Christian Solorzano [00:54]

Hello, and welcome to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. Club. I am your host, Christian Solorzano, and today I am speaking with Aggie Toppins, a designer and educator who explores the origins, impact, and evolution of visual communication. She is an Associate Professor and Chair of Design at Washington University in St. Louis. Aggie is also the author of Thinking Through Graphic Design History, Her writing has appeared in prestigious design publications, including Design and Culture, Design Issues, Slanted Eye, and AIGA Eye on Design.

In this episode, we delve into Aggie's formative years in Chicago, her transition to teaching, and her thoughtful approach to design history and education. She shares her journey from her working-class upbringing in Ohio to discovering her voice as a designer, educator, and writer. Whether you're a design professional, student, or simply curious about the creative process, I believe that you'll find Aggie's perspective both refreshing and insightful. Enjoy the conversation.

And as always, if you enjoy the show, we would be really thankful if you gave us a rating wherever you listen. Thank you and enjoy the show. Good afternoon, Aggie. How are you doing?

Aggie Toppins [02:29]

I'm doing well. How are you doing today?

Christian Solorzano [02:31]

Good. It's I was mentioning to you, it's finally, it feels like spring. I don't know how it feels where you're at, but over here it's really pleasant.

Aggie Toppins [02:41]

Yeah, we got to almost 80 degrees today. So it's t-shirt weather, which is nice. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [02:48]

And I also just want to call out and mention gratitude for your amazing talk that you gave with the Chicago Graphic Design Club not too long ago. It was spectacular. And I'm still finishing your book. I'm still reading your book. And I find myself having to go back and forth because there's so much rich nuggets of information in there. So just want to say congratulations and thank you for—

Aggie Toppins [03:14]

Thank you.

Christian Solorzano [03:15]

For everything that's gone into this stuff that you're doing.

Aggie Toppins [03:19]

Well, thank you. That's so nice. I hope you enjoy. I hope you enjoy the book.

Christian Solorzano [03:23]

Learning about you, I've known about you for a long time now because I've always— I've become familiar with your name because it tends to be shared by people that I respect. You and I have mutual connections. I learned that you have a relationship to Chicago. I would love for you— I would love for us to start about talking about that relationship to Chicago.

Aggie Toppins [03:49]

Well, I love Chicago. Chicago was a formative time in my life. I started— in many ways, I really started my career there. So I moved to Chicago when I was 25 in a Ford Focus with little more than a few suitcases and my basset hound that I had at the time. I remember sleeping on my friend's couch for a few weeks until I got my first apartment. But I did have a job.

I was hired by a company called SGDP, which was run by Ted Staniszek and Arnie Goodwin. And over the, over the time I was there, it changed. They changed the name to Simple Truth, and they're in River North. So they're still active, thriving Chicago business today. And so they changed their name right around the time that I left the company to go to grad school. But I lived in Bucktown for the first maybe 1 or 2 years, and then after that I lived in Ravenswood.

So, and I met my husband in Chicago and we got married, and then 2 weeks later we moved to Baltimore.

But when I was at, yeah, when I was at SGDP, which became Simple Truth, I worked with, I worked with really excellent writers and project managers on Mostly print and branding projects. I had really cool clients like Morris Animal Foundation. The Chicago History Museum was our client for a while, and I worked with the Chicago Guild for the Blind, a lot of nonprofits. I worked with really talented people, really kind people that I still think so fondly of.

I worked with Mark Drozd, who's now retired, but he was the creative director I worked with most closely, and he was actually a writer. I worked with associate creative directors Kim Terzis and Marcus Norman. And I worked alongside my dear friend Francis Close, who now lives in Grand Rapids and is an interaction designer. I also worked with 2 really great writers there Claudine Gerton and Steve Batterson.

And I was, I was really active in the AIGA. I went to like everything the AIGA did, and I wrote for their blog. So it was just a really I was young, and it was a really formative time in my life. I started thinking about leaving the industry when the recession hit in 2008, '09. And that was just a really difficult time. And I learned how precarious the industry could be.

And I was starting— at the same time, I was starting to feel kind of bored with client work, which I think is something a lot of academics go through. So it was kind of time to go on and go to grad school. So I— we moved to Baltimore, and I went to MICA for grad school.

But between my first and second years of grad school, I moved back to Chicago, and I took an internship at IDEO, where they would— they had these internships that were for graduate students. And, that was not a good fit for me. I say with a chuckle, for a lot of reasons. And I think it was maybe around that time that I realized that I really, I really needed to leave the industry and maybe go into maybe like teaching or something like that.

And I think it was like kind of serendipitous. It was like the same week that my internship was coming to a close and I was about to move back to Baltimore for school when Brockett Horn, who was my teacher at MICA, offered me my first opportunity to teach.

And so I think I taught like Typography 2 or something like that at MICA when I was in my second year of grad school. And then I taught again the next semester, and I taught the summer after grad school, and I realized this is the calling for me. This is the thing, yeah, that I think I need to do next. So as much as I loved Chicago and I thought we would move back, yeah, we never moved back.

After Baltimore, we lived in Chattanooga for 8 years. That's where I started my academic career. And then we moved to St. Louis about 5 years ago.

Christian Solorzano [07:47]

What was it about the commercial or client work that you didn't enjoy doing?

Aggie Toppins [07:52]

I mean, I don't— I think it might have been a little bit the timing. I mean, during the recession, some of the more experimental and cultural work kind of dried up, and it was a lot of like brochures for insurance companies. And not that, not that, I'm not trying to disparage that kind of work. It's— that needs to be done, and people make their living at it, and some people love it, and that's totally fine.

But I think I wanted to do something that I don't know. I wanted to do something more that felt more conceptual, maybe more of an experimental engagement, a more— I think I wanted to have more of a voice in my work too. And I think also, I think I longed to do something that I felt like had some kind of social impact.

I loved working with the nonprofits we worked with, but I kind of felt like, I don't know, I felt like I just hadn't found yet the work I was supposed to be doing, if that makes any sense. Like the thing that really felt like it was enriching me intellectually. I certainly loved graphic design, but I think a lot of academics go through this. It's like something else, but what is it? So then you go to grad school and then you start teaching.

And for me, I think research and even practice-based research has been— that's been a good fit for me. I really enjoy thinking about theory and thinking about history and making things in ways that aren't necessarily related to commercial outcomes, but are still interesting and hopefully make some kind of contribution to the field.

