Designed to be Red

The Polymode Foundation is proud to announce its support of the forthcoming publication, Designed to Be Red: Native American & Indigenous Graphic Works by Brian Johnson (Author) and co-published by DelMonico Books.

Designed to be Red recenters Indigenous voices in the history of graphic design by highlighting the vibrant, complex, and powerful visual storytelling of Native artists, designers, and collectives. For too long, the presence of Native Americans in design history has been shaped through a colonial lens—reduced to caricatured branding in consumer products and stereotyped imagery that advanced capitalism rather than culture. Representations of Native figures are prevalent in poster designs used to brand and market products from baseball to butter, Fords to football, however, these reductive depictions of the “noble savage” occlude the rich history, culture, language, and creativity of Native Americans. This has overshadowed the real and resilient creative practices of Indigenous artists. Designed To Be Red turns this imposed, stereotyped narrative on its head. It recognizes Indigenous designers not as subjects of design but as shapers of it—innovators who have created dynamic, subversive, and joyful work despite centuries of cultural erasure, land theft, and socio-economic marginalization. This exhibition upends those dominant narratives by celebrating the resistance, pride, humor, joy, and innovation embedded in Native-made printed matter.

Spanning nearly two centuries and featuring artists from over forty tribes and nations, Designed to be Red brings together posters, prints, ephemera, and related materials. From war bond posters to environmental protest prints, illustrated language broadsheets to billboard-sized messages, Native artists like Anna Tsouhlarakis, the New Red Order, Crystal Worl, and Kent Monkman make work that is both timely and timeless. They speak to critical issues of sovereignty, cultural erasure, extraction, racism, and assimilation while also radiating pride in ancestral knowledge, Two-Spirit identity, language revitalization, and Indigenous joy.