The LIUNA union logo in white in a repeating pattern on a black background

The Fraternal Order of Design: A Selection of U.S. Labor Union Logos, 1880s to Now

While we here at the Department of Information have successfully stamped out many attempts over the decades at unionization from within our own ranks—sometimes through illegal, quasi-legal, and morally dubious methods—we still know how to appreciate good branding when we see it.

So, instead of giving our staff Labor Day off to spend time with their families, we asked our officers, unpaid interns, and anyone hanging out in the lobby over the holiday weekend to compile some of their favorite labor union logos from over the years. Here are a few of them in no real particular order.

American Federation of Labor (AFL), 1886–1955

American Federation of Labor union label, circa 1894 via Wikimedia Commons via American Federation of Labor: History, Encyclopedia, Reference Book

The handshake heard around the world, the AFL was one of the first substantial labor union collectives in the United States. Founded by a cigar maker named Samuel Gompers, the AFL featured a pretty serious logo complete with secretive latin messages and woodcut-style illustration.

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, 1962–present

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association logo would look great slightly faded on a vintage t-shirt

They wouldn’t even listen to us… I’m not saying we’re elitist; doctors and lawyers are elitist. But mechanics have been shortchanged.

O.V. Delle-Femine, co-founder of AMFA
We used A.I. and Computer Vision to simulate what a modern passenger jet might look like wrapped up with the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association logo like a birthday present.
The original AMFA logo was much weirder and was almost certainly hand-designed by the union co-founder (seen here) after an overnight drunk at the local airport bar.

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association logo is pretty whimsical and fun. We’re ranking this a 9 out of 10.

American Federation of Teachers (AFT), 1916–present

The AFT logo, inverse on AFT Blue

While this is a negligent, missed opportunity to do some fun stuff with pencil iconography and apples we are still going to give this logo high marks since it is very solid as far as traditional logo design goes—it is clear an actual graphic designer was involved. A+ for sticking to the assignment.

International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers (IBB), 1880-present

The Boilermakers union logo has some great typesetting, storytelling, and a large cast of characters but what is the plot?

The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers logo is a pretty wild ride. The tightly kerned circular text is almost like an abstracted extension of the interior illustrations, radiating outward like sparks flying off a welder’s torch as he patches a hole in a sinking ship.

Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), 1945–present

The AFA logo, inverse on black

The Association of Flight Attendants was founded in 1945. Did you know that we had airplanes in 1945? The logo is flying high with weirdness, makes little to no sense, but is really great and just kind of works for some reason. Staring at it for too long makes you feel like you are 30,000 feet up in the clouds and deprived of oxygen.

United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agriculture Implement Workers of America (UAW), 1935–present

The UAW logo in various colorways

United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agriculture Implement Workers of America (UAW) logo is a real master lesson in symmetry and symbolism. We’ve got gears, people unified by a common cause, and together it all forms a a kind of suggested wheel shape—very appropriate and cool. 

Coalition of Labor Union Women, 1974–present

Coalition of Labor Union Women logo, inverse on black
Here again we have harnessed the power of Computer Vision and A.I.—this time to imagine what the abstract, alien-language-looking CLUW logo might look like if applied to some swag.

The CLUW logo is one of the better ones out there. It looks like an unknown, ancient language (no matter what language you actually speak) and has a nice subversive, mysterious, forgotten desert-cult vibe about it.

National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), 1889–present

The NALC logo in full color on a wrinkled piece of paper

The National Association of Letter Carriers logo is just super pleasant and straightforward. It really “delivers”. 10 out of 10.

United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), 1979–present

A UFCW logo on a burger wrapper

The UFCW apparently represents “retail; meatpacking, food processing and manufacturing; hospitality; agriculture; cannabis; chemical trades; security; textile, and health care”. The logo is pretty generic and could use some refinement but is still fine for what it is.

United Farm Workers of America (UFW)

The UFW logo was allegedly designed by Richard, the younger brother of labor leader César Chávez, in 1962.