Christian Solorzano [09:24]

And going back further in time, I would love to learn about how you became interested in graphic design. What was that origin story of maybe you, experiencing your first design or like just experiencing that first—

Aggie Toppins [09:40]

Origin stories are complex, aren't they? Well, okay, let me— I'll take you back. So I grew up in a very low-income family in central Ohio, in Columbus. My mom, sister, aunts, grandparents, we all lived in the same, small half-double that we rented, and sometimes another aunt and her 3 kids lived with us. It was just, a crowded house, and everyone in my family worked menial and often grueling jobs. My grandfather had like a 6th grade education, worked in a factory. My grandmother washed dishes.

And then my mother and my aunt who helped raise me, they worked in a hospital. And, everyone in my life was great, but no one had a career. No one. Most people didn't even have a high school education. So it was just a— I was this weirdo kid that wanted to draw all the time and read books. And it was— I was— I don't know why, but I was just like that. I was curious about cultures and languages, and I was interested in art.

And I think early in my life, I told myself, if you're really good at school and you get a decent job, you won't have to worry about having enough to eat or being warm in the winter. And so I was definitely motivated to have a career as a way of achieving some kind of, I don't know, economic mobility maybe. But the thing I just wanted to do, I just wanted to be an artist when I was a kid.

And As I got older, I started thinking, how could I be something like an artist, but also make a reliable income and have some kind of like social role? And, I grew up in the '80s and '90s, and graphic design wasn't really a household name back then, and certainly not in my family. But at some point, I think I was a freshman in high school, there was someone at church who was a graphic designer, and she took me to her job one Saturday.

And she was— it was like a really amazing experience for me because she had all these markers on her desk and she had this cool Macintosh. Kosh. And she had drawings of horses all over her desk, like tiny drawings, as if she were trying to capture just the right gesture. And I thought, wow, she's getting paid like a nice middle-class income to do what I kind of just do for fun, like what I'm drawing in my, sketchbook or something.

So I decided to study graphic design because it looked like the kind of thing that suited my interests, but also I can get a job. I mean, there's a part of me that's just a materialist like that. So I was the first person in my family to go to college. I went to the University of Cincinnati. I went to the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, which is affectionately referred to as DAAP. And at that time, I started school in '98 and graduated in '03.

It was a 5-year program. It was a bastion of modernism. My professors were like in their 60s, and I had the same professors that Michael Beirut had. I mean, we are not the same age. And so it was just— I just kind of had these old guys who kind of taught things the way that they had always taught them. But it was a really great introduction to the field. And we also had this great co-op program.

So I had 3 internships that were about 6 months each before I graduated. One of them was in New York City. I sold my car so I could afford to, move to New York for 3 months because we were on a quarter system. So our internships were like 2, 3-month blocks. But Anyway, when I was in New York, I saw what was like really possible with a career in graphic design.

I mean, I was going to these world-class museums and we had— it was a branding company. I worked at Lippincott, so we had like world-class clients and it was just another level. I thought, when I'm done with college, I'm going to live in a big city and I'm going to work with cool clients. And I started— I stayed in Cincinnati for 2 years to save money and then moved to Chicago.

Christian Solorzano [13:30]

So a lot of the like getting familiar with your work that you do today and your teaching methodologies and everything that you speak about, there seems to be a very strong rebellious attitude about refusing to comply with power, challenging the status quo, upsetting systems of knowledge. So it's a very troublemaking type of attitude, which I love because I remember myself growing up, I went to a very strict elementary school.

And if you challenged any kind of anything, you would get put on detention or like you would face some kind of consequences. And for a long time, like it was just this inner angst that I had within me where I felt like I— there was nothing out there. I'm like, there's something wrong with me because I tend to just have a problem with authority.

And like now, as an adult, seeing so much discourse about graphic designers that are, disrupting or that they're challenging or that they're so anti so many things, it feels like I finally have a home in which I can belong in. So were you a troublemaker?

Aggie Toppins [14:49]

I love that question because you know what? I was not a troublemaker. I still don't like to get in trouble, but I do, I do believe in critical thinking, and I do believe in challenging the status quo. But I was not— I was like so nervous about getting in trouble and not being able to go to college. Or I was a really good, goody-two-shoes type kid, and I worked on top of high school.

I was just really focused on getting to a place where I could afford to like mess up. I mean, that's the truth. I was like wired to be a good kid and now, I mean, I'm, I feel like I'm maybe more of a troublemaker now that I'm an adult than I was when I was a kid. But part of that is, part of that is because I think, when I mean, I did have an excellent undergraduate education.

So what I'm about to say might sound like I didn't appreciate it, but I was definitely taught to just conform, as a, as a designer to like follow the rules. And this is how you do things. And it just I didn't like it, especially because it's supposed to be a creative field. And to some extent, the industry kind of reinforces that, or at least my experience in the industry did.

And I felt like I just needed— maybe that was partly why I wanted to go to grad school and partly why I like the sort of intellectual autonomy that's involved with being a professor, because I can study what I want and make what I want. And I'm actually like required to make arguments as part of my work. And so I get to really kind of— now I can push, like you said. Maybe now I can be a troublemaker.

Christian Solorzano [16:26]

I love it. I remember when I was in school for graphic design, the required reading was Megg's History of Graphic Design. And I remember thinking to myself that I needed to read the entire book in order to be a real graphic designer.

Aggie Toppins [16:42]

Really?

Christian Solorzano [16:43]

And it used to stress me out so much because growing up, I just, I was never a fan of school. I was always anti-school and I just never liked it. So to pair a history book now to my passion was just so— it would piss me off so much.

Aggie Toppins [17:02]

Why?

Christian Solorzano [17:02]

But eventually, I got over it and I've learned to— I mean, I really appreciate graphic design history a lot, but I've learned to appreciate it through conversation as opposed Through, as opposed to like just reading an outdated book that's telling you that this is the way.

Aggie Toppins [17:20]

Yeah. I mean, I think Meggs, when Meggs did what Meggs did in '83, that it was important at the time. And the questions he was asking, it's almost like easy to look back on it and say, there's so many problems with this. But the questions we ask now are different questions because the field is different. And that's the thing that I do think history is— can be taught in a way that's super boring, and a lot of people are not interested in it because of that.

