Important Update: 92Y remains open
Ellen Lupton, senior curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, will conduct a four-session overview of graphic design in the 20th century.
Discuss the fundamentals of graphic design while exploring iconic posters, typefaces, magazines, and more. Avant-garde artists and advocates for social change used printing and publicity to promote their ideas. The visual techniques they created still resonate in today’s media.
The Futurist Manifesto of 1909 triggered a series of avant-garde design movements that used graphic design and typography to disrupt tradition. This talk takes a tour from Italian Futurism—with its Fascist bent and anti-feminist ideology—to alternative modes of techno rebellion, from Dada to Afrofuturism.
What was the Bauhaus, and why does it matter? Get up close and personal with the Bauhaus as we look at key pieces of graphic design and learn how they were made and what they aimed to achieve. Discover the ideas, the people, and the stuff that made the Bauhaus an outsized legend whose influence is still felt today.
Protest posters, documentary photography, publications, and fashion are tools for achieving civil rights. This talk looks at the role of graphic design in the struggles for women’s suffrage, racial justice, gay rights, and disability rights.
The 1960s were a period of tumult and disruption. Designers including Milton Glaser, Tadanori Yokoo, Gere Kavanaugh, and Emmett McBain embraced the era’s search for new freedoms and languages rooted in popular culture.
This program will take place live online with an opportunity to interact with the instructor. Sessions will be recorded and made available for patrons for later viewing.
Class will take place on February 24 and March 3, 10, 17 from 6:30-7:45 pm ET.
Programs taking place online:An access link will be emailed to you after purchase.
Programs taking place in our NYC facilities:Please read our safety guidelines before visiting our building.
Programs taking place online and in our NYC facilities:Please select which experience you wish to participate in when registering. Online participants will be emailed an access link after purchase. In-person participants should read our safety guidelines before attending the program.
Ellen Lupton is a senior curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the author of numerous books on design, including How Posters Work and Herbert Bayer: Inspiration and Process in Design.
Ellen Lupton: Modern Graphic Design