The original UFW logo (inverse on black) proudly suggests “Si Se Puede” or as we now know it from Barack Obama’s successful socialist presidential campaign “Yes, we can!”. Cool.
Left: UFW Boycott Grapes. National Museum of American History. Right: UFW Boycott lettuce. between 1965 and 1980. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

We’re not entirely sure where the eagle motif came from but it looks really nice in a symmetrical, geometric, and minimalist way (and is also quite intimidating). 

Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA), 1940–present

The UWUA logo in full color

The Utility Workers Union of America logo—which represents electric, gas, steam, water, and nuclear industry workers—is a technicolor, experiential journey through the rolling hills of the American mind—both physically and geo-spiritually. It’s really fun.

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), 1891–present

The IBEW logo in full, glorious color

The IBEW, which represents workers in the electrical industry (as well as some in the computer, telecommunications, and broadcasting industries) has one of the better and more recognizable union logos out there. The clenched fist clutching the god particles of electricity, defiantly raised towards the heavens, reminds non-electric-industry-working peasants that they are mere mortals and should fear the wrath and power of those with electrical knowledge.

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), 1888–present

The IAM logo imagined on a casual t-shirt.

The IAM logo is a lot of fun and gives off after-school-math-club vibes. 7 out of 10.

International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE), 1896–present

The IUOE logo on Operating Engineers Blue

The International Union of Operating Engineers is ahead of the pack with their logo. It is both adorned with ambiguous latin phrases and features some subversive hidden symbolism (all of the pressure gauge hands inexplicably point towards “420”) all while maintaining an allegiance to circular symmetry and ornate minimalism. Bravo.

Special shout out to the custom Canadian version of the logo, which also has a gauge mysteriously fixed on the number 420.

American Postal Workers Union (APWU), 1971–present

The APWU logo, stamped on a crinkled mailer envelope

The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) logo deviates from it’s brethren’s allegiance to the circular seal shape, instead opting for a 1980’s-corporate-tech-style fadeaway mark. There is a seal version out there but it just doesn’t look as slick as this fax-machine-company-from-1983-looking-one.

Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA!), 1903–present

The LIUNA logo, inverse and repeated

This is by far the most classic, well-rounded, and Department-of-Information-approved logo of the collection. These should be on soft vintage t-shirts in thrift stores across America. Look how visually pleasing that wireframe globe is!

This has been a brief but purposeful look at some of the more visually interesting labor union logos out there. If you’d like to learn more about labor union logos feel free to spend your Labor Day researching them on your own.

A black image with the word Sensorium in bold white sans serif font in the middle with a buffalo running in place made of thousands of little pink dots

Sensorium

senˈsôrēəmnoun

The sensory apparatus as a whole through which someone or something experiences the environment around them—feeling, seeing, smelling, hearing, sensing, etc—and use of physical and remote faculties of the mind, phenomenal and psychological perception, cognition, intelligence, and intuition. The seat of sensation.

via Google Ngram

A small bacteria can sense, crudely, in a small shape around itself—we can call this “sight” if it can respond to a light source, or “smell” if it can detect an unwanted chemical toxin nearby—and the total of its sensory range, the full addition of all its input, stretching through and combined across all its senses, is called its sensorium.

Patrick House, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness

Select Examples

Just at the end of the nineteenth century Bernard Berenson had begun a crusade ‘to endow the retinal impression with tactile values.’ There was wide awareness that photography and other technological change had abstracted the retinal impression, as it were, from the rest of the sensorium. Thus, in 1893 Adolf Hildebrand the sculptor published a small book called The Problem of Form. He insisted that true vision must be much imbued with tangibility, and that creative, aesthetic awareness was touching and making.

