Unlike the 1960s, which are popularly regarded as a watershed in histories of graphic design, developments in the 1970s have been largely ignored by critics and historians of American visual culture. Yet this decade witnessed several fundamental changes in the structure and practice of the graphic design industries, giving rise to new patterns of working as well as a distinctive set of technical and stylistic interests. This symposium will examine several aspects of advertising, publishing, and print technology in the 1970s, with a particular focus on the role of illustration in the New York design scene.

Topics to be explored will include: the diversification of the magazine publishing industry; the evolving roles of the art director, illustrator, photographer, and ad agency; women designers, feminism, and the mass media; corporate identity, branding and the counter culture; pop culture, graphics, and the music industry; and Modernism, modernity, and the first stirrings of Post-Modernism.

Amy Aronson
Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University
“Revolutionary and Regressive at the Same Time: Women’s Magazines and the Magazine Industry in the 1970s”

R. Roger Remington

Design, Rochester Institute of Technology

“Three Lost Women Design Pioneers: Dorthy Waugh, Helen Federico, and Mary Faulconer”

Henrietta Condak
Independent Designer
“Record Cover Design”

Ruth Ansel (Art Director and Designer)
in conversation with Aidan O’Connor (Manager, Strategic Initiatives, AIGA) “On Being an Art Director”