But the thing that's exciting about history is that it really is, it really is always changing. It's very contestable. The past is contestable. And then we can contest Meigs's approach now because the field has evolved and the questions that maybe make sense to us at this point in the time, at this point in time, are different questions. Than maybe Meggs would have had. He was of his time. And if you read Meggs now— and Meggs is still enormously popular, this text.

I recently collected data on every undergraduate program I could in the United States, about 345 programs, and a ton of them still use Meggs. I can't remember the percentage off the top of my head, but it was, it was— when it comes to textbooks, the most popular textbook in use is Meggs. And the other thing is just no textbook. That's equally popular. So I think, where was I going with this?

Meggs is actually— there's going to be a new version of this text later this year that's coming out, and I know who is working on it. And I think it's supposed to be a radical reorganization of Meggs.

But yeah, I think history— I think I'd much rather— and the way that I kind of teach history in the context of studio is to just ask students to do the kind of research that, to start dealing with historical things so that they're actually thinking historically instead of just studying the content of history that someone else presents. And, that's harder to do maybe, and or maybe it isn't, I don't know.

But I think it just makes sense to me as a practitioner, to start to try and think of historical thinking as a method as opposed to a, content to cram into your head. That makes sense.

Christian Solorzano [19:37]

One of the things that I appreciate about studying history often is discovering someone from the past who also was of the— who was also kind of a disruptor at the time.

Aggie Toppins [19:49]

Yeah, I identify with folks like that.

Christian Solorzano [19:51]

Yes. And I'm like, all right, so there is like, there's other people that were like— an example that comes to mind would be like Tibor Kalman. When I learn or read anything about him, I just love that, bad boy attitude, or perverse optimist. So in unveiling history and discovering history, have you been able to see yourself in past contexts? And do you use the past as a way to inform what you're wanting to do?

Aggie Toppins [20:21]

I think that's a great question. And in some ways, yes, but in some ways, no. I do try to think about the work that I make now and the things that I write now as part of a much larger field of knowledge that existed before me and that I'm trying to make a contribution to. So in a sense, I'm locating myself within the field as it has historically developed.

But I don't know if I see myself in history because there— I mean, we— it's just that so much of graphic design history is written according to this, these professional career profiles. And there's not a lot of women, and there's not a lot of working-class people who make that, who make that cut. But that is partly why I'm interested in what we're starting to see a lot more study of design with its intertwining histories with labor and craft.

And that's where we start to see more kinds of practitioners, and it's a different look at the field. Different than Megg's, and Tibor Kalman was a huge critic of Megg's too. It's a different kind of history than a professional canon, but when I look at the canon, there's certainly people whose work I think is great. I mean, I love Lester Beall's work, who was a mid-century American modernist, and a lot of graphic design histories make mention of Kurt Schwitters' work, which I'm very interested in.

But, I don't know if I don't know if I see myself. And I— but at the same time, I think I recognize the need for designers to have forebears, creative ancestors, as some people— as some people say. And I certainly have designers that I admire. I love Martin Vaneski's work. I love Keetra Dean Dixon's work. They're still practicing. So I recently was at an archive looking through all of Martin Vaneski's process work, and I felt like, I want to be his friend.

I just want to, somehow talk with him about this because his process work, I felt a sort of affinity with it in my own kind of process work. And, but I don't always look to, survey histories of graphic design to show me how to be a practitioner. I think more about how the field has changed. I'm more interested in the kind of social structures from which design history emerges.

I think that teaches us a lot about how our field has changed, how design interacts with the world, what its impacts can be. That's a very different, a survey history that explains the field in a very broad way. I don't necessarily think it's just a roster of professional careers, although I think everyone is certainly— it certainly makes sense that everyone who is a creative practitioner would try to find forebears, if that makes sense.

I think that's a kind of a different history than, say, a survey history that tries to explain the whole, as much of the field as possible, or study something in particular about it.

Christian Solorzano [23:28]

There is a theory that I discovered a few years ago called the 7th generation theory. I don't know if you're familiar, but it's about, it's about taking into account the history of 7 generations into the past. And also taking into account the impact of what you're doing today, 7 generations into the future.

So it positions people as being constantly aware and critical of both their consequences that might be as a result of what they're doing today, and then also the good and the not so good things about the stuff that happened in the past. So I think it's just I find that it's a useful way to Oscillate between all these different reference points.

Aggie Toppins [24:13]

That's interesting.

Christian Solorzano [24:15]

So writing obviously plays a big role in your practice. You are a writer, and in your talk that you gave with us, you mentioned how writing is something that you've been practicing for the most part for the last 5 or so years.

Aggie Toppins [24:30]

Yeah, it's more recent than practicing design, that's for sure.

Christian Solorzano [24:35]

So for designers, one of the things I love about writing is that it encourages you to test your thoughts because it's easy to have a thought, but then once you write it down, you realize that really there's no substance there, or sometimes there is. So how did you get into writing? And what was— for designers that also wish to write, how does one muster up the courage to do it?

Aggie Toppins [25:00]

Yeah, those are, those are great questions. Well, I think I started to write partly because of being an academic, there is a kind of expectation of publication. And in my first teaching position, I taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for 8 years, and I could practice design there and like win design awards or like make some kind of impact in the community. And that was like a demonstration of skill and, even of impact, like just demonstrating impact was enough, to earn tenure.

But when I moved to WashU is Washington University in St. Louis— is a research institution. And so the level of rigor is much higher for tenure, and I did have to earn tenure again when I came here. So I started to write because, partly because I had a lot on my mind that I wanted to say that I had been thinking about, and also because I had just moved halfway across the country.

It was the pandemic, and I thought, I've got to start producing something, but I am totally uprooted. I don't have clients. I don't even really know what it means to practice now. So I started writing because I had all— I had been working on some things. But before, when I was at UTC, I was the head of the department there, and it was a very demanding job, and I just didn't have a lot of time for research.

But when I moved here, that was a very different— I have a very different workload. And so I started publishing out of partly necessity, like I need to earn tenure. But I also, I mean, I was genuinely interested in exploring some things, and I was finding that writing was a way for me to explore that, perhaps even— I don't know if better is the right word, but maybe differently, or in a way that I could get across faster.