Marshall McLuhan, Inside the Five Sense Sensorium

The seat of consciousness – what’s known as ‘sensorium’ – exists partly as an expression of particle entanglement in higher physical dimensions. The human brain is merely a conduit

Daniel Suarez

Geographical Interest

Country-level searches for “Sensorium” over the past 5 years via GoogleTrends data
The plain white cover of the scientific pamphlet titled Colorado Legal Psychedelics: Psilocybin, Psilocin, DMT, Mescaline and Ibogaine. Observations on Personal Treatment Possibilities

Colorado Legal Psychedelics: Observations on Personal Treatment Possibilities

During a recent official Department research expedition that took place deep in the mountains of Colorado our team uncovered a peculiar artifact. The object appeared to be a self-published journal of observations from a respected and storied career medical professional. The subject of which focused on the personal treatment possibilities of legal (state-level in Colorado, not federal) psychedelics such as psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, Mescaline, and Ibogaine.

The stark white, deliberately non-designed, perfect-bound, 50-page book was discovered by an unpaid intern in the basement of an unremarkable and quite frankly disheveled and unorganized Boulder, Colorado book shop—whose name we are redacting.

As a design artifact—this is an art book review, after all—the pamphlet leaves a lot to be desired. It is completely printed in black and white with what we will assume is Helvetica (or Arial) on the covers and (very likely) Times New Roman for the interior body copy and data. These are tried and true fonts and set at a comfortably large size. The alignment on the cover is offset slightly, a little too close to the perfect-bound spine, which gives the whole thing a really nice DIY self-published feel.

The author takes kind measures to administrate the way one could potentially “acquire, produce, and use” psychedelics in the chapter titled Acquisition, Production, and Use of Psychedelics. This is probably the chapter that most Colorado residents would be most interested in.

Other areas of the book like Chapter 9: Case for Low and Moderate Dose Treatment explore ways the drug can enhance peoples lives while limiting the extreme effects. The book is very detailed and if you want to know about high dose trips there are paragraphs to greet you.

Overall this is a great book about how and why Colorado-legal psychedelics are so important in the spectrum of mental health, depression, and addiction. I think if you live in Colorado you should buy this book. But even if you don’t live in Colorado you should buy this book.

Apparently the author is selling it on Amazon of all places (along with an even cooler book which we will not mention here) which is conveniently linked to below:

Colorado Legal Psychedelics: Psilocybin, Psilocin, DMT, Mescaline and Ibogaine.: Observations on Personal Treatment Possibilities.

Objects from Civil Air Transport, a CIA front airline company from the 1950's

CIA Front Airline from the 1950s, Design Objects of Civil Air Transport (CAT)

In August 1950, the CIA secretly purchased the assets of Civil Air Transport (CAT), an airline that started in China. CAT would continue to fly commercial routes throughout Asia, acting as a privately owned commercial airline. Under the guise of CAT Incorporated, it provided airplanes and crews for secret intelligence operations. Naturally, with any substantial covert gaslighting operation, graphic designers were needed to really seal the deal. Seemingly an entire brand identity was developed (at least the typeface, dragon logo, and colors seem consistent) specifically for this fake CIA airline and these are some of the artifacts that were produced.

“This is one of the famous Oriental symbols of CAT (Civil Air Transport) – the five-toed dragon. In olden days only the emperor could wear this symbol; those of lesser rank wore dragons with fewer toes. We like to think that all of our passengers on CAT’s colorful Mandarin Jet – truly a flying Oriental Palace – receive hospitality and cordiality befitting an emperor and his lady.” — Photo and caption source: ciagov Flickr account

During the Chinese Civil War, under contract with the Chinese government and later the CIA, CAT flew supplies and ammunition into China to assist Kuomintang forces on the Chinese mainland.

“Given as a souvenir to guests on CAT’s Mandarin Jet, this notepad includes a calendar from 1967.” — Photo source: ciagov Flickr account

At the time the families of the pilots were told, in order to keep the CIA’s covert actions in China secret, that they had crashed into the Sea of Japan on a routine flight to Tokyo.

