HOT TYPE

Book, edition of 6, 2019

HOT TYPE is a collection of readings and primary sources on the topic of the working class history of graphic labor, as exemplified by the International Typographical Union, the California Labor School, and the Detroit Printing Co-Op. It argues for both the historical precedent of labor militancy within the design industry, and the necessity for a renewal of class consciousness in the creative sector more broadly, which is comprised of many contract and contingent workers.

Background

Before the term “graphic designer” was coined, there were jobbing printers, typographers, compositors, bookbinders, pressmen, and more. Design, now widely considered a white collar profession, has its basis in the furnishing of the newspaper printing industry of the nineteenth century. As workers, these printing professionals occupied a strategic position in relation to the to the means of the production of popular consciousness.