Eye Magazine

David Reinfurt’s A *New* Program for Graphic Design had a novel origin: his entire graphic design course at Princeton University was condensed into six lectures, presented over three consecutive days in Los Angeles and transcribed for publication. A *Co-* Program for Graphic Design was born of equally specific constraints, though, this time they emerged from the need to adapt the course for online delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic. Zoom’s automatic transcription generated a record of every session, which was edited to produce the new book’s content. Nontsikelelo Mutiti’s foreword conjures an image of the programme as it shifts online, with evocative references to hosts, waiting rooms, sessions, emojis and chat. My own recollections of remote teaching during lockdown have few highlights, so it is heartening to witness this contribution to graphic design pedagogy come from the same period. But then, as Reinfurt says: ‘design loves constraints’. The first book was a hit – it is currently being translated into six languages – and this sequel, or ‘extension’, builds upon that success.

The ‘co-’ in the title provides the clue to the second factor shaping proceedings. Reinfurt reflects how, by the end of the first semester in 2020, the urgency of Black Lives Matter protests in his native New York and elsewhere ‘made it clear that my classes needed to change’. The question of ‘whose stories get told and who does the telling’ became critical. So the ‘co-program’ represents an attempt to construct a ‘more assertively polyphonic’ curriculum for graphic design, where the white male teacher is decentred (with the acknowledgement that here he nevertheless remains the author). This primarily involves two moves. The first sees an increased presence of Black designers and artists within the new curriculum content. The second stems from the ways that a multiplicity of voices contribute, materialising throughout the book’s transcribed text via different means: as guest speakers, played through video recordings, read aloud by Reinfurt in lengthy quotations. We also hear not only from academics / practitioners, but from recent graduates, too, who open the book considering what a co-programme for graphic design might signify.

J. P. Hartnett, designer, writer, lecturer, London

Read the full version in Eye no. 109 vol. 28, 2025