I was really— a lot of the questions I was asking when I first started writing Are the questions that led to my book. And those questions came out of a little bit from being a practitioner and a little bit from being a teacher. So yeah, I mean, it— I started writing because that was the outcome that kind of made sense for the questions I was asking. But it was also something I kind of had to do for my job.

It started small, an article here, an article there for I wrote at first for what we call trade or public writing, which is like I wrote for blogs, I wrote for AIGA Eye on Design, I wrote for Slate once. And so those are short-form, often op-ed style kinds of writing. And then I started doing scholarly writing and published. Those are much longer form, very different expectation for the way that you build an argument. And those went into scholarly journals.

And then I just kind of kept doing that, exploring different parts of what would eventually be the book. And I think also part of why one publishes before you try to do a book, I think, is to kind of practice what you're— practice your skill at writing, to prove to the publisher that you do have expertise in the area. But also there's a little bit of building an audience for what you're doing. Like if you publish an article, people read it.

Okay, maybe there's a little bit more that I could keep going with here. So that's kind of how it started. And I didn't— I did not know what I was doing when I started. There are a lot of really great organizations in our field that help practitioners learn to write. One of them being the Design Writing Fellowship that Maggie Taft, a great Chicagoan, is behind. And that used to be part of the Design Incubation organization.

And they still have— they have great programs too for developing research. But, design, graphic design is an applied field. And now that it's in these, research schools, people who were trained to do applied, practice-based work are finding themselves having to learn to do research, on the job. And I was maybe a little bit in that position. My MFA was very studio-oriented and very much oriented toward expression and authorship in the sense of, visual graphic authorship.

And we did write a little bit, but we didn't write academic things. So it was a new turn when I came here.

Christian Solorzano [29:21]

And as you were writing, did you have a mentor? There's so many ways to write and so many— how would you go about just the technicalities of writing?

Aggie Toppins [29:32]

I think mentorship is very important no matter what stage of your career you're in. And I think of mentorship also as sort of a network of people and not just one or 2 people. But I think, through the fellowship program— that was when I did it was through Design Incubation, and now it's through the Writing Center, but does it— Maggie Tass organization.

I met people that were working on books at the same time, and we met publishers, and we learned some things about, how do you pitch a book and what are they looking for. I met the person who ended up commissioning my the commissioning editor on my book through that, through that fellowship. And I meet every month with my research group, and we give each other advice on writing.

We also give each other advice on other things in our work, because we're all, we're all women with academic jobs and leadership roles, and we're all writers, and it's just— we're all designers. And so we— I think it's important to have people in your corner for sure that can help you solve problems or overcome Barriers that while you're growing and trying to figure out how to do things, I definitely think you asked about courage, which, oh, that's a difficult thing.

I don't know how you— I don't know how you find courage, except that I knew I wanted to get tenure and I had to publish. So I was just— that opened up a can of courage. And I submitted things for peer review, and sometimes you get back edits and they're just intense. They just shred your work, and you just take a day, maybe drink a glass of wine, sit down and work on those problems one at a time.

And at first, I used to get— when I first started writing, I used to get totally trashed by peer review because I really didn't know what I was doing yet. I learned how to form an argument by getting it wrong a lot.

And so I think being willing to— if you're starting a new skill, or if you're trying something new, being willing to do the work and make the mistakes and learn from it is one way to go about it. It's not an easy road, but I just, I mean, I was kind of in, I was kind of in the thick of it, so I kind of just had to, the best way out was through kind of thing.

So there was that part of it. There was like the mentorship through these fellowships I had, and then there was the just trying and not getting it right, but then trying again type of thing. I mean, the first academic journal article I published took me 3 years. I didn't even have 3 years for my book, which is like 10 times longer.

Christian Solorzano [31:59]

Which one was that? Which—

Aggie Toppins [32:00]

My first journal article was called Good Nostalgia, Bad Nostalgia. Published in Design and Culture.

Christian Solorzano [32:07]

And that was in 2022 when it was published, right?

Aggie Toppins [32:11]

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I have to look at my—

Christian Solorzano [32:14]

Yeah. And I have it pulled up here because I've been wanting to read it and I only have the abstract. Can we talk about that a little bit?

Aggie Toppins [32:22]

Do you recognize a reference I might be making there? As a Tibor Kalman fan?

Christian Solorzano [32:26]

Yes. So, yeah, can you, can you speak to us a little bit about that?

Aggie Toppins [32:32]

Yeah, sure. So I should say that I wrote that probably a year before it was published too, because academic journals can take a long time. It's all labor that's based on volunteer work. So I was that was one of my first explorations of history through essentially through historical texts like reading things that had been published in the past and thinking about that. I'm very interested in that kind of method of, reading discourse.

And I have often, at various points in my career, and I remember the first time I read it, read this essay called Good History, Bad History that was written by Tibor Kalman and Abbott Miller and Kerry Jacobs, in like the— I can't remember the year now. I want to say it was like '90, yeah, it was, it was, yeah, that's right, '92. And, in this essay, which was very controversial, they kind of like blow apart the sort of growing graphic design history movement.

And some of their arguments are not bulletproof. It is a polemic. They know that what they're saying is strongly opinionated. And, Meggs wrote a response to it because they were, they were definitely like pointing their fingers at Meggs. Among others. But I was very interested in the argument. Part of it was questioning the sort of historical methods that were surfacing in graphic design history and becoming common.

And part of it was questioning what was increasingly a postmodern thing to do, which was to quote history or to absorb historical works into new work, which, at the time modernism is still such a thing. And this idea of nostalgia was quite, it's too— it's— that's not the way you should think. That's sentimental. That's— that doesn't have a place in rational thought. And so it was just really, this idea of bringing the past into the present was just like not cool yet.

It had been going on. This debate had been going on for, years, because I think— I'm thinking of like the Paula Scher ad she did for Swatch where she kind of like uses Herbert Motter's work. That was so controversial at the time. To graphic designers, at least. I don't know how much the public would have thought about it.

But, so I was— I've been very interested in that article, and I was kind of like, what if I use this article as the kind of skeleton or armature for a similar kind of exploration of nostalgia? Because I think at the time, too, I was still living in the South when I started writing the article, and I had— by the time it was published, I had moved to St. Louis. But there was just a lot of pseudo-historical-looking graphic design.

