The End of Diversity as We Know It! However, there are two … The title’s font—jagged and pink—resembles graffiti and reflects Moritsugu’s underground films, Xu says. Xu’s newfound boldness is reflected in her work. Minorities in Graphic Design,” by Michele Vernon Chesley, AIGA Journal of Graphic Design (vol. In an Information Design course taught by her favorite instructor, Assistant Professor River Jukes-Hudson (BFA 05 Graphic Design), Gamio created the newsprint project Make America Great Again?, which juxtaposed Trump’s incendiary words against images of both his opponents and supporters. She designed a “Queer All Year” Pride Month sticker and tote bag sporting rainbow-colored type for Ace Hotel Palm Springs. How does graphic design at ArtCenter compare? In the undergraduate program, 47% identified as Asian American, 10% as Latinx or Hispanic, 10% as White, and 1% as Black. The book’s publisher, Kaya Press, publishes cutting-edge literature that’s created throughout the Asian and Pacific Island diasporas. “Graphic design as a profession can’t survive if it doesn’t represent the audience it’s speaking to,” says undergraduate and graduate Graphic Design Chair Sean Adams, the only two-term president of AIGA, the professional association for design, and an AIGA Medal winner who started an AIGA diversity initiative in the mid-’90s. To demonstrate creative contributions of designers from diverse groups 3. A poster, part of a 2018 voting campaign she designed, proclaims, “You Have a Voice.” Gamio, who has a green card, reminded coworkers that the campaign should include those not able to vote. Now I speak up a lot more.”. As for gender, according to ArtCenter’s Fall 2018 statistics, women made up 64% and 67% of undergraduate and graduate Graphic Design students, respectively. youtube. Born and raised in Suzhou, China, Xu studied digital art in Shanghai before getting her Graphic Design master’s degree at ArtCenter. Photo. Designers can also help out the Task Force by recommending and nominating designers who have demonstrated concerted efforts to increasing diversity in the field. According to the United States Census, we are expected to have a minority-majority population by the year 2043. Graphic design can be a fairly expensive profession to break into — as Roberto Blake gracefully points out on his article about Diversity in the Design Industry: “The truth of the matter is that graphic design can be a fairly expensive profession to break into, and many minorities may be priced out of entering into this industry based on that fact. (Full disclosure: Revision Path’s founder and EIC Maurice Cherry is also a member of this task force.). As recently as 1991, 93% of designers were Caucasian, so there has been very little minority growth in the field in almost a quarter of a century. “How can I reframe the biases around female identity when this is what I grew up with?”, For Nonstudio’s 2020 piece Reverb, which Lii describes as “a life-size hairy vagina,” the studio is partnering with a genetic technology company. But diversity is much more than just race. AIGA, the premier professional association for graphic artists, is looking to tackle this issue with a Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. “Designers from different worlds have different creative perspectives. Graphic design in the 21st century is a multidirectional realm of possibilities. I used to be shy. Among graduate students, 16% identified as White and 9% as Asian American. “When I first started working here in early 2018, I was the only female designer on the team, and now there are four,” says Gamio, adding that the group has had many important conversations about inclusivity. It’s not about “diversity for the sake of diversity”, but it’s about having a workforce that reflects the multicultural world we live in. “The design canon can be very monolithic and rooted in the same European history, and that needs to change,” he says. The Fall 2018 statistics for students enrolled in the College’s Graphic Design programs provide some answers. Audio. The exhibition was held at the Armory Center for the Arts and presented by student groups Antiracist Classroom and CHROMA. “These conversations might be uncomfortable at times, but they open people’s perspectives.”. Adams says the departments are actively working on equalizing that female/male faculty ratio with top-notch designers. Although Meggs’ History of Graphic Design is a well-regarded and extensive textbook on the topic of graphic design history, it has been criticized for its lack of diversity in the designers featured in the text. Design has the power to permeate every product, moment and solution in our lives—with immense opportunity for change. “I have always been very political because of my family, because I am an immigrant.” Obsessed with photography, collages and printmaking in high school, Gamio attended Cypress College, made short films, then spent a year at a trade school doing sign painting before being offered scholarships to ArtCenter. Video. Boosting diversity also includes removing economic barriers, Carroll says. “My series explored mental health in Black communities and the complexities of perception,” he says. The Fall 2018 statistics for students enrolled in the College’s Graphic Design programs provide some answers. 1, 1990) Books. Interested in sponsoring Revision Path? It includes gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and culture. For an Advanced Print Studio course, which she petitioned to be taught by Assistant Professor Stephen Serrato (BFA 05 Graphic Design), she conceived a brand identity for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles that included posters with slogans like “You belong just like any motherfucker living here” in purple type. Contact us. Other industry efforts toward inclusion include AIGA’s Women Lead initiative, co-founded by ArtCenter trustee and AIGA’s fifth female president Su Mathews Hale, and 28 Days of Black Designers. The AIGA Diversity and Inclusion Task Force has the following goals: The task force is looking to meet these goals with a number of activities and initiatives. Throughout AIGA’s 100-year history, design and innovation have advanced not only our industry, but transformed everyday life. And so is the future.” In order to represent and reflect that future—and the present—the industry must include women and people of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, disabilities, genders, sexualities, ages, economic status and religions. For Memani, diversity in graphic design should be an obvious intention. A nearby poster declares “EQUALITY.”. ArtCenter Graphic Design students today focus on a wide range of media and enter careers in which they design branding, packaging, environmental graphics, publications, UX, 3D motion graphics or, as with Lii’s transmedia projects, works that defy categorization. According to Carroll, “technology, multiculturalism and globalism make diversity and inclusion more relevant than ever in design and all aspects of business.” With the projected demographic shift in here in the U.S., that means clients, colleagues and collaborators will change as well. It includes gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and culture. “I went to school purely on scholarship, and it’s our job to provide scholarships that give students the same opportunities that I had,” says Adams, a CalArts alum. For Serrato’s Advanced Print Studio course, she approached Martin Wong, the punk rock–inspired co-founder of Giant Robot magazine, to create a new identity and zine for his nonprofit organization Save Music in Chinatown, which throws all-ages shows to raise money for the L.A. neighborhood’s Castelar Elementary School. In terms of faculty, according to ArtCenter statistics from Spring 2020, roughly 39% of the combined Graphic Design programs’ full-time and part-time faculty were women, and 61% were men.