“Is This the End?”: Histories and Futures of Worker Solidarity in US Graphic Design

• In Event: Mass Media and Counterplay: The Visual and Textual Politics of Resistance and Solidarity

Abstract

At the International Typographical Union’s 1893 convention in Chicago, union president W. B. Prescott offered dire statistics on the effect of mechanical typesetting on employment in the printing trades: 3,500 union members had lost their jobs as a result of the widespread adoption of typesetting machines since their invention and subsequent marketing in the 1880s. Linking the introduction of such machinery to the period of economic depression that had begun in the 1870s, Prescott affirmed that the enduring ethic of trade unionism was not fighting against the adoption of such machines so much as “accepting the inevitable and securing the best terms possible.” Since the late 19th century, work practices related to typography, printing, and layout have, as in other trades, continued to be shaped by mechanization and automation designed to funnel power and profits away from workers towards capitalists. As such, mechanization of the printing industry in the late 19th century represents a phase in the continuing automation of visual communications production. Also since that time, such production practices have transitioned from the purview of skilled manual laborers to a managerial class of creative workers known as graphic designers who are rarely, if ever, members of unions or guilds. Thus, while graphic designers have continued to perform the skilled creative and technical labor that has defined so much of the United States’ media cultures since the 19th century, they often identify more readily with the interests of management and capital.
Today, as artificial intelligence and machine learning threaten to once again replace graphical workers with machines and fundamentally reshape the labor practices of those remaining employed in the field, graphic designers along with other visual communication professionals find themselves at a disadvantage as they face yet another radical shift in their working conditions under globalized capitalism. This paper, situated at the intersection of US labor history and design history, analyzes graphical workers’ current predicament within the broader scope of US visual communication since the mid-19th century in order to envision what solidarity has looked like–and might look like–under such conditions. Notable exceptions notwithstanding, the bulk of historical narratives of graphic design history have continued to emphasize defining and/or interrogating what is distinctive or rarefied about graphic design as a creative practice rather than delineating the ways in which the term has come to represent an complex cluster of labor processes and class struggles. Examining the successes and failures not only of trade unions but also other creative collectives in the face of capitalist automation, this paper seeks to chart a path through this historical territory in order to present political possibilities not only to the graphical workers whose labor shapes so much of the contemporary media landscape but also to other workers, including scholars and educators, who might be displaced and silenced by machines.

Biographical Information

Arden Stern, Ph.D. is a faculty labor organizer and scholar of U.S. visual culture and design history whose current research analyzes the labor history of graphic design in the United States and material histories of digital media. Dr. Stern is an Assistant Professor in ArtCenter College of Design’s Department of Humanities & Sciences, also teaching in its Media Design Practices graduate program. They received their doctorate in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine, and their bachelor’s degree in Art-Semiotics from Brown University. Dr. Stern has been the recipient of research fellowships from the Walter P. Reuther Library, the Winterthur Library, and the American Antiquarian Society, as well as ArtCenter's Samsung-endowed Faculty Enrichment Grant and the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography Educator Grant. They have contributed to various scholarly and journalistic publications, including Design and Culture, Design Issues, and Print magazine, and are currently preparing a manuscript that analyzes U.S. graphic design from the late nineteenth century through the present through the lens of class struggle. They recently shared the stage with Chris Smalls, the lead organizer of the successful Amazon Labor Union campaign at the corporation’s Staten Island fulfillment center, at the California Labor Federation’s 2022 Biennial Convention.

Author

• Arden Stern, ArtCenter College of Design