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A rich, inclusive, contemporary, and global look at design diversity, past and present, through essays, interviews, and images curated by design educator and advocate Kaleena Sales.
As the design industry reexamines its emphasis on Eurocentric ideologies and wrestles with its conventional practices, Centered advocates for highlighting and giving a voice to the people, places, methods, ideas, and beliefs that have been eclipsed or excluded by dominant design movements.
Curated by Kaleena Sales, a powerful voice and noted advocate for diversity in the design community, the thirteen essays and interviews in this volume feature important and underrepresented design work and projects, both historical and present-day, including:
- Gee’s Bend Quilters, by Stephen Child and Isabella D’Agnenica
- A Chinese Typographic Archive, by YuJune Park and Caspar Lam
- Indigenous Sovereignty and Design: An Interview with Sadie Red Wing (Her Shawl is Yellow)
- The Truck Art of India, by Shantanu Suman
- New Lessons from the Bauhaus: An Interview with Ellen Lupton
- Vocal Type: An Interview with Tré Seals
- Decolonizing Graphic Design, A Must, by Cheryl D. Miller
- And more
Filled with striking visuals from a range of global designers, Centered is a must-read and must-have for design practitioners, educators, students, and anyone interested in expanding narratives and gaining a more inclusive understanding of design diversity and its impact on culture.
Kaleena Sales is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Chair of the Department of Art & Design at Tennessee State University, an HBCU in Nashville, TN. She is a coauthor of Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Non-Binary Field Guide for Graphic Designers, and cohosts a podcast about design and culture with Design Observer. During her service on AIGA’s Design Educators Community Steering Committee, Sales advocated for a more inclusive view of design history, through her Beyond the Bauhaus writing series, from which this book originated. Sales formerly served as Director of Diversity and Inclusion for AIGA Nashville.
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