CAT travelers allegedly received flight bags as complementary gifts — Photo and caption source: ciagov Flickr account

Air America happened later on (after I suppose things with CAT went downhill or became no longer useful). Running after or parallel to the original operation, it is not to be confused with Radio Americas, another CIA front operation in the form of a tropical radio station that would materialize years later and a few thousand miles away.

“This Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly bottle contained medicinal wine (intended for a strong and healthy heart) that was served on some CAT flights.” — Photo and caption source: ciagov Flickr account

The artifacts and designed objects are pretty well-rounded as far as applications and branding goes. The wicker basket for instance is a pretty odd material design choice but it is quite elegant in execution and doesn’t really seem that unbelievable.

Limited edition Civil Air Transport (CAT) baskets were promotional handouts for CAT travelers, each likely packed with schedule 1 substances, as a privileged inside joke. — Photo source: ciagov Flickr account

This Civil Air Transport (CAT) lighter is from the Hong Kong-to-Bangkok inaugural flight of Civil Air Transport on July 20, 1957.

A very cool CIA lighter — Photo source: ciagov Flickr account

One of the cooler and more useful/practical items might be the CAT-branded zippo lighter, steel-pressed and engraved from some likely-very-real company called Penguin.

Check out the whole series of photographs here.

Biodegradable

bi·o·de·grad·a·bleadjective

A once-living substance or object that becomes capable of being decomposed by bacteria or other living organisms — often to live again through growth or repurpose.

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via Google Ngram

And should biologic time run out and some plastics remain, there is always geologic time. The upheavals and pressure will change it into something else. Just like trees buried in bogs a long time ago—the geologic process, not biodegradation, changed them into oil and coal. Maybe high concentrations of plastics will turn into something like that. Eventually, they will change. Change is the hallmark of nature. Nothing remains the same.

Alan Weisman, The World Without Us

Select Examples

‘Plastic is like that,’ Oliver was saying. ‘It never biodegrades. It gets churned around in the gyre and ground down into particles. Oceanographers call it confetti. In a granular state, it hangs around forever.’

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

most plastics in use today are simply not biodegradable and are in fact, highly resistant to degradation. Indeed, the billions of tonnes of plastics already released into the environment, since the origin of their creation, remain with us to the present day in one form or another and may take thousands of years to completely degrade.

Christopher Blair Crawford, Microplastic Pollutants

Geographical Interest

Country-level searches for “Biodegradable” over the past 5 years via GoogleTrends data
Book cover for Extinct A Compendium of Obsolete Objects

Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects

While some of the objects in Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects are actually very much still around, it is true that all of them more fully belong to a now distant period of time that appreciated them more. Advertised by the University of Chicago Press as a “visual tour through futures past via the objects we have replaced, left behind, and forgotten”, the book is a fascinating and curious read. It is host to accounts, conclusions, and warnings from the ghosts of deceased inventions and their often-haunting lives that float on beyond the grave. The authors use natural selection and evolution as an analogy to the birth, death, mutation, and rebirth of designed or ideated objects as they cycle through their usefulness and ultimate obsolescence.

A spread from Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects shows a photo of a patterned arsenic-laced wallpaper
A spread from Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects shows a photo of a beautiful arabesque patterned wallpaper in beige and 19th century Swedish-German chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele’s patented copper arsenic-green. Don’t lick the wallpaper!

All 85 of the object accounts—each written by a different person with a distinct perspective, story, and voice—sound interesting and are at the very least eccentric and unique. Objects and chapters range from the obscure and questionable like something called a “moon tower” or “arsenic wallpaper” to the more familiar and loved zombies of the now/recent past (not quite dead yet but not really living) like the Polaroid SX-70 or the warm and comforting incandescent lightbulb.

A printed memo form from the 1950s-era British Civil Service as seen in Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects. This was email!
A printed memo form from the 1950s-era British Civil Service as seen in Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects. This was email!

