‘A digital archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives’ With more than 20,000 selections dating back to 1924, the AIGA Design Archives is a vital record of all disciplines of communication design.’ ‘The AIGA archives and special collections serve to identify, preserve, and make collections of enduring value available to the public. But you know, if you can, get thee to a library. So online research has become even more significant as part of their learning. But with the many restrictions implemented due to COVID-19, that hasn’t been possible for most students across the past year or so. You can’t beat actual books in an actual library – they’ve already been handpicked, and they have an authorial depth and rigour that isn’t always found online. * It goes without saying that any research should be a mix of online and offline. Oh, and for ease of use, there’s a complete list of the links featured in this piece at the bottom of the page. Site titles link to the sites, lead images link to the individual projects they’re taken from. I’ve organised the list below into loose collections, but there’s no particular hierarchy to them, nor to the entries within each collection. In fact, why not check out Elizabeth Goodspeed’s brilliant Casual Archivist list? Or the AIGA Design History and Resources page.Īnyway, I hope it’s useful, and if you have any additional resources you think should be added in, post on the Twitter thread. If you’re starting out, make sure you find other resources, other lists. It’s an English language list, so doesn’t have the truly global scope that it could.
It’s not intended to be comprehensive – more a starting point. It has been curated by me, and I am a middle-aged white man based in London (gay though, for what it’s worth). But great strides are being made, and as we look forwards, the industry is beginning to reflect the true diversity of society.Īnother caveat is that this list is not agnostic. That said, the following list still leans heavily in that direction, partly because the industry leant heavily in that direction for many, many years. We’re at an exciting time in our industry’s history, when the established canon of graphic design is being questioned, examined, and reformed, so that it’s no longer the preserve of middle-aged straight white men. Not all of them are still being updated, but they all have rich selections of really good graphic design. I did a call out on Twitter back in June, listing the resources I was already aware of, and asking for suggestions of others, which I’ve added in to the list below.
With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to pull together a list of some really great graphic design archives and resources – mainly historical, but some contemporary. And you’re more likely to be looking at contemporary work rather than historical – which is a bit like studying Fine Art and only being aware of work by contemporary artists. Of course, you can find good stuff on both those platforms, but you can also find a lot of bad stuff (and an increasing amount of ‘promoted’ paid for stuff). The problem seems to be the massive gravity of Google Image Search and Pinterest, which exerts a pull that students find hard to escape. One of the things I’ve noticed each year though is that students often struggle when it comes to finding useful places to look for inspiration when they search online.* If you’re new to design, it can be hard to filter, to work out what you should really be looking at.
It’s a wonderful course, with great connections to industry, and some really brilliant students who regularly create exciting and energetic work. When I’m not doing graphic design stuff at We Made This, I’m an Associate Lecturer on the Graphic Design BA course at the School of Art, Architecture and Design (previously named The Cass) at London Metropolitan University.