I think maybe it's partly because of living in an old Civil War town. There's a lot of nostalgia in the branding around town, and I wanted to dig more deeply on this idea. I certainly was not allowed to do nostalgic work as an undergrad. I mean, that was not acceptable. But my students love nostalgia. They love to scratch that itch. At least at the time. I see it less and less now, but it's still there.

So I wanted to just deal with this elephant that seemed to be in the room and kind of confront, could nostalgia be a good thing? Could it be a critical thing? And I found ways that it could be. I related it to some other scholars who had written about it.

And I also kind of— Part of what I do in this essay is I also question Tibor Kalman's own references to working-class expressions, which he called vernacular, because that too is a kind of sentimentalizing of anonymous— I mean, I kind of interrogate something that was sort of an unexamined assumption in that, in the original essay as well. So it's a long essay. It's like 8,000 words, and there's— it takes on a lot.

But yeah, it was the first thing I sort of wrote that was kind of in a scholarly a scholarly sort of way.

Christian Solorzano [36:38]

And I watched a few of your presentations that are online in preparing for this interview. There is so much stuff. There is so much stuff. There is a lot for me to pull from. But one of the things that I believe it was a talk that you gave at Cheyenne Ooga, you spoke about truth.

Aggie Toppins [36:56]

Oh, Creative Mornings.

Christian Solorzano [36:58]

Yeah, Creative Mornings.

Aggie Toppins [36:59]

Yes. Yeah, I did. I talked about truth.

Christian Solorzano [37:01]

You talked about your appreciation of Abraham Lincoln. And you talked about truth as a process of inquiry, which I love.

In that talk, you spoke about questioning systems of knowledge, practicing in an ethical way, and truth being a continuous process of questioning and seeking rather than a fixed endpoint. This definition of truth, I think, a way that I sometimes will describe Being open-minded is like being a little bit ignorant in the sense that you're not so attached to your conceptions or like your ideas. So you're like open to being wrong and you're open to just nothingness, to just. So can you speak about just truth?

I know that's a—

Aggie Toppins [37:52]

That's a big question.

Christian Solorzano [37:53]

A big question. How would you define truth today?

Aggie Toppins [37:56]

Oh gosh. I mean, we're seeing in our political climate—

Just how slippery truth can be. Well, first of all, people spend their whole lives contemplating truth. Philosophers have written volumes and volumes. And I suppose in my own work, as a, someone who thinks about history and who thinks about graphic design, and which is a— both of these fields are very persuasive fields based on arguments, based on rhetoric. To some extent. I definitely think that the idea of absolute truth is not so absolute, and that can make people uncomfortable because many people want absolutes.

Many people want, moral imperatives. And I, while I respect that I mean, I'm not the person that came up with these ideas originally, but there's a lot of different philosophical schools that, poststructuralism is one of them that comes from, linguistics that talks about how there's inevitable slippages in language that compromise absolute truths.

There are theories like object-oriented ontology and actor network theory that a lot of academic designers are into that kind of suggest that there's a limit to how much we can really know about things based on the fact that we can't observe everything that exists. And, that means that the, truth as a truth insofar as we can verify facts about things, even the ground upon which we verify facts is kind of shaky.

So, I think— and we're seeing this play out for good or for bad sometimes— but truth is, it's not usually a matter of absolute facts so much as agreement or coalition or consensus. And so that's why I, in that talk, which now feels like a very long time ago, but, I talk about truth as a pursuit, as something that's an ongoing quest, as opposed to this thing that we just— is fixed. We learned the truth about something and now it's over.

Because, I mean, history shows that that's not the case. And in the history of science, the history of knowledge shows that that's not the case. But yeah, it's a big philosophical concept for sure. And it can make people uncomfortable.

Christian Solorzano [40:17]

Yeah. But I think it's such an important conversation to have as designers because what we design is essentially manufacturing some kind of truth, and that truth is often not true. And I think—

Aggie Toppins [40:33]

Yeah, who was it that wrote that? Oh gosh, I'm forgetting the name now on the spot like this, but who was it that wrote about design as essentially trickery?

Christian Solorzano [40:40]

I know what you're talking about.

Aggie Toppins [40:43]

I had that ready at my fingertips, but it's sort of well known through our field that what we do is a little bit trickery.

Christian Solorzano [40:52]

Yeah. And much of, I mean, advertising, it's all an illusion in my opinion. And I think one of the reasons why I, like yourself, have had many existential moments working with clients is because you start to question just what am I doing? And yeah, it's a dark place.

Aggie Toppins [41:19]

I'll give you something I'm grappling with right now related to this, and I don't know where I'm going with it, but I've been asked to write an essay about Tomoko Miho, who was an extraordinary designer, a modernist, and a woman who for much of her career worked separately from her husband, but then worked with her husband, her ex-husband. And then she was also, as a child, interned in a Japanese American, like a Japanese internment camp during World War II.

And so I'm looking through some of her work, and I found this poster that's— I just don't understand today. I don't think someone who went, who had her life experience would necessarily accept this commission. I don't know. Speculation. But she accepted a commission. She and her husband at the time did this series of posters for the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum when it opened in 17— I'm sorry, in 1976 for the bicentennial.

And there's this— it's got all these World War II planes, and the headline is Friend or Foe? And it has like an Air Force insignia or something in the middle. And basically they're talking about— what the poster is talking about is how during World War II civilians were kind of tasked with spotting enemy planes from the silhouette in the sky.

And so the poster is very playful in a sense, because at the bottom you try to match the airplanes that are shown with the caption to try and figure out which is an enemy airplane and which is an American or an ally airplane. But to think that this, as a child, she went through this horrible experience and then designs this poster.

It's sort of like— it sort of like maybe speaks a little bit about the way modernists were so detached from the political content of their work sometimes, or at least tried to be, and had a very objective relationship to content and just solved the problem in quotes. And I don't know how to deal with this unsettling poster, but I also can't interpret it using the values of our time, like the things that we value, because that would be a fallacy. That would be a historical fallacy.

So I don't know how to— I don't know what to do with this thing, and I don't know what the truth is of this thing. I have no access. She's— I can't talk to her. But even if I could, she probably wouldn't want to talk about those camps.

So it's a— I don't know, I brought this up because it felt relevant to what we were just discussing about those kind of existential crises and, crises of meaning and crises of, maybe ethical alignment or moral alignment with certain politics. And here's this poster where clearly this designer just was able to set those things aside? Yeah. Yeah, it speaks to how the field has changed.

