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Incomplet Design History

Incomplet Design History

By: Amanda Horton
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The nature of history is that it is never “complete”, new information is gained every day that changes our understanding an interpretations of history. The mission of Incomplete Design History is to explore areas of graphic design history that are overlooked or ignored; to expand our knowledge in the field and to include all sides of the story. Incomplete design history seeks to be inclusive, inclusive not only of people but of ideas and technologies that advance the field of graphic design. History is messy. History is incomplete. Art World
Episodes
  • Matchbook design

    Matchbook design
    Sep 17 2026
    Matchbooks and matchboxes became influential artifacts in design and visual culture, beginning with early fire-starting tools in sixth-century China, all the way through the development of matches from simply functional to globally standardized packaging shaped by technological innovation. The Swedish safety match and the sliding-drawer box established the foundations of modern match design, while improvements in printing turned matchboxes into miniature canvases for illustration, typography, and branding. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, matchbooks evolved into pocket-sized billboards, showcasing advertisements for hotels, airlines, restaurants, and more. Their designs reflected broader movements like Art Deco and Modernism, capturing cultural identities across countries, from Soviet propaganda to Indian folk imagery and American corporate aesthetics. Although their popularity declined in the mid-twentieth century with the rise of lighters and anti-smoking campaigns, matchbooks have re-emerged as nostalgic design objects. Matchbooks ultimately shifted from ephemera to collectible artifacts, drawing on critic Arthur Danto’s ideas about collecting, matchbooks gained meaning as personal and cultural artifacts, valued for the stories they hold about people, places, and design. Today, boutique hotels, artists, and designers revive matchbooks as historic symbolism. This study shows that matchbooks reveal how design lives in ordinary objects. They demonstrate the power of small-scale design to communicate history and culture in ways that continue to resonate long after their original purpose has faded. TIMELINE 1827 – The First Friction Matches 1830s–1850s – Industrial Production Begins 1870s – Branded Labels on Matchboxes 1892 – The Paper Matchbook is Patented 1890s–1910s – Rise of Advertising Matchbooks 1920s–1930s – Golden Age of Matchbook Advertising 1940s – Wartime Utility 1950s–1960s – Midcentury Modern & Pop Culture 1970s–1980s – Iconic Branding & Collectibility 1990s – Decline Begins 2000s–Present – Retro Appeal & Niche Design REFERENCES Adler, B. (2014). The Matchbook: From flame to miniature billboard. Pennsylvania Center for the Book. https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/feature-articles/matchbook-flame-miniature-billboard Beauchamp, M. (2006). Striking images: Vintage Matchbook Cover Art. Chronicle Books. Biener, L., Nyman, A. L., Kline, R. L., & Albers, A. B. (2004). Adults only: The prevalence of tobacco promotions in bars and clubs in the Boston area. Tobacco Control, 13(4), 403. https://doi.org/10.1136/tc.2004.007468 Creative spark: Vintage matchbook art in pictures. (2017, May 20). The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/may/20/creative-spark-vintage-matchbook-art-in-pictures-aaron-kasmin-sims-reed Danto, A. C. (1991). From matchbooks to masterpieces: Toward a philosophy of collecting. Aperture, 124, 2–3. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24472389 Greene, R. (n.d.). Matchless beauties: The art of pin-up matchbook covers. Yoe Books. Heller, S. (2003). Boxes of light. Print, 57(1), 97–98. Heller, S., Fili, L., & Nadel, D. (2006). Stylepedia : a guide to graphic design mannerisms, quirks, and conceits. Chronicle Books. Heron, K. (2009, October 21) A New Old Freebie: Restaurant Matches Return. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/dining/21match.html Jones, B. (2004). Matchbox cover design: The evolution of and the influences on the graphical design of matchboxes [PDF]. Kosinski, J. (2017). Antiques Peek: October 2017. Journal of Antiques and Collectibles. https://journalofantiques.com/columns/antiques-peek-october-2017/ Lee, A. G. (2024). We’re in a matchbook renaissance; As a younger generation takes up match collecting, matchbooks are taking on a new life as a design motif and an emblem of worldliness. The Wallstreet Journal. https://www.wsj.com/style/fashion/matches-matchbooks-collectors-tiktok-prints-kate-spade-110d6b07?eafs_enabled=false Lewis, J. (1962). Printed ephemera; the changing uses of type and letterforms in English and American printing. W.S. Cowell; distributed by Faber and Faber, London. Novin, G. (2012). Chapter 51: A history of matchboxes. A History of Graphic Design. https://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2012/02/chapter-51-history-of-matchboxes.html Oatman-Stanford, H. (2014, October 24). Circling the globe with the mid-20th century’s most brilliant matchbox art. Collectors Weekly. https://medium.com/hunter-oatman-stanford/circling-the-globe-with-the-mid-20th-centurys-most-brilliant-matchbox-art-d3a82c14ee03 Promotions tied in with matchbooks. (1954). Women’s Wear Daily, 88(67), 3. Saeed, Y. (n.d.). Lives in a Matchbox: Gautam Hemmady's Collection of Matchbox Labels [Online exhibit]. Google Arts & Culture. https://artsandculture.google.com/story/lives-in-a-matchbox-tasveer-ghar/nAUxYaf8n-hyWw?hl=en Tres Bohemes. (2015, September 14). Czech ...
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    15 mins
  • The Hobo Code

