Graphic Designers After Graphic Design

A fascinating exploration of contemporary designers who are redefining what it means to be a graphic designer, offering a vibrant celebration and an inspirational reimagining of the medium for students, professionals, and educators in the field.

Drawing from his popular podcast Scratching the Surface, Jarrett Fuller profiles more than 20 graphic designers who have taken the skills acquired through education and on-the-job experience to create new types of practices, working outside traditional commercial contexts. Reimagine what graphic design can mean when viewed through the lens of publisher, programmer, activist, artist, and more. Each chapter features a series of short profiles, an in-depth interview, and a visual exploration of one designer’s work.

Including both emerging and midcareer practitioners from around the world, Graphic Designers After Graphic Design showcases a wide variety of innovative creatives who have embraced graphic design’s blurry edges. In both text and images, we meet designers such as:

• Nina Paim, who runs Bikini Books, a small publishing platform for feminist thought.
• Tiger Dingsun, whose interest in critical theory and psychoanalysis shapes his work in design, writing, and programming.
• Benedetta Crippa, whose research into visual sustainability is changing how we might think in the face of the climate crisis.
• Sarah Saleh, who sees her work as collage, whether it’s a video piece, a live DJ set, or text-based images.
• Na Kim, whose large-scale installations turn the tables on how the principles of design are executed.
• And many more.

A foreword by renowned graphic designer, curator, and educator Ellen Lupton shows how the tools, media, and mindsets of graphic design have laid the foundation for persisting beyond “a profession forever threatening to expire . . . doing work in the invisible spaces between form and content, art and commerce, layout and editing.”

POPULAR DESIGN PODCAST: Scratching the Surface, named one of the best design podcasts by Architectural Digest and Dezeen, is a forum of thoughtful and informal discussions around contemporary design practice. It has featured interviews with leading figures in design and architecture, including Michael Bierut, Jessica Helfand, Ellen Lupton, Rick Poynor, Rudy VanderLans, Reinier de Graaf, Paul Goldberger, and Karrie Jacobs, as well as emerging voices like Hannah Ellis, Jerome Harris, Theo Inglis, Kate Wagner, and Jenny Odell.

EXPERT AUTHOR: Jarrett Fuller is a well-known designer, writer, educator, editor, and podcaster. The director of twenty-six, an independent design and editorial studio, he is a contributing editor at AIGA Eye on Design, and has been published in Eye Magazine, Design Observer, Curbed, Fast Company, and Wired, among other notable media outlets.

FOREWORD BY INDUSTRY INFLUENCER: Ellen Lupton, educator and author of the bestselling Thinking with Type and Graphic Design: New Basics, contributed the foreword. Known for her mix of authority and playfulness, Lupton directs MICA’s MFA in Graphic Design program while her Instagram persona, “Type Mom,” helps her share approachable design lessons with followers worldwide.

Jarrett Fuller is a designer, writer, educator, editor, and podcaster. He is an assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in graphic design at North Carolina State University, director of the design and editorial studio twenty-six, and host of the design podcast Scratching the Surface. He lives in Raleigh, NC.