Christian Solorzano [44:17]

So as an educator, how do you find having these kind of conversations with your students, with perhaps, a generation that is enthusiastic about pursuing graphic design, maybe as a means of making a living, getting a job, designing the big billboard, or working with all the logos that you see, like the Nikes and the Apples and all that kind of stuff. I'm curious about how that— what you refer to as a brave space.

Aggie Toppins [44:47]

Yeah, that's something a lot of people say, brave space. Yeah. So yeah, let's talk about that. This is a very challenging time to be a student.

Christian Solorzano [44:57]

Teacher.

Aggie Toppins [44:57]

I just want to start by saying, the other day I was reading about a student who ICE basically abducted from their apartment as they were leaving their apartment. That is really difficult to go to school and talk about letter spacing when, ICE is showing up on college campuses or staking students out at their homes. I mean, it's a terrifying time. And so, I bring this up because I think it's a good way to start by saying, teaching is not just the transference of technical skills.

If it were, then it wouldn't be so threatening, right? I think, I think education should be empowering and it should be joyful. I mean, I didn't always have fun in school, but I love to learn, which is why I'm still in the academy. And I think knowledge is powerful. And people who are denied knowledge Are— there's a reason for that. There's a reason why power doesn't always want you to know things. And so, I still believe in education for that reason.

Not everybody responds well to education, to work, to higher ed, or not everybody does, and that's fine. But I don't— I'm one of these people that still believes in the power of education and the transformational potential of college. So when I am teaching, I don't think about what— how do I want to say this? There are students that come to us and just want the technical and visual skills to go get their job at Google. That's fine. That's what they want. That's fine.

And there are students that don't necessarily want that. And I feel like what my role is as an educator is to help students reach their potential and help them get closer to their own goals. I'm bringing my experience and my research expertise and my own experience also in the industry and to that conversation. But the whole thing doesn't work if the student doesn't have goals. I can't just deposit the knowledge in their brains. It doesn't work that way.

And I guess I think that what I think what is important about higher education is not just learning the skills to get a job, but to have transferable skills so that you can, you can take your place in the ongoing work of social transformation. I mean, labor is going to be radically different soon. It's already changing all the time and has changed a lot since I was in college.

And whether our students go cure diseases or make beauty or represent the law, I don't know, whatever they do, I hope college serves them in lots of ways, like to be a whole person. And so when I teach, I'm trying— that's what I think about. I'm trying to help my students reach their own goals, and some of them want to be designers, and some of them take design classes and they don't want to be designers.

I think bell hooks talks about teaching as love, and a kind of love, and a kind of even spiritual guidance, which I don't necessarily take to mean in a religious sense, but I think— I do think it means a kind of intellectual Stupid thing. And so, I, as a teacher, I'm in a position of authority, but I'm not sure I really have that much power. I mean, one of the things I wish students understood better is that teachers are institutionalized along with students.

We don't have— we don't have as much control as maybe historically educators did or professors did, but we are beholden to some structures that we can't control. So we're kind of all in this together. So I only have so much control over that brave space, but it doesn't— I guess what I'm saying is students have to be willing to come to that space too, and they have to be willing to support each other. There's a community, a learning community that happens in the classroom.

And bell hooks talks about this a lot in her book Teaching to Transgress. She talks a little bit about it in All About Love even. But I think, that kind of way of thinking about teaching which some people call the practice of freedom, teaching us the practice of freedom. It comes out in little ways. For example, when I start critiques with my students, I'm not— I don't start by talking.

I ask the students to tell us what their goals are, what they hope to gain from the critique, and how we can help them. I don't want it to be this, interrogation. When I was in school, it was like that. I mean, my professor tore my work in half one time and threw it in the trash. In front of 25 of my classmates, and I was devastated. I just don't teach through humiliation, and I don't teach through like power like that.

I like power, like control, and I'm much— I'm just interested in who my students are and what they want to do. And if they don't know, that's okay. We can— they can still set goals, and tell me what they want to learn. And we do that within the context of certain kinds of conversations.

Some of those conversations are more industry-facing, like I teach a branding class sometimes, or I teach a junior studio that's just called Word and Image, which is about form, and sort of problem solving with form. And I also teach a class called Zines as Critical Practice, where the students can kind of just do whatever they want as long as it's— there's research involved and there's a critical position involved and they can explore form and do things they haven't been able to do in other classes.

It's so fun and yet it's serious. It's not like, let's just goof off. It's still serious. But I'm just so committed to education being joyful and empowering at the same time. And I think it has to do with— I think I try to approach my teaching that way. Not everyone responds to it. Not every student likes it, and not every learning community functions well.

But when it works, boy, is it great? And yeah, I guess that's kind of what I think about it. I mean, I hope to learn the formal and technical skills along the way, but yeah. It's bigger than that.

Christian Solorzano [50:49]

And I definitely see that tone that you're describing, this joyful tone in your book. Because sometimes, anytime that there are some excellent design books that I've read that are extremely academic and they're almost a little bit off-putting just because you gotta read a sentence like 5 times to like—

Aggie Toppins [51:11]

Yeah. Oh, I know. I read a lot of stuff like that. I do, I do try to avoid writing that way.

Christian Solorzano [51:17]

Yeah. So I like—

Aggie Toppins [51:19]

Draft is super jargony, and then I have to— yeah, wipe all that out. But yeah, I do, I do try to achieve a kind of balance between serious ideas, even scholarly theories, with just much more accessible language. It's hard to do. I don't always succeed. I think it doesn't have to be so— it doesn't have to be complicated to be complex? Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [51:43]

And I think sometimes just translating complex ideas into a digestible manner kind of reaffirms that the writer understands what it is that they're talking about.

Aggie Toppins [51:55]

Or at least enough.

Christian Solorzano [51:56]

Or at least enough.

Aggie Toppins [51:57]

At least enough. There's always more to learn.

Christian Solorzano [52:01]

So a follow-up question to what we're talking about is you mentioned, and like we've all been experiencing, here in the world is that we live in just this very strange polarized climate in which, truths are being questioned and beliefs are being reaffirmed that are, sometimes not so— that are harmful and whatnot.