Remember the memo? According to Adrian Forty if you worked in an office before 1990 you should certainly be familiar with it. Forty goes on to explain the basic mechanisms and life cycle of a typical office memo and how it was the precursor to email. The memo would be passed around an office and physically marked as read by recipients. In less hierarchical organizations memos could be carbon copied (with real carbon paper!) and distributed equally amongst intended recipients. And Finally we are hit with the phrase “skeuomorphic anachronism” when Forty explains how this whole system was adopted by modern email as the ‘c.c.’ On the other hand, blind carbon copy (b.c.c.) did not exist in the epoch of the memo apparently—this is a new phenomenon unique to our digital age.

Letter-writing case, UK, early 1960s as seen in Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects

In the 1960’s the writing case was a suitable, even coveted, present for a bookish child who might, one day, aspire to engage in ‘correspondence’

Barry Curtis, excerpt from Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects
A spread from Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects shows a photograph of hands clapping over a Clap on Clap off device from the 1990's with a blue background
The Clapper, Joseph Enterprises, Inc., USA, c. 2000. Died silently in its sleep. RIP.

Charles Rice writes about the origins of the famous Clapper device and posits all kinds of wild ideas about how it basically paved the way for the modern day internet-of-things and home-connectedness devices. In its eulogy, Rice reflects somewhat nostalgically about the dumb and joyful object—exhuming the harmless idiot spirits that must have haunted its clappers for years. He preaches: “It comes from a time before the data threshold. It is just an enhanced switch, not a device that gathers and shares information…Do we indeed underestimate the dark side of home automation?”

Kodachrome 40 Super 8 color movie film cartridge packaging
Kodachrome 40 Super 8 color movie film cartridge packaging

In another chapter we see writer Tacita Dean recollect her visceral and cerebral experiences with Kodachrome through her early experimentation with the medium. Many of the historians in this volume have deeply personal and often emotional connections with what are now just the bones and ashes of once mighty giants.

I later started using Kodachrome Super 8 film: the perfect short form, like a celluloid haiku, that was a synthesis of time, place, and experience distilled into three minutes evanescent magic.

Tacita Dean, excerpt from Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects
A photograph of a MDR-74 Recordable MiniDisc on a white page
MDR-74 Recordable MiniDisc, 1999. Gone too soon.

Walking through the halls of this unnatural history museum awakens our own sense of nostalgia when we remember briefly brushing paths with weird stuff like the MiniDisc, a kind of obvious transition or missing-link in the evolutionary chain of digital media.

…the protagonist in one television advert that aired in Britain in 1997 manages to make the sun go down while his MiniDisc is playing fast-paced techno, suggesting that the thing could give its users special powers.”

Priya Khanchandani, excerpt from Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects

Extinct is 400 pages, 85 objects and essays, and many more brilliant original and archival photographs and illustrations documenting humankind’s fossilized record of object evolution.

Westrex teletype terminal, type ASR/KSR33, UK, 1960-1980. Buried alive in an electronic waste sorting facility. Leaves behind many spare parts and confused memories.
Alcatel Minitel communication terminal, France, 1983
Alcatel Minitel communication terminal, France, 1983. Died of being too cool for this world. RIP.

Extinct was edited by Barbara Penner, Adrian Forty, Olivia Horsfall Turner, and Miranda Critchley and published by Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press (US distribution). You can buy it at the University of Chicago Press website, from Reaktion Books, or just haggle your local bookshop (while they are still relevant and not extinct!) to order it and stock it.

Interpassivity VHS fuzzy situation

Interpassivity

in·ter·pass·iv·i·tynoun

The delegation or outsourcing of enjoyment, consumption, action, or (inter)activity through passivity and inaction

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via Google Ngram

A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Select Examples

Interpassivity is a widespread, and yet mostly unacknowledged, form of cultural behaviour. Rather than letting others (other people, animals, machines, etc.) work in your place, interpassive behaviour entails letting others consume in your place.

Robert Pfaller, Interpassivity: The Aesthetics of Delegated Enjoyment

New concepts are rare in social thinking, and interpassivity is arguably the only true concept that emerged in the last two decades. The idea that others can not only act for us but that they can also be passive for us, that we can enjoy, believe, laugh and cry through others, provides the key to understand the paradoxes of our cynical-hedonist era.

