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Briar Levit

@briarlevit

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Work, research process, events, other people’s work. I 💜 pop culture.
Director @graphicmeans
Professor @psugd
Co-director @peoplesgdarchive

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Recent Travel Pages by @emmachristinehall and kbk. Books. Cars. Signs. People. Quotes. Weirdo Stuff!

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Week Two @psu_artanddesign LET’S DO THIS!

Kicking this post off with our overstuffed corndog, who made the move from the old building with us.

NO CORNDOG LEFT BEHIND!

A few moments from all four floors as I opened up doors and popped into classes this morning. We also had our first fire drill, so there’s a little all-school gathering outside in the mix too!

I saw colleagues from painting, fashion + printmaking, along with so many sweet graphic design faces. SUCH a game changer to have our whole school under one roof. All these people and all this making happening in one spot!

And NEXT TUESDAY we get to share it with all of YOU! Our big GRAND OPENING is October 13, and everyone is invited. Come explore all four floors and meet the people bringing this place to life!

4–8 PM! Opening remarks at 4! Ribbon cutting at 4:45! Building-wide party from 5–8!
Art, design, music, printing, performances + making things. Bring your friends! 💛

Details at psu.gd/grandopening

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New York, I love you—you’re not bringing me down.

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I thought I would just officially share that I’m working on the book follow-up to my documentary, @graphicmeans. This project, which has never really stopped completely, is something I will never tire of. There are so many aspects to the story of graphic design production that are not just fascinating in and of themselves, but that are really important to reflect on in this rapidly expanding tech moment.

The book will include the film information, but expand on more aspects of these production eras and will be crammed with images to pore over.

I hope you’ll join me as I share along the way at the @graphicmeans account. Mostly it will be things that just cannot make it into the book, but that are a delight and deserve a spotlight if only for a moment on social media.

PS: sorry for the corny “byte” joke. I can’t resist.

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Attn: 1970s DESIGNERS!
Do you remember this issue of U&lc? Did it make an impression on you or your colleagues? Let me know your thoughts about it or simply about the brief transition from film photosetters to digital if you were keyed into it in the comments or a DM. Thanks!

Many thanks to @volumes.designlibrary for access to this incredible magazine and many more.

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ATTN @typecon attendees (and those in driving distance to Portland, OR). The People’s Graphic Design Archive will be up and running at the @futurefonts and Friends party TONIGHT!
6–9pm at @outletpdx

Lots of other goodies to check out as well. Come one and all!

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𝑳𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒆𝒂𝒏 was the closing event of the BA summer seminar 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗶𝗻, 𝗳𝗼𝗿, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝘆. In our final class, the Dean of @fhpotsdam.design joined us as each student read their letter aloud and handed it to her. 💌

Students wrote letters to the Dean of Design as an institutional intervention to expand the perspectives through which design is understood, taught, and practiced at FH Potsdam.

These recommendations are the outcome of a feminist audit of the FHP library, where students documented and identified significant gaps in the representation of marginalised voices and perspectives on design. Each letter to the Dean requests the acquisition of a book currently missing from the collection of the FHP library and argues why it matters.

Every book requested by the students has now been ordered for the FHP library!

🔤 The typeface is Manuzio by @selinabernet

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𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗶𝗻, 𝗳𝗼𝗿, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝘆 is a BA seminar I taught last summer semester @fhpotsdam.design 🔥🔪🔮🎀

Design operates within social, political, and economic structures and actively shapes them in return. It participates in the production and organisation of spaces, labour, images, knowledge, and things, helping make certain worlds possible while excluding others. For this reason, it is deeply entangled in systems of oppression and privilege. One of the systems design is entangled with is patriarchy.

Patriarchy makes inequality appear natural and unavoidable. But it does not operate alone; it intersects with white supremacy, coloniality, racial capitalism, cisheteronormativity, and ableism, shaping experiences differently across bodies and geographies. How does design naturalise and reproduce inequality? How does it participate in extraction, exclusion, and invisibilisation? And what might it mean to design against these logics?

🔤 The typeface is Manuzio by Selina Bernet @selinabernet

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Here are some more green books we LOVE! Because although we *cannot* deny the favorite child allegations, you might have had enough of Alphabettes Soup by now...

But when you're done cleansing your palette, swipe to see our aforementioned favorite green child, and consider taking her into your home by ordering now at bikini-books.com

💚 💚 💚

From Top to Bottom:

We couldn't resist the urge to sneak in Bikini's own On design, feminism, and friendship by Briar Levit into this overview of green(ish) books! It is a tiny but mighty book on Briar Levit's design journey, weaving through teaching, writing, editing, archiving, and documentary making against a changing feminist landscape.

Virago Reprints and Modern Classics: The Timely Business of Feminist Publishing dives into Virago's strategy of reprinting and the epistemic revelation that women writers were forgotten and could, therefore, be rediscovered. (We love Virago in this household!)

Reading Ecologies: Transforming Publishing in Africa (Edited by Pascale Obolo, Michalis Pichler, Parfait Tabapsi) calls for insurgent publishing, rooted in the political, aesthetic and epistemic struggles of independent publishers from the African continent and diaspora.

On Women brings together Susan Sontag's most fearless and incisive writing on women. Although for the most part written in the 1970s, her words are still strikingly relevant to our contemporary conversations.

Mindy Seu's Cyberfeminism Index, an expansive archive of radical techno-critical activism, has taken the world by storm — documenting over 1,000 entries of feminist net art, digital rights activism, bio-hacktivism, and scholarly texts.

Radical Software: Women in Art & Computing 1960-1991 (exhibition catalogue) similarly abandons conventional art-historical categories to look at art and social change through the lens of technology.

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Two weeks ago, a group of #lostarts members coordinated a dinner with some new faces and familiar faces.

We started off hanging out at @volumes.designlibrary (more soon) — an incredible repository of design literature. Worth the trip to PDX just for a visit.

Then dinner. For some dinner was a moment to reconnect. For others a way to meet new folks — expand our thinking and the community of folks we know.

But at the end of the day, it was just fun. No screens. No pretense. Just food, good conversation.

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I graduated college last week with a BFA in Graphic Design, along with some of my best friends in the entire world! I’m so grateful for this experience for teaching me so much and helping me grow into the person I am today. There was a time in my life where I never thought this would be possible for me, and I’m so proud and happy to say that I did it! I’m gonna miss @psugd and those who are a part of it so much. Thank you to all of my professors, mentors, friends and peers who helped make this possible. A huge special shout-out to @katebingburt @briarlevit and @dididothat.design -And EVERYONE who has come into my life along the way.

Can’t wait to enter this next chapter of my life one degree hotter! 💐👩‍🎓🧚‍♀️

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Briar Levit (@briarlevit) is a professor of graphic design at Portland State University. Her feature-length documentary, Graphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production, tells the story of how production technologies and workflows informed graphic design from the analog mid-century to the Digital Revolution at the end of the 20th century.

She edited Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History (2021), which includes the research of 19 scholars including herself. Currently, she co-directs The People’s Graphic Design Archive @peoplesgdarchive (with Morgan Search) — a crowd-sourced digital archive with an aim to help create more inclusive and participatory design histories.

Archive
September 19, 2026
New York City
@fitnyc—Katie Murphy Amphitheater
Co-host @aigany

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