The Design of Race: How Visual Culture Shapes America

My second book The Design of Race: How Visual Culture Shapes America was published in February 2021. It examines the role of design in establishing racial stereotypes first in print, and then over and upon objects, moving images, and into the digital sphere. It fills in part the significant gap in research on how the visual and material culture of graphic design has mediated much of the racialized rhetoric of U.S. American culture. The significance of my book to graphic design cannot be overstated. I can say unequivocally that although it is about U.S. graphic design’s historical reliance on racist imagery in establishing our consumer culture the need for it is immediate and vital.