Slavoj Žižek

Geographical Interest

Country-level searches for “Interpassivity” over the past 5 years via GoogleTrends data
Cover of Ruben Pater's CAPS LOCK: How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it

CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It by Ruben Pater

Ruben Pater and Amsterdam-based Valiz Publishers’ CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It is an extensive (552 pages) but very engaging, accessible, and portable account of graphic design’s current and historical relationship with capitalism (and theories on how, as a designer, to potentially decouple the inextricably-linked duo).

The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.

Jeff Hammerbacher, former Facebook employee (excerpt from CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It)

Pater’s first book The Politics of Design: A (Not So) Global Manual for Visual Communication (which is also a great read) feels almost like an introductory or warm-up to this more dense and detailed book, though both stand firmly on their own.

A spread from Ruben Pater's CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It
A spread from Ruben Pater’s CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It

Pater is at once a professional designer, writer, and educator which is helpful to keep in mind as you read along since the tone is through both a historical and critical lens. While the book is broken up into four main parts and 12 sections, perspectives, or “roles” (Designer as…”Scribe”, “Engineer”, “Brander”, “Salesperson”, “Worker”, “Entrepreneur”, “Amateur”, “Educator”, “Hacker”, “Futurist”, “Philanthropist”, and “Activist”) it is also an effective and very enjoyable read when flipped through casually and randomly.

Just like Politics of Design, CAPSLOCK is printed as a portable paperback in full color on soft/matte/newsprinty-feeling paper. It is full of real world examples of posters, photographs, logos, advertisements, screenshots, and quotations from (sometimes anonymous) designers, philosophers, brands, cultural icons, thinkers, and other relevant bodies.

A spread from Ruben Pater's CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It
A spread from Ruben Pater’s CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It

The layout itself is very clean and practical. Bold, monochromatic color fields adorned with obsessively kerned sans serifs (appropriately set in ALL CAPS) let you know which section you’re heading into. These spreads are supplemented with delightful and amusing photographs, illustrations, and quotes. Subsection headings are also in ALL CAPS and painstakingly-kerned but set in a striking condensed modern transitional serif. Graphic designers, who are famous for not being able to read actual books, will find this book very readable.

A spread from Ruben Pater's CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It
A spread from Ruben Pater’s CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It

One of the more foundational sections of the book describes the origins of design being used for financial literacy and record keeping. From ancient grid patterns used on clay tablets (think ancient Microsoft Excel) to track financial records, to paper banknotes (first appearing as woodblock-printed paper in seventh century China), to the first plastic credit cards, Pater uses historical evidence and research to demonstrate the complicity and importance of designers in establishing and maintaining authority, credibility, and competency for capital institutions since the beginning of time.

In THE PLASTIC ECONOMY section of CAPS LOCK we see a graphic-designer-assisted first general purpose credit card, issued by Bank of America in 1958 and with revolving credit that could be paid down incrementally instead of paying the balance at the end of each month.
In THE PLASTIC ECONOMY section of CAPS LOCK we see a graphic-designer-assisted first general purpose credit card, issued by Bank of America in 1958 and with revolving credit that could be paid down incrementally instead of paying the balance at the end of each month.

An important message, deputized and legitimized by phrases like Philanthrocapitalism, Causewashing, and the White Savior Industrial Complex, can be found in the chapter The Designer as Philanthropist (as well to an extent in The Designer as Futurist and really all of the chapters). Pater lauds but warns against the often good intentions of Design for Good as a practice. Robert Reich is cited as saying that while philanthropists outwardly seem well in most cases their charity is often indirectly transactional and a “competitive and strategic act”.

