Eye Magazine

The book’s five core proclamations of Resist, Vote, Strike, Teach and Love, serve as thematic sections, each showcasing work from a variety of mediums while providing historical context and a narrative timeline.

From the wood-type broadsides of the abolition movement in the 1800s, Emory Douglas and the protest graphics of the 1960s and 70s American Black liberation movement, to new forms of protest via augmented reality, the pace is thrilling.

And though some of the subjects in the book will already be well known to designers, there has been a clear effort to expand the collection of work beyond white, Euro-American ‘cisgender’ narratives of design and typography.

This includes the fascinating silkscreens of Sister Corita Kent (see Eye 35), the anonymous brilliance of the ‘ERA YES’ mark (for the Equal Rights Amendment), the groundbreaking aesthetic of 1920s Black queer magazine Fire!!, and the digital fonts of A Queer Year of Love Letters by nonbinary alphabet artist Nat Pyper.

Although Strikethrough casts a wide net of cultures and perspectives, work from the United States predominates, due perhaps to the exhibition’s location and the US’s unique place within the wider context of protest graphics and typography.

The civil rights and anti-war movements coincided with an explosion of American innovation in advertising and marketing. This period produced some of the most iconic images in our collective history, but also the commercial methodologies that would later be applied to socially driven design.

There is still plenty here from an international perspective: from the graphic anti-imperialism of Ospaaal (the Organization of Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, see Eye 16), the Atelier Populaire of Paris, and the designers and artists associated with the Arab Spring to the See Red Women’s Workshop of 1970s London (see Eye 93). There are a few iconic examples of typographic resistance that are conspicuous by their absence, such as The Art Group’s work for Extinction Rebellion (see ‘Truth works’ in Eye 100).

Such omissions aside, Strikethrough is an affecting and poignant read, marked by stunning photography and dynamic typography. The display typeface, Equals, was especially created for the book by type designer Tré Seals (Vocal Type).

In his curatorial statement, which opens the book, Munro speaks of the collected works as a ‘typographic call and response’, inspired by the call and response in musical patterns imported into the US via the transatlantic slave trade, a tradition that fostered both connection and civic participation. But the powerfully brilliant achievement of Strikethrough itself may represent such a call for present and future designers, typographers, activists and students (for whom this book should be required reading). What forms their response will take is a source of hope and optimism.

Strikethrough is a clarion call for those of us in the industry to examine our convictions and strive to create change with our work. Just as the title suggests, perhaps these words will form the basis of what we choose to challenge, uplift, transform, discard and ultimately, to strike through.

Greg Bunbury, designer, podcaster, lecturer, London

First published in Eye no. 105 vol. 27, 2023

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.