So amidst all of this stuff that's going on, how do you find hope and optimism to continue to, engage with future generations of designers to think critically, to, do all of these things that you're doing? Because yeah, sometimes it could just get— it feels kind of hopeless.

Aggie Toppins [52:46]

Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's so hard to answer. Yeah, that's so hard. I mean, I think we're all dealing with that right now. I mean, so many of us are. I don't even know. I mean, I will be honest that sometimes I think what motivates me is that people rely on me. And, I've got, I've got a kid in college to look after, my niece, and I've got a husband, and I've got students and colleagues that depend on me.

And I think that kind of gives me a sense of purpose. Teaching is very purposeful. And I think when you have a sense of purpose, it kind of helps you stay focused when there's so many distractions in the world. And I do think a lot of what we're seeing, even though it's like devastating news, a lot, a lot of it is distraction from something probably much worse. But I don't know how staying hopeful is definitely hard.

But I guess maybe having an interest in history does to some extent help with this, because in some ways the things that we're seeing have rhymed with periods in the past, and things have been different before, so they could be different again. And I think there's an element of that kind of keeps me hopeful. But, I read the news sometimes in the morning, and I feel so worried about higher ed. I feel so worried about our students.

And then I'll go to class, and I'll teach, and I'll just be completely energized afterwards. Tired, but somehow still— Like my students, I see their I see them, and I just feel like it's somehow it's go— we're gonna get through this. Like they give me— they really do. It sounds corny, but they really do give me hope. They're so small and so committed and creative and generous. And I just, I spend 3 hours at a time with these people, and I think it's gonna be okay.

That may be, it's hard to answer a question like that. I think you have to look for hope and in those kinds of moments. Yeah, I don't know if that answers it, but the demands of teaching and writing and designing and chairing a department are real, and I'm trying to get better at work-life balance and slowing down.

But I think another thing that kind of helps me just be a person in the world amidst, the madness that's out there and the kind of staggering pace of work that we're asked to do. And I think it's to somehow dedicate space to just thinking and being. And I need my time with my books, I need my, I need my long cup of coffee. I just need space to, be a person who thinks about things.

I think cultivating yourself, some people think that's selfish, but it's, it is a form of self-care, and it maybe is even a form of resistance. It's a form it's radical to care about yourself and to care about others in this world. So I think being super tenacious about defending that time and keeping that time, protecting that time, it's hard, but I think it matters. I think it helps a lot.

Christian Solorzano [56:04]

And sometimes that's what appears to be selfishness permits you to show up better for others.

Aggie Toppins [56:10]

Absolutely. Oh, I'll be the first to say that. Absolutely. I mean, I think about this a lot because if I'm too stressed out to do my job well, then students are not going to have a good teacher that day. Yeah, a kid is not going to have a good aunt that day. Someone's not going to have a good friend that day. And I don't want to be that. I don't want to do that.

I mean, taking care of yourself is a way of being available to others too.

Christian Solorzano [56:34]

Absolutely. Yeah, totally. So teaching seems like it's something that is giving you a lot of Joy, recently, if you were not in the world of design, was there ever— is there another— in an alternate universe, is there another path that you would have taken had it not been what you do today?

Aggie Toppins [56:53]

I don't know. That's such a good question. Okay. I mean, I have like— I, when I was like a kid starting to study design, I definitely thought if I don't do well at this, then maybe I'll like study French because I was— I'm very interested in French for some reason. I've been studying French since I was about 10 years old. Yeah, I think I'd be better at it. But so I thought maybe I'll be a— I'll study French, or maybe I'll study American history.

I've always loved history. But I also feel like I'm super interested in cities and urbanism, and I think that could be a cool thing. But to be honest, I was just talking about this with my colleagues the other day. We were all out to dinner, and I— the truth is my fantasy career is to be a food critic.

I would love to be a feared food critic. You go to a restaurant and everyone's like, I think that's her, that kind of thing. And then you eat a big, beautiful meal and then you write about it. That would be an amazing job if you could, if you could make a living. I mean, I would love to do that. I guess it all comes back to like something that has to do with culture and language.

Christian Solorzano [57:56]

And do you remember what was the first thing that you ever designed? Or like the first thing that you were consciously aware of making as a design?

Aggie Toppins [58:04]

Oh, I love that question because it was probably a long time before I went to college.

I mean, I think a lot of times little kids design things. They make graphic design all the time. When I was a kid, I— when I was a little kid, I think I was in 3rd grade. This is when I lived with my grandparents and everything, and my aunt and my mom. For some reason, my grandparents let me turn one of the rooms just into my little art gallery, and I would draw like awful crayon portraits of everyone and put them on the walls.

But I had this little book I made. I mean, I was like 8 or 9, and it was a book that I like staple-bound and drew all the pages. It was like a picture book, and I called it Agatha Aardvark's Life of Adventure. I haven't thought about that in ages, but that's probably the first thing I designed. I mean, really, there was word and image. There were pictures. I made decisions about how the text went with the image. And I mean, I was 8.

I didn't know. But yeah, it's the same thing.

Christian Solorzano [59:04]

And you're doing that today.

Aggie Toppins [59:05]

Yeah, just a different level, different tools. I still like crayons, though. Yeah. Fun. Anyway, I mean, I don't know. That's— I don't know if that's the answer you were looking for, but I mean, when you start becoming a professional, that's a— you have a different set of things, I guess, that you think about, but kind of the it kind of comes back to those same principles, maybe.

Christian Solorzano [59:27]

Yeah, I remember going to a family friend's house and they allowed me to use her computer to create a Mother's Day postcard using clip art. And I remember the moment that it came out of the printer, I just could not believe it. I'm like, this thing that I just made, I'm now holding in my hand. And I think that was just that in that moment, like everything else, like there's nothing else but that.

Aggie Toppins [59:58]

There is a magic about turning nothing into something, through form, through the sort of illusion of form. I mean, when I didn't have a computer until I was like in my— in college, that was the first time I had a computer. But I do remember like getting stronger at like in college, like the things in my mind that I wanted to make becoming the things that actually came out of my hands.

I remember getting better at that, but also trusting, the thing that I'm thinking about might transform in the process of this thing we do called design. But I remember feeling like, so wow, I can almost do whatever I can almost make anything I want. Yeah, it kind of felt like— I mean, I remember feeling that way toward like the end of undergrad?