A spread from CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It challenges us to examine the polarity between a photograph of Elon Musk at an annual Tesla shareholder’s meeting and a miner in Cerro Rico Mountain, Bolivia

While negative examples are drawn from some of the obvious larger players in the space like IDEO, the United Nations, UNICEF, etc. for running tone-deaf or often incompetently negligent campaigns or models, Pater positively encourages designers to localize their efforts (mutual aid), recognize their privilege, and be a part of the community they are serving (rather than designing for a disconnected cause half-way around the globe).

Illustration from US patent 2019/0045094 A1 files by Apple, 2019 as seen in CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It

While laying out the evidence demonstrating capitalism’s hijacking and reliance on design to extrapolate and manipulate market and labor, Pater offers alternative ways of thinking for the concerned reader or designer. This frames the book in an optimistic and hopeful light, which is refreshing since so much of the content can feel a bit overwhelming and hopeless at times.

A humorous spread from CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It by Ruben Pater
A humorous spread from CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It by Ruben Pater

The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.

—Mark Fisher, Philosopher (excerpt from CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It)

The last section of the book is dedicated to showcasing a handful of anti-capitalist design practices across the globe that have seemingly taken on a new way of thinking by reclaiming design’s political economy: Brave New Alps (Italy), Common Knowledge (UK), Cooperativa de Diseño (Argentina), Mídia NINJA (Brazil), Open Source Publishing (Belgium), and The Public (Canada).

Ruben Pater’s commentary on images like this “LGBTQI+ rights branding for Royal Dutch Shell” introduces us to phrases like “causewashing” in CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design
A classic Adbusters piece by Chris Gergley for the Maquila Solidarity Network is shown on a spread in CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design

CAPS LOCK: How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape From it by Ruben Pater is published by Valiz Publishers out of Amsterdam. Whether you’re a designer or a consumer or both, the book is an excellent addition to your library (plug it in right next to Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style) and an essential read for anyone interested in understanding how society got to the place it is today and how to potentially course correct it to a better, more equitable future.

Buy it from the publishers site or demand your local bookstore to order a whole stack of them—this is one book you really shouldn’t get from Am**on.

Hauntology

Hauntology

haun·​tol·​o·​gynoun

First introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book Specters of Marx, hauntology is a portmanteau of haunting and ontology. It usually refers to the return, celebration, or persistence of elements from the past, as in the manner of a ghost and in anticipation of a future that never occurred.

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via Google Ngram

At a time of political reaction and restoration, when cultural innovation has stalled and even gone backwards, when “power…operates predictively as much as retrospectively” (Eshun 2003: 289), one function of hauntology is to keep insisting that there are futures beyond postmodernity’s terminal time. When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.

Mark Fisher, The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology

Select Examples

Hauntology supplants its near-homonym ontology, replacing the priority of being and presence with the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present nor absent, neither dead nor alive.

Colin Davis – Hauntology, spectres and phantoms

The great sonic-theoretical contribution of The Caretaker to the discourse of hauntology was his understanding that the nostalgia mode has to do not with memories but with a memory disorder. The Caretaker’s early releases seemed to be about the honeyed appeal of a lost past: Al Bowlly’s aching croon in the Strand ballroom in prewar tearoom London, buried beneath the sound which constitutes something like the audio-correlate of hauntology itself: crackle.

k-punk (Mark Fisher)

Geographical Interest

Country-level searches for “Hauntology” over the past 5 years via GoogleTrends data
The Islandia Journal: A Sub(Tropical) Periodical

The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

The Miami-based Islandia Journal offers a refreshing and strange look at some of Florida’s more eccentric angles and anomalies through the hazy, sun-drenched, and mysterious lenses of local visual artists and writers. It is focused around the paranormal, weird, historical, and uniquely Floridian. The 8 ½’’ x 5 ½’’ limited-run journal’s first issue was published in spring 2021 and is a delight to hold, read, and flip through even if you’re unfamiliar with the idiosyncratic nature of life in and around Florida.

Detail of illustrator Russel Beans' Everglade Griffin on the cover of The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical
Detail of illustrator Russel Beans’ Everglade Griffin on the cover of The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

The periodical begins with a sincere and storied indigenous land acknowledgement which also acts as a kind of preface, setting the stage for the reader in a way that suggests Florida/Islandia has a complicated and deep history of human habitation.

