Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest

A powerful new exploration of the uses of lettering, type and design to amplify resistance and inspire change―from 19th-century antislavery broadsides to the “Silence = Death” graphics of the AIDS epidemic and the handmade signs of the Black Lives Matter movement

Organized into chapters that explore the many ways to express dissent (RESIST!, VOTE!, STRIKE!, TEACH! and LOVE!), Strikethrough presents more than 120 signs, posters, publications and ephemera in vivid imagery and incisive prose. From the colorful affiches of the Paris ’68 uprising to Memphis strike workers’ placards to the Black Panthers’ newspaper, this generously illustrated volume showcases the role of graphic design in a wide range of protest movements in the United States and abroad. Including selections from artists and art collectives such as Jenny Holzer, the Guerrilla Girls and Fierce Pussy, this book provides a broad and critical survey of the typographics of activism. Strikethrough also features 10 profiles on the designers behind the graphics―including Corita Kent, Emory Douglas and Ben Shahn―and a custom display typeface based on historical protest graphics by Tré Seals, plus an introduction by activist and design scholar Colette Gaiter and an essay on type by Stephen Coles.
Charting a typographic chant of resistance that spans more than 150 years, Strikethrough curators Silas Munro and Stephen Coles reveal how the message makes its way to the masses via marker, screen print, spray paint, collage and both physical and digital type, and how it calls on us all to craft our own demands for social change.
Artists and designers include: Atelier Populaire, See Red Women’s Workshop, Carlos Cortez, Emory Douglas, fierce pussy, Ganzeer, Milton Glaser, Guerrilla Girls, Jenny Holzer, Corita Kent, Aaron Douglas, Art Workers’ Coalition, OSPAAAL, Tibor Kalman, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., Herb Lubalin, Phase 2, Favianna Rodriguez, Ward Schumaker, Ben Shahn and Wes Wilson.

About Silas Munro
Silas Munro is a partner of Polymode, a studio that leads the edge of contemporary graphic design for clients in the cultural sphere. Collaborations include works with the City of Los Angeles Mayor's Office; the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; the Getty Museum; the David Kordansky Gallery; Mark Bradford at the Venice Biennale; MoMA; and MOCA. Munro's writing appears in W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America. Munro expanded this research as a coauthor of the first BIPOC-centered design history course, Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design, which will be published in book form in 2023. Munro holds an MFA from CalArts and a BFA from RISD. He is founding faculty and cochair of the MFA in Graphic Design program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
About Stephen Coles
Stephen Coles is author of the bestselling book The Anatomy of Type. With his background in design and journalism, combined with an obsession for type history, Stephen is responsible for the online face and voice of Letterform Archive, where he is editorial director and associate curator. He also publishes the influential websites Typographica and Fonts In Use.
About Colette Gaiter
Colette Gaiter is a professor in the departments of Africana studies and art and design at the University of Delaware. After working as a graphic designer in New York City, she became an educator, an artist, and a writer. Her essays on his work appear in Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas (for which she wrote a new introduction to the 2014 edition); West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977; Art, Global Maoism, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution; and other publications. The 2022 book The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression & Reflection includes her essay on evolving visual literacy.