Events
Collections Tour: Design and Social Justice
with Sabiha Basrai
Explore a facet of Letterform Archive’s vast collection during this in-person, docent-led tour.
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The graphic designer has always had an important role in movements for social justice. This tour will highlight objects from the Letterform Archive that designers produced in service of revolutionary struggles from around the world spanning 100 years.
These objects will tell stories of international solidarity, student activism, racial justice organizing, and queer liberation. In many cases, those who produced these works risked their lives to design, print, and distribute materials to protest injustice, win campaigns, and ultimately change the cultural narrative around those issues. They utilized evolving technologies to craft their messages for mass production and disrupt oppressive narratives.
As we face a difficult political terrain today, we can learn from the social justice movements of the past. We can find inspiration from designers who devote their talents to visualizing a more just and sustainable world as we reflect on our own roles and responsibilities to fight repression.
Our docent for this in-person tour is Sabiha Basrai.
This tour was made possible by a generous grant from Hauser & Wirth.
Sabiha Basrai
Sabiha Basrai is a co-owner of Design Action Collective—a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to serving social justice movements with art, graphic design, and web development. She is a Core Member of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, where she works with racial justice organizers on international solidarity campaigns. Sabiha is part of the Center for Political Education Advisory Board, a member of Race Forward’s Affiliate Training team, and a docent at Letterform Archive focusing on global scripts and internationalism.
Sabiha Basrai has been working at the intersection of graphic design and social justice activism since the late-1990s. She is currently a co-owner of Design Action Collective and a member of the University of San Francisco’s Department of Art + Architecture. She is also a volunteer coordinator of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action and a member of the Center for Political Education’s advisory board.