Don't Sleep: The Urgent Messages of Oliver Munday

Description

Part personal history, part design philosophy, and part advocacy, this volume showcases the arresting work of Oliver Munday. Employing humor and menace in equal measure, Munday wields graphic design as a tool of empowerment, activism, and resistance. Drawing from the history and utility of twentieth- century agitprop, from Russian Constructivism to the Black Panthers, Munday updates a timeless medium for the social media age with his stark and often unsettling imagery. Drawing on the madness of the 24-hour news cycle, Munday s work has been featured on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, the New Yorker, Time Magazine, and the Atlantic. Munday exploits a digital platform to poke fun at the 2016 presidential election, renounces warfare in the age of drones, and examines the tragic legacies of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, offering a perspective that must not be overlooked. His design, reflecting influences from Paul Rand to Globe Poster, champions a think more, design less philosophy with the ultimate goal to provoke contem-plation and even meaningful action.

Oliver Munday is a graphic designer whose work has been recognized by many of the major design publications, including Communication Arts, TDC, STEP magazine s twenty-five freshest minds in design, Young Guns 7, and AIGA 50/50. In 2010, he was named one of PRINT magazine s 20 under 30, in the new visual artists review. Hilton Als is an American writer, theater critic, and Pulitzer Prize winner. He is an associate professor of writing at Columbia University and a staff writer and theater critic for The New Yorker magazine.

"The title of the insistent new monograph...is as fervently conscientious as the artist's loud, literal, and acutely compelling illustrations." -Bookforum "This encapsulates Munday's design work: arresting juxtapositions, an engagement with the political, and above all, a deliberate, understated presence. As heavy as the visuals are, Munday's hand is light. The images speak for themselves. Deep Sleep is a powerful survey of thirty-three-year-old Munday's career thus far . . . It's rare that a monograph can be accurately described as important or necessary. Don't Sleep, however, fits the bill. Isolated from their origianl context and arranged by theme, Munday's images accumulate power-the power not just to move readers but to move them to action. Don't Sleep is the kind of book that burns through the coffee table it's left on." -The Paris Review