new direction and mission for Levit—a desire to help uncover under-researched and disseminated topics in design history—notably around people who existed in marginalized communities—women and people of color. In 2021, Princeton Architectural Press published Levit’s edited volume of essays,
Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Design History. The book includes 15 essays by 19 scholars with one by Levit exploring the design work of young adult author, Ellen Raskin.
In 2018, Levit joined Louise Sandhaus’ journey to realize
The People’s Graphic Design Archive. The Archive is a crowd-sourced virtual archive aims to allow for new and expanded stories about a graphic design history—one that represents diverse cultures and a broad range of interests!
Louise Sandhaus is a graphic designer and faculty at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). She is the founder and co-director of The People’s Graphic Design Archive, a crowd-sourced virtual archive that expands, diversifies, and preserves graphic design history. Her book on the history of California graphic design,
Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires, and Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936-1986, was published in 2014 by Metropolis Books and Thames & Hudson. It received laudatory attention from The New York Times, The Guardian (London), and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among many others. In 2015, the book received the Palm D’argent from The International Art Book and Film Festival (FILAF). In 2019,
A Colorful Life: Gere Kavanaugh, Designer, co-written and designed with Kat Catmur, was published by Princeton Architectural Press and was the subject of a full-page L.A. Times article. Her design office, LSD (Louise Sandhaus Design), in partnership with Tim Durfee and Iris Regn, is renowned for its ground-breaking approach to art museum exhibition design, including shows for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, Center for Photography in New York, and others.
Louise is a Letterform Archive board member, former American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) board member, former Chair of the AIGA Design Educators Community steering committee, an AIGA Los Angeles Fellow, and in 2017 was recognized with the Design Icon Award from Los Angeles Design Festival. In 2022 she was recognized for her contributions to the design field with an AIGA medal. She was named by GDUSA Magazine 2023 People to Watch.
Morgan Searcy is a creative lead, researcher, and strategist with a background in graphic design. Early on, Morgan worked in non-profit and branding spaces between Washington D.C. and Chicago. She supported design and creative strategy for two 2020 political campaigns: Warren for President and Jon Ossoff for Senate. Morgan also served as the Brand and Creative Director of Rock the Vote, leading digital initiatives that gained 61M+ organic impressions in the first two months. As a Co-Director, she is collaborating with The People’s Graphic Design Archive, to promote equitable collection of histories.
