collection – Design at Mason Gross

Poetries Politics

March 19, 2024May 9, 2023 by Atif Akin

Poetry must be made by all.

Not by one.

– Isidore Ducasse. Comte de Lautréamont

The book that you see on the shelf, Poetries – Politics: A Celebration of Language, Art, and Learning is recently published by Rutgers Press. It is the outcome of a collaboration between design students at Mason Gross and SAS students. Professor of French Literature Mary Shaw and I co-taught a practicum class in 2017 that then culminated as an exhibition at the Academic Building. The book features posters that display politically charged poems from around the world that are selected by SAS students and designed bilingually by Mason Gross students.

Poetries – Politics is edited by Jenevieve DeLosSantos, Associate Teaching Professor & Director of Special Projects, and designed by Devon Monaghan, a design alum. I have included here a PDF of sample pages from the book along with Devon’s and my articles. All the students and other contributors are listed in the PDF. It is a coffee table book with good reproductions of great collaborative student work. It is available on amazon and at Barnes & Noble next to the train station in New Brunswick, in the faculty author section.

Design Issues Covers

April 3, 2019April 1, 2013 by Atif Akin

MIT Press Journals has put the complete collection of almost 30 years of Design Issues covers on a Pinterest page. You can see them at the following url:
http://pinterest.com/mitpress/design-issues-covers/

This is Display

April 12, 2019June 28, 2012 by Atif Akin

www.thisisdisplay.org

Display is a curated collection of important modern, mid 20th century graphic design books, periodicals, advertisements and ephemera. Documenting, preserving and providing public access to these original materials will raise the profile of Graphic Design as a source of educational, historical and scholarly analysis for teachers, students, designers and independent researchers. From the rational to the experimental to the playful – our collection is varied and represents a distinct point of view about mid-century graphic design, typography and beyond.

Display is organized and designed by Kind Company, an independent web and print design office in Brooklyn, New York. Alongside client work, KindCo engages in self-initiated graphic design history projects. Their websites for the Alvin Lustig Archive and Helvetica and the New York City Subway System help generate inspiration and awareness about graphic design history, pioneers and artifacts. Partners – Greg D’Onofrio and Patricia Belen – are practicing designers, graphic design history enthusiasts, collectors and aspiring writers.