Symposium The Design of History and the History of Design


London College of Communication
15 September, 2025



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SpeakerS and Abstracts:

Huda Almazroua
Alberto Atalla Filho
Russ Bestley
Kevin Biderman
Silvia Bombardini
David Cross
Dora Souza Dias
Sam Gathercole
Ian Horton and Ian Hague
Jennifer Hankin
Zarna Hart
John-Patrick Hartnett
Fenella Hitchcock
Abbie Vickress and Sakis Kyratzis
Christopher Lacy
Timothy Miller
Danah Nassief
Jesse O’Neill
Nina O’Reilly
Patrick O’Shea
David Preston
Cheryl Roberts
Rebecca Ross
Antoin Sharkey
Andrew Slatter
Kate Trant
Vanessa Vanden Berghe
Judy Willcocks
Christin Yu



A symposium for UAL’s Design History research community


The Design of History and the History of Design is a one-day symposium that maps research into, through or at the boundaries of design history at UAL. While design history may underpin our teaching across different disciplines, research in design history across UAL is somewhat hidden. This symposium aims to share and make visible the work of researchers (staff and students) at all career stages across all UAL colleges.

Exploring the intersections of historical narrative and design practice, it examines how history is constructed, represented, and mediated through design, and how the discipline of design itself is shaped by its evolving historiography.

The symposium will serve as the starting point for a Design History Network at UAL, bringing together researchers from across the university. It also lays the foundation for a welcoming research community in design history, with potential for ongoing events, collaboration, publications, and curriculum development.

If you have any questions or would like to be involved in future activities, please get in touch with the convenors:

Rujana Rebernjak
r.rebernjak@lcc.arts.ac.ukTai Cossich
t.cossich@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Please also sign up for the UAL Design Histories Newsletter




    Ian Horton and Ian Hague
    Graphic Design Histories and the Absence of Comics


    “Most usually words and images are used together, either text or image may dominate, or each may have its meaning determined by the other” (Hollis, 1994, p. 7).

    Comics combine words with images and employ many visual and material features of graphic design, including typography, grids, and magazine format printing, but they are rarely included in histories of graphic design. Comics are completely absent from canonical histories of graphic design by Meggs (1983) and Hollis (1994) and are even omitted from a more recent critical and inclusive history by Drucker and McVarish (2009).  When comics and graphic novels are included, as in the second edition of Ekilson’s Graphic Design: A History (2012), they are presented as a vernacular aesthetic employed by designers rather than a graphic design practice. The disconnect between graphic design and comics also persists on the other side of the academic boundary: just as graphic design omits comics, Comics Studies omits graphic design, tending to focus on narrative and formal properties of comics as a distinct form. Where visual components of comics are interrogated, the analysis has tended to proceed from fields such as art history (Horton and Gray, 2022), drawing (Grennan, 2017) or even literary studies (Hatfield 2012) rather than graphic design.

    This paper focuses on three features of comics to explore how graphic design and comics might usefully interact: typography, grid systems and the magazine format. Considering both historical and formal components, the paper shows that the form of comics can be interrogated through the lens of design, and conversely design can be interrogated through the lens of comics. The paper seeks to establish a broader theoretical foundation that allows for the interaction of comics and design on common ground. 

    • References

    • Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish (2009) Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

    • Stephen J. Eskilson (2012) Graphic Design: A History. London: Laurence King.

    • Simon Grennan (2017) A Theory of Narrative Drawing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    • Charles Hatfield (2012) Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

    • Richard Hollis (1994) Graphic Design: A Concise History. London: Thames & Hudson.

    • Ian Horton and Maggie Gray (2022) Comics Studies and Art History: Past, Present and Potential Futures. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave.

    • Phillip Meggs (1983) History of Graphic Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.



    — Ian Horton


    Dr Ian Horton is Reader in Graphic Communication at University of the Arts London. His present research is focused in three related areas: comic books, graphic design and illustration and he has previously published work on: colonialist stereotypes in European and British comic books; the relationship between art history and comics studies; public relations and comic books. He is a founder member of the Comics Research Hub (CoRH!!) at the University of the Arts London, co-editor of Contexts of Violence in Comics (Routledge 2019) and Representing Acts of Violence in Comics (Routledge 2019) and is associate editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. More recently he has collaborated with Maggie Gray (Kingston University) on Art History for Comics: Past, Present and Potential Futures (Palgrave 2022), and the edited collection Seeing Comics through Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Form (Palgrave 2022).

    — Ian Hague

    Dr Ian Hague is the Associate Dean of Research and Reader in Graphic Narrative at London College of Communication, UAL. His research focuses on the sensory and material properties of comics and graphic narratives. He is the author of Comics and the Senses: A Multisensory Approach to Comics and Graphic Novels (Routledge 2014), and The Materiality of Digital Comics (Palgrave, forthcoming). He co-edited Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels (Routledge 2015), Contexts of Violence in Comics (Routledge 2019) and Representing Acts of Violence in Comics (Routledge 2019). Ian is the founder of Comics Forum, and a founding member of UAL’s Comics Research Hub. Find out more at www.ianhague.com.