Islandia acknowledges Florida and the Caribbean are the ancestral homes of a myriad indigenous tribes including (but not limited to): the Miccosukee, Seminole, Calusa, Muspa, Tequesta, Timiqua, various Arawak and Calib tribes including the Taino and Lucaya.

Land acknowledgement in The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

What does Miami look like after ten years of sea level rise? A couple spreads of beautiful watercolor paintings by Raymond Fort help the reader visualize this uncomfortable but seemingly unstoppable imminent-future waterworld scenario.

Miami: Ten Feet After Raymond Fort is a series of watercolor paintings depicting a theoretical Miami after ten feet of sea level rise.

The paintings–which appear to show impossible geometric buildings and structures floating off in distant bodies of water–are loose, a bit abstract, colorful, and calming.

Detail of painting from Miami: Ten Feet After, a series of watercolors by Raymond Fort depicting a theoretical Miami after ten feet of sea level rise.
Detail of painting from Miami: Ten Feet After, a series of watercolors by Raymond Fort depicting a theoretical Miami after ten feet of sea level rise.

What is hopefully a recurring segment in Islandia is the section devoted to “Cryptids of the Caribbean”–a reference to cryptozoology and the field of theoretical but unproven and often mythical and strange creatures. Here we are patiently taught about the Chickcharney–an “owl-humanoid creature known for its trickery”. The island on which it haunts, “Andros”, is “the largest, but least populated Bahamian island… Andros is also home to the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center where the U.S. Navy simulates underwater warfare.” 

Miami-based illustrator and printmaker Russel Beans lets us know what the owl-humanoid cryptid Chickcharney looks like in the first issue of The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical
Miami-based illustrator and printmaker Russel Beans lets us know what the owl-humanoid cryptid Chickcharney looks like in the first issue of The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

The illustration of the Chickcharney by Miami-based illustrator and printmaker Russel Beans (@are.beans), who also drew the Everglades Griffin cryptid on this issue’s cover, is ominously delightful and thoughtfully detailed.

Detail of Russel Beans' owl-humanoid cryptid Chickcharney from The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical
Detail of Russel Beans’ owl-humanoid cryptid Chickcharney from The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

A very succinct and prideful essay on health and Haitian food by Haitian nutritionist, Olguyne Fernandez-Fraga, called The Haitian Nutritionist is translated into Haitian Creole on it’s opposite page which is a beautiful and fascinating language to see on the printed page.

Gen santye pi dwat pou rive an sante. Manje ou pa Bezwen foto-pafe pou konsidere li kom an sante. / There are more straightforward paths to a healthy lifestyle. Your food doesn’t need to be picture-perfect to be considered healthy.

Excerpt in Haitian Creole and English of The Haitian Nutritionist by Olguyne Fernandez-Fraga in The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

Amongst more essays, poems, and illustrations is a very old and storied flag of Fernandina Beach that extends across a full spread and supplements, both visually and literally, a story about the region’s tumultuous and dense history of colonization. It also introduces a mythical con-artist anti-hero figure from the 1800’s that feels uniquely Floridian.

The History of Fernandina Beach on the Isle of 8 Flags in the first issue of The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical
The History of Fernandina Beach on the Isle of 8 Flags in the first issue of The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

Themes and tales of the strange, wonderful, and uncertain persist throughout the colorful, eerie, and fascinating 53-page journal including a full spread illustrated map of author Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! by Marcella May.

Map of Karen Russell's Swamplandia! by Marcella May in the Spring 2021 Issue of The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical
Map of Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! by Marcella May in the Spring 2021 Issue of The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

For more information on Islandia including purchasing this or future issues (or re-issues), visit their website islandiajournal.com or check out their instagram @islandiajournal where they are very active and tuned-in to the Florida weird.

https://www.islandiajournal.com/