Histories of Visual Communication Design

Abstract

In this special issue of Visible Language, the history of visual communication design provides an area of thematic convergence. The research represented here engages typographic communication, an area of investigation familiar to the journal’s readership. Yet its significance extends beyond illuminating the historical context of singular designs or designers. Collectively, the authors in this issue join a broader and sustained interdisciplinary conversation between design history and visual communication design practice. Situating their research relative to this shared context expands its relevance beyond their discrete areas of focus. Both design and its history are characterized, at present, by a complex and multivalent convergence of questions about decolonization and cultural sovereignty, world and/or global histories, the migration of forms and the evolution of their meanings, adaptive practices for a changing environment, and evolving definitions of design as activity and artefact. In collectively situating the authors’ specific research agendas in relationship to these shared questions, the special issue proposes that the history of visual communication design is a vital and integral sphere of inquiry and that scholars, practitioners, and educators within the discipline benefit from participation in the ongoing dialogues of historical research.