    The Hobo Code
    Sep 10 2026
    The Hobo Code was a shared visual language used by itinerant workers, okies, bohemians, and some famous blues artists in America. In the late 1800s, people (usually men) hopped onto trains and headed into the American West looking for work wherever they could find it. These people, called hobos, developed and used a system of pictograms to leave notes for other hobos passing through. Whether it was to signal that water and food was available in an area, or to alert Hobos of police enforcement, this shared language strengthened a marginalized community. Not all hobos were men. The documentation is sparse, but there are some records of women hopping trains. As some of them were fleeing situations of domestic violence, for them, the hobo code was a lifeline for finding sanctuary in unfamiliar towns and cities. As more people took to traveling the train lines looking for work, a worker’s union emerged along with a publication and what were known as hobo colleges. During and after WWII, there were far fewer itinerant workers and the need for the hobo code declined, but it didn’t go away. It evolved into some of the train graffiti we see today. TIMELINE 1865 - Civil War ends and discharged soldiers are looking for work becoming the original itinerant laborers. 1869 - Transcontinental Railroad is completed by immigrant laborers which creates a source of transportation for transient workers (hobos and tramps). 1873 - The Panic of 1873 forces large amounts of stable workers onto the road in search of new jobs. 1880s - “Hobo” becomes a formal group to distinguish themselves from tramps. 1890 - The Hobo Code begins to spread across different parts of the west. 1900s - The term Hobohemia becomes a part of white hobo culture 1905 - Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founded. 1909 - The Little Red Songbook was published by the IWW in Spokane Washington. 1910-1920 - New Immigration (European immigrants join migratory labor and add to hobo population). 1920s - African American hobos and itinerant works express hardship through music which leads to the start of the blues. 1929 - Stock market crashes leading to the Great Depression (Hobohemia Golden Age) 1930s - Dust Bowl storms displace midwest families and lead to more migration to the west. 1940s - World War II begins, allowing workers to find stable war industrial jobs marking the end of the hobohemian era. REFERENCES Allsop, K. (1967). Hard travellin’; the hobo and his history. New American Library. Clayton, O. (2023). Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos. In Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos: The Literature and Culture of U.S. Transiency 1890–1940 (pp. i–i). half-title-page, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dreyfuss, H. (1972). Symbol sourcebook : an authoritative guide to international graphic symbols (First edition.). McGraw-Hill. Dyl, J. (2014). Transience, Labor, and Nature: Itinerant Workers in the American West. International Labor and Working Class History, 85(85), 97–117. Hall, J. (2010). Sisters of the Road?: The Construction of Female Hobo Identity in the Autobiographies of Ethel Lynn, Barbara Starke, and “Box-Car” Bertha Thompson. Women’s Studies, 39(3), 215–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497871003595828 Hobo Communications: A Brief History of Hobos and Their Signs. (2021, August 4). National Security Agency/Central Security Service. https://www.nsa.gov/History/National-Cryptologic-Museum/Exhibits-Artifacts/Exhibit-View/Article/2718897/hobo-communications-a-brief-history-of-hobos-and-their-signs/ https://www.folkschool.org/author/cory. (2017, January 13). What’s a Hobo Nickel? JCCFS. https://www.folkschool.org/2017/01/13/whats-hobo-nickel/ NPR. (2016, June 11). Anthropologist Discovers 100-Year-Old Graffiti By “America’s Most Famous Hobo.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2016/06/11/481695146/anthropologist-discovers-100-year-old-graffiti-by-americas-most-famous-hobo Liungman, C. G. (1991). Dictionary of symbols. ABC-CLIO. Joffe-Block, J. (2025, November 8). Immigration agents have new technology to identify and track people. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/11/08/nx-s1-5585691/ice-facial-recognition-immigration-tracking-spyware Volk, T. M. (2001). Little Red Songbooks: Songs for the labor force of America. Journal of Research in Music Education, 49(1), 33-48. https://libproxy.uco.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/little-red-songbooks-songs-labor-force-america/docview/214489163/se-2 Wanderer, J. J. (2001). Hobo Signs: Embodied Metaphors and Metonymies. American Journal of Semiotics, 17(4), 131–146. https://doi.org/10.5840/ajs200117476
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    15 mins
  • Elizabeth Friedlander

