Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

Through the flagship CSA Archive Catalog of Stock Art,
Anderson has both reintroduced and laid claim to many of the forgotten
artifacts of American commercial printing, and in doing so he has made a
ragtag collection of random forms into a regiment of disciplined artworks.
Or put another way, he has made a variety of generic visual idioms into an
accessible design lexicon. In popularizing these forms Anderson has also
contributed to the continuum of design by building on what designer Art
Chantry referred to as American commercial folk art—the anonymous
artifacts of the commercial era. In the original forms that Anderson draws
upon the customer was never aware of the human hand, the images just
matter-of-factly materialized in newspapers, “shocards,” and flyers. In
Anderson’s work, however, the presence of the artist/designer is always
apparent, and it is this intervention that makes his appropriation (and
ultimate invention) into a commentary of sorts on the state of design, past
and present.