Silas Munro and Tobi Ashiru

Overview

The discipline of graphic design has been a fundamental, but often siloed, facet of design practice. Stylistic typography, color choice, and composition have spoken in the stead of Black designers. Graphic design has co-created any traceable history of the Black aesthetic into the material. Conceptualizing the intricacies, logics, intentions, and visual modes of Black graphic designers works to define and make reference to Black visuality throughout time. 

The work of Polymode and Poche Design both give reference to Black visuality: odes to their West African cultural heritage, traditional architectural education, deep knowledge of the Black archive to offer two disparate, but fully embodied approaches to graphic design. Polymode is the brainchild of Silas Munro, and espouses their commitment to poetic research as an original practice of finding balance between all knowledges, and methods while maintaining a centrism on designing for the context through inquiry. Poche Design has translated the work of architects Morgan and Tobi, into a mission-driven design studio across graphics and brand design to tell stories that catalyze the important work of communities and organizations. At the core of these two professionals is a commitment to storytelling, and at the heart of their practices are their contributions to education as professors. 

Polymode is a bi-coastal, queer, and minority-owned graphic design studio leading the edge of design with thought-provoking work for clients across the cultural sphere. We collaborate with innovative businesses, community-based organizations, and those shifting the world through social justice. By advocating for clear and transparent structures of communication, compensation, and relationships, Polymode creates a radical approach to design where the product emerges from a process of mutual respect and enjoyment.

Poche Design STUDIO, poche “the word for the black portion of an architectural plan that represents solids,” is a black women-owned design studio who’s mission is to occupy and amplify the poche, or Black space in design. Working at the intersection of architecture and design, Poche creates impactful designs for clients and customers, which over a 100 clients served total projects since their start in 2020.

This episode is dedicated to thinking about the discipline of graphic design, its critical role in the visualization and representation of design, and most importantly, the role of graphic design in expanding the visual justice of Blackness in our public consciousness and graphic materiality. Our central question is: how can a black orientation to graphic design deepen the role and function of visualization in architecture fields? And more importantly, how can a black form of graphic design offer something entirely distinct and why do we need that? 

 

About Silas and Tobi

Silas Munro is an artist, designer, writer, and curator engaging multi-modal practices that inspire people to be the best versions of themselves in order to effect positive change on society as a whole. He earned his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Munro is Founding Faculty, Chair Emeritus for the MFA Program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the curator and author of Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest which opened at Letterform Archive in 2022. Munro was a contributor to W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America and co-authored the first BIPOC-centered design history course, Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design 19–21st Century.

Tobi Ashiru is a creative problem solver, leader and designer. With a mission to change the world through design, she strives to push the boundaries of creativity. Born in Nigeria and raised in South Africa, Tobi seeks to create contextually relevant work that celebrates blackness. She’s an interdisciplinary creative with diverse experiences as an architectural designer, installation artist, forever student, educator, and business owner. She holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa; and a Master of Architecture, University of Southern California. Tobi is also adjunct professor at A-Lab Program and undergraduate architecture courses at the University of California. 

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About the Show

Developed by the African American Design Nexus at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, The Nexus is