External Resources for Finding Design Objects Online
Here’s a listing of many excellent online collections, compiled by Matthew Bird, Design Historian and Industrial Designer at RISD.
Letterform Archive is a relatively new and compelling repository in San Francisco, full of gems about typography—typeface specimens from the last century, printed goods such as posters, brochures, maps, and books. They also hold excellent books and periodicals for research. It’s a must-visit if you are in San Francisco. The digital archive has high-quality scans and photographs from the collections.
The People’s Graphic Design Archive is an online, crowd-sourced archive full of items that might be overlooked in design history. You can upload your own ideas or browse. (Brockett’s current research project).
50 Watts is an easy-to-browse blog with comprehensive offerings in publication design. Global range of offerings.
Grolier Club is a fancy museum and library in New York city for folks who love books. The collections are wide-ranging, but particularly strong in Renaissance and 18th-century printing. It is beloved by book and print collectors, antiquarian bookdealers, librarians, designers, fine printers, binders and other artisans. Online exhibitions are often accompanied by a great publication that makes research easy.
The Public Domain Review is an open-source collection of, as the name suggests, visual items in the public domain. It’s a nice research hub because images are linked to other sites to support research and most items are featured with a well-presented essay. Global emphasis (not just American or European examples)! Suggested by Design Researcher Dori Griffin, it is “an excellent site for sourcing images to use in studio design projects that explore historical subject matter, since everything is in the public domain.”
Maîtres de L’Affiche (Poster Masters) was a subscription service in 1890s France in which subscribers received an art nouveau poster every month. Jules Cheret organized participation by over 90 artists participated to create a collection of 90 amazing Art Nouveau works.
The New York Public Library has amazing digital collections with a range of media—from songbooks, photographs, early cinema, and posters. In particular, the historic menu collection might be a great source of inspiration.
The Black Panther newspaper was a civil rights protest publication created by the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, originating out of Oakland, CA. This repository has excellent, high resolution illustrations.
Monoskop is a wiki collection of art that is comprehensive and easy to search. In particular, the collection of Avant Garde magazines is a great resource for Graphic Design research and encompasses global publications beyond Europe and North America.
If Art Deco is your interest, here’s a scan of the catalog from the influential 1925 Paris exhibition, full of images to inspire and worthy of research. In general, world’s fair catalogs will offer an array of topics with context ripe for research, such as this MoMA catalog on Art Nouveau.
The Qatar Digital Library has the biggest range of artifacts that I know of from the Persian Gulf area, presented in English, including rare Islamic manuscripts.