Christian Solorzano [60:40]

Yeah. That's amazing.

Aggie Toppins [60:42]

Yeah, it's powerful. It feels powerful anyway.

Christian Solorzano [60:45]

After that, I feel like you're just constantly chasing that feeling.

Aggie Toppins [60:49]

Maybe. I mean, maybe that's why it's important to do things differently sometimes, like just to remember what it's like to have wonder, in your practice. I really need that. I need something that I use a lot of, like chance procedures and things in my work to just try and remove my brain from the process a little bit. So I actually appreciate the way form reveals itself sometimes.

And yeah, because sometimes I think, especially because I was trained in this sort of modernist way of thinking, that designers like are often trained to control things so much. And you can just control things so much, there's no— there's no like magic or beauty or whimsy. And I feel like that's what's hard. That's what's really hard, right? Kind of— it's kind of similar to what you were saying, getting that— magical feeling back.

Christian Solorzano [61:35]

Yeah, because after a while, I kind of feel like as designers, we kind of default to what we know works or what we know feels good, and it just becomes like iterations of the same thing over and over.

Aggie Toppins [61:47]

Especially if you're on a deadline. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [61:50]

Yeah. So, true. We're approaching the end of our conversation here, but I just want to say, thank you so much for everything that, we've been talking about. I do have a few just wrap-up questions about what are you what are you listening to? Are you a listener of stuff, podcasts, music? What do you listen to?

Aggie Toppins [62:12]

I'm really into Idles right now, the band Idles. I know that their album, their last album is— it was like last year, but I still really love it. That Tonk album, I keep listening to it. So that's what I'm listening to music-wise. That's like the top of my list right now. I don't know if I'm listening to a podcast with any like regularity.

I tell you, I still listen to Sound Opinions, which is a Chicago podcast. Still love Sound Opinions. But when I've been reading, I'm reading like a lot of things right now because I'm beginning a new sort of research project that has to do with collage. So I've been doing a literature review, trying to read everything I possibly can that's been written about collage, which is a lot of stuff.

But I'm also doing— I have a couple essays that are going to have me reading that had me reading about Tomoko Miho, as I mentioned. And I just wrapped up something that I had that had me reading a lot about Tadanori Oku. So I feel like when you're working on a piece of writing, you try to read as much as you can about— so that's kind of, that's kind of some of the more recent things I've been reading.

I'm also getting ready to go on an 8-week residency in Paris. So I'm trying to read a little bit about the history of Paris so I can understand what I'm looking at when I'm walking around. And yeah, so that's a lot of stuff.

Christian Solorzano [63:38]

And you've been learning French since you were 10 years old.

Aggie Toppins [63:40]

So yeah, I've been learning French for a lot. I mean, I still am not fluent because I don't speak French at home, but yeah, my hope is I'll get better at it when I'm there.

Christian Solorzano [63:49]

And what's the residency focused on? Will you be— will you be doing there?

Aggie Toppins [63:54]

Yeah, so this residency is called the Cité Internationale, and it's like an artist— I don't know, like an artist apartment complex that different institutions own apartments in. WashU owns one. And so you can apply to be— it is a juried process. So you apply with like a proposal and everything, and I was accepted. So my plan is to develop a— this is a lot.

It's almost like too soon to talk about this, but I'm trying to develop a method that involves using archives and making collages, and that's all I can say about it right now. It's going to get much more specific than that, but—

I'm hoping to go to archives, take long walks, and kind of bring together a few different influences from my practice and from, just things I've written and try to develop a kind of collage method that I will use in my work. And I'll hopefully write about that too. So that's the idea. Sounds really luxurious. I'm very lucky to have this opportunity.

Christian Solorzano [64:54]

It does sound awesome. I hope you post photos on your social media. Sure. I follow— I know you were recently, you were traveling, you were doing a lot of traveling, and I was living vicariously through some of your photos.

Aggie Toppins [65:09]

Yeah, we get to do that. Get to go to conferences sometimes and get to go to fun places.

Christian Solorzano [65:14]

So the other question I have for you is just regarding Chicago. I know you and I have talked about the possibility of maybe you coming to Chicago sometime this year to do something with something. I don't want to speak too much about it, but—

Aggie Toppins [65:26]

Yeah, nothing's in stone yet.

Christian Solorzano [65:28]

But it would be great to have you in the city and to get together with the community, and maybe there's something that we can collaborate on.

Aggie Toppins [65:36]

Yeah, I'll let you know if I come. I come up next time. I come up. I'm certainly going to come back to Chicago. Yes.

Christian Solorzano [65:42]

And then the other question I have for you, do you have any guilty pleasures? What's something that people would not gather about you?

Aggie Toppins [65:49]

Well, I don't know if this is surprising, but when I— right before the pandemic hit, so I bought a drum set and I started taking drumming lessons. Okay. And I was like 40 years old when I started doing this. So then the world shut down and I moved to St. Louis and I'm like, still a bad drummer.

But I am— when I get— when I have like a day where I'm just that's it, I got to go upstairs and play some very bad punk songs, like play some punk songs poorly. That's me. I'm like the person in the neighborhood making a bunch of noise on a drum set and they probably think it's like a 6-year-old or something.

But it's me. So yeah, I don't know. I'd like to— I'd like to think that I have time to develop that skill a little better, but it's okay if I'm bad at it forever. I still just like to do it.

Christian Solorzano [66:40]

Maybe that'll be like the next thing that you become, that you write books about.

Aggie Toppins [66:44]

It's like the history of drumming. I'll be a bad drummer. Well, yeah, that's funny.

Christian Solorzano [66:52]

Well, thank you so much again. It was a joy to speak with you. I look forward to everything that you have going on.

Aggie Toppins [66:59]

Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. It was lovely talking with you. This was a lot of fun. I hope we can hang out sometime.

Christian Solorzano [67:05]

Yes, definitely gotta verify that you're a real person and not like an AI bot.

Aggie Toppins [67:13]

Yes. Thank you again.

Christian Solorzano [67:16]

Sounds good. Thank you so much. And yes, we'll keep in touch. Thank you so much for sticking around. If you enjoy this conversation and the show, we would appreciate a rating wherever you listen. It helps us expand our reach in Chicago and beyond. To learn more about us, visit www.chicagographicdesign.club. Thank you, and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you.