    Elizabeth Friedlander
    Sep 3 2026
    Elizabeth Friedlander (1903–1984) was a pioneering German-Jewish graphic designer, calligrapher, and typographer best known as the first woman to have a published typeface. Born in Berlin, she studied at the Berlin Academy under typographer Emil Rudolf Weiss, whose refined aesthetic shaped her early work. Friedlander began her career at Ullstein Publishing House, designing for Die Dame, a leading women’s magazine, before creating her groundbreaking “Elizabeth” typeface for the Bauer Type foundry. Denied work under Nazi rule in 1935, she fled Germany for Italy, where she designed book covers and illustrations for publishers like Mondadori. Still, the rise of fascism, again, endangered her life, prompting her escape to England in 1939. There, she was recruited to design for the British government’s wartime propaganda office, producing forged Nazi documents and counterpropaganda materials. After World War II, Elizabeth Friedlander's work continued to be a source of admiration and inspiration. She built a prolific freelance career, designing book covers, patterned papers, and calligraphic maps for Penguin Books, Thames & Hudson, and other major publishers. Her elegant borders and type designs were widely admired, and her calligraphic skill earned her commissions from institutions such as Sandhurst Military Academy. In the 1960s, Friedlander retired to Kinsale, Ireland, with her lifelong partner, Professor Alessandro Magri MacMahon, turning her creative focus to small crafts like leatherwork and maps. She continued designing for friends until her eyesight failed. Friedlander died in 1984, leaving behind a legacy of innovation and resilience. TIMELINE 1903 – Born in Berlin 1927 – Designed the Elizabeth typeface for Bauer Type Foundry 1928-1935 – Designed for Die Dame Magazine 1933 – Nazis rise to power 1933 – Italian Under-Secretary of State allows in refugees from allied Nazi Germany as long as they were politically inactive 1935 – Elizabeth’s permit to work as a designer is denied by the Nazi party and she is fired from her job at Die Dame magazine 1936 – Elizabeth flees Germany and settles in Milan 1936-1938 – Works for Mondadori publishing house 1937 – Paid 200 marks for her Elisabeth typeface 1938 – Italy passes racial laws. Elizabeth seeks to emigrate to the US 1939 – Elizabeth learns her visa application cannot be expedited. She obtains a Domestic Service permit for Britain. 1941 – Mynell hires Elizabeth for his advertising firm 1942 – Final attempt to emigrate to the US before settling in Britain. World War II begins. 1942 – Howe recruits Elizabeth to his black propaganda unit 1945 – WWII ends. Elizabeth chooses to become a naturalized British citizen 1946-1949 – Worked on “Britain in Pictures” 1948 – Begins working for Penguin Books, designing book covers and patterned papers. Designs the Flexocase. 1949 – Is finally paid for her Flexocase design 1951 – Chosen by the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, to inscribe the Roll of Honour for officers of the Armies of the Commonwealth who fell in WWII 1951-1960 – Designed several of the covers for the “Penguin Classics” series 1961– Moved to Kinsale Ireland 1958 – Designs the “Freidlander Borders” for Monotype 1967-1972 – Becomes the official Sandhurst calligrapher 1984 – Death and burial in Cork REFERENCES Bauer Types. (n.d.). ELIZABETH FRIEDLANDER: THE FIRST WOMAN TO DESIGN A TYPEFACE. Bauer Types. https://bauertypes.com/elizabeth-friedlander-la-primera-mujer-que-diseno-tipografia Ganeva, M. (2008). Women in Weimar Fashion: Discourses and Displays in German Culture, 1918-1933. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. Kolesa, P. (2021, April 13). "ELIZABETH-ANTIQUA": A FILM ON ELIZABETH FRIEDLÄNDER [Video]. https://youtu.be/lY9FG9lcELY Muraben, B. (2018, March 8). Elizabeth Friedlander: one of the first women to design a typeface. It's Nice That. Retrieved September 5, 2025, from https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/elizabethfriedlander-graphicdesign-internationalwomensday-080318 Paucker, P. (1998). New borders : the working life of Elizabeth Friedlander. Incline Press. https://doi.org/10.58066/j89j-mt96 The People's Graphic Design Arvchive. (2024, October 31). Penguin Books 25th Anniversary Designs by Elizabeth Friedlander. The People's Graphic Design Archive. https://peoplesgdarchive.org/item/15702/penguin-books-25th-anniversary-designs-by-elizabeth-friedlander Rawsthorn, A. (n.d.). Story | Elizabeth Friedlander. Maharam. Retrieved September 5, 2025, from https://www.maharam.com/stories/rawsthorn\_elizabeth-friedlander
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    19 mins
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