Earlier this year, I received a mysterious email. A permissions specialist wanted to license my 1991 poster, “Defying Odds, Expanding Opportunities: The African American Challenge,” (below right) designed for my client, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, for use in the forthcoming 7th Edition of Meggs’ History of Graphic Design.
I scanned the image, forwarded my permission form, and crossed my fingers. No way, was my image and any commentary about my work going to appear in the next Meggs’, I thought. By July, I received a confirmation from the book’s co-editor, Sandra Maxa.
I had no idea how the editors would position my work, but I was excited to see the new edition. Before attending the AIGA Design Conference, I received my copy, and I read it in awe of the new perspectives and the topical organization. Under the topic “Mobilizing for Racial Equality,” I found my poster, positioned alongside Black design history icons: Eugene Winslow, Emory Douglas, Dorothy E. Hayes, and the sub-listing of Bill Howell, Dorothy Akuburo, William Wacasey, Alex Walker, and Joyce Hopkins. I am beyond honored to see my name listed with our community’s Black graphic design trailblazers.
poster by Cheryl D. Miller (1991)
“Mobilizing for Racial Equality,” featuring work by Herb Lulalin, Corita Kent, Eugene Winslow, Emory Douglas, and Cheryl. D. Miller, Meggs’ 7th Edition, pages 444-448
But as I thumbed through the pages, the topic of “Editorial Design” offered another surprise: Ebony and Jet Magazine are now canonized in Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. “Well, sah,” as my Island mother would say. “These magazines highlighted the Black experience at a time when most magazines focused on white readers documenting a range of topics, including the civil rights movement of the 1960s and pop culture,” wrote the authors.
With excitement, I looked over the index to discover 25 Black designers in the 7th Edition. That’s a 750% increase in visibility of Black graphic designers from merely three references in the previous six editions.
I have been an extremely harsh critic of Meggs’ History in the past, as it rendered the timeline of our graphic design history. As a lecturer at the Howard University School of Fine Arts, I teach my signature course, “Decolonizing Graphic Design: A Black Perspective,” and have written an accompanying history textbook in response to the countless oversights of cultures and heritages not recorded in the canon. I couldn’t wait for Meggs’ to do what I knew needed to be made available to young designers.
The 7th Edition is a reformation — dismantling the core barriers that have kept many of us from realizing our full potential in this field. It will make a transformative difference for years to come. The next generation of designers will find themselves in the history of graphic design and propel the industry forward.
Black graphic designers have been hiding in plain sight for centuries. They had no intention of hiding. The design industry simply made little attempt to help them feel seen.
Jada Jones, Howard University undergraduate
I asked Maxa about the restructuring of the historical timeline and how this shift might affect educators whose weekly lectures have long relied on the linear storytelling approach that has traditionally defined Meggs’ History.
“To create a new edition that is relevant to students today, we used a more direct writing style and stronger representation of designers from different backgrounds,” she said. “We also advocated for restructuring the new edition around themes instead of chronology to avoid implying a hierarchy that comes with presenting something as ‘the first.’” Maxa continued, “Including diverse voices and practices of graphic design is integral to situating the work of graphic designers today with cultural and social contexts of the past and inviting broader participation and interpretation from readers to construct a shared history of graphic design.”
“We heard you! We read a lot of reviews and talked to numerous people about what they would like to see in a new edition of Meggs’ History of Graphic Design,” said Maxa. The Black graphic design representation in the 7th Edition is unmatched as a discussion of the design canon. Years of countless clarion calls from our Black graphic design community have finally been heard — for a more fair, equitable, and just representation of all practicing designers, past and present.
The canon is not neutral. It is not simply a record of what happened. It is a selective story that gives power to some voices and silences others.
Aditya Gupta, Howard University MFA program
At the AIGA conference, I was pleased that Debra Johnson, co-owner of Shop at MATTER, featured the new Meggs’ in the pop-up store. I asked Johnson how sales of the latest edition were going. Candidly, she informed me: not well. “Many are saying it’s too white,” Johnson admitted, “This is the first time we’ve carried Meggs’ in our bookstore. Meggs’ long reputation as a premier graphic design history textbook coincides with its reputation as being a white, Eurocentric textbook.”
Now that the 7th Edition has expanded and reformed the canon of our collective histories, Meggs’ must tell a new branding story!
AIGA also coincided with my midterm grading, which further underscored the point above; each paper spoke to a crucial need to diversify the design history we teach.
Left: Timeline from Meggs’ 7th Edition, page 2; Right: Detail of Blombos Cave patterns (South Africa) and Lascaux paintings (France)
The Lascaux Cave “bull and horse” artifact has dominated our understanding of the origins of writing and graphic communication. Meggs’ and every other history of graphic design underrepresents the graphic communication, writing, and symbols originating in Africa. The new Meggs’ History of Graphic Design course corrects! In the first chapter, “Timeline,” the book gives a lucid and a fair representation of both Africa (c. 75,000 BCE Silcrete flake stones at Blombos Cave, South Africa) and then Southern France (c. 15,000-10,000 BCE cave painting at Lascaux) as the beginning origins of graphic communication, writing, and symbols, offering the origin of our history in clear view.
This lack of visibility is problematic not only because it disregards the historical context that many people live in, but it also limits the ways in which we can truly communicate with each other.
Kamel Worgs, Howard University MFA program
Maxa, along with co-editor Mark Sanders, candidly shared with me their heartfelt goal to include a more diverse history within the new edition of Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. “We sought parallel, converging, and divergent designers and works that bolster the spine of graphic design history presented over the previous editions,” she said. The book’s acknowledgments list includes Bobby Martin, Jerome Harris, and Brockett Horne as especially helpful in advising on Black graphic design history. Maxa continues, “Our hope in doing this is that readers, new and old, find meaningful role models, contrasting opinions, and unexpected connections that illustrate how the past is important to their present.”
“We want to thank the numerous graphic designers, researchers, archivists, journalists, advocates, students, and teachers who add to the scholarship and history of graphic design every day,” Maxa added. “We spent hundreds of hours reading your books, articles, interviews, exhibition catalogs, and papers, and are grateful for and inspired by your work to expand the field of design.”
The 7th Edition of Meggs’ is a new beginning; it offers hope. Mission accomplished, Meggs’ team! I plan to incorporate it alongside my own course textbook. I am confident my design scholars will be inspired to find their voice and feel included in the design conversation.
Dr. Cheryl D. Miller is recognized for her outsized influence within the graphic design profession to end the marginalization of BIPOC designers through her civil rights activism, industry exposé trade writing, research rigor, and archival vision. Miller is a national leader of minority rights, gender, race, diversity, equality, equity, and inclusion advocacy in graphic design. She is the founder of the former Cheryl D. Miller Design, Inc., NYC, a social impact design firm. A designer, author, educator, theologian, and decolonizing design historian, Miller is the author of HERE: Where the Black Graphic Designers Are (2024) and Decolonizing Design from a Black Perspective (2025).
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