Modern Graphic DesignArchive

Design history, verified and connected.

A digital humanities research archive for modern graphic design history — built from verified records, explicit provenance, and evidence-bounded computational research.

It is an extensible research infrastructure for locating, reading, and examining design-historical records, not a complete history of graphic design.

Read.Trace.Reframe.Aresearcharchiveformoderndesign.

FROM SOURCE TO ARCHIVE

We reconcile design-historical records out of scattered institutional catalogues and under-documented regional collections, then publish only what evidence, rights, and publication conditions permit.

40,000+

candidate records examined

Reconciliation & Screening

Candidate records are gathered across heterogeneous catalogues, de-duplicated, and normalised into one schema. Conflicting dates, attributions, and object types are reconciled against their sources rather than silently averaged.

15,923

canonical records established

Spot-Check & Semantic Review

Records are reviewed at a semantic level and spot-checked by sampling — not exhaustively, and not as expert art-historical adjudication. The method is stated plainly so its limits are legible to anyone citing the archive.

7,995

records currently published

Governed Publication

Publication is gated on evidence, rights, and visual-availability conditions assessed separately. Records that do not clear that bar are held in the canonical set rather than dropped, so absence stays visible and recoverable.

180015,923 canonical · 7,995 public2026

What we hold, and what is public · by year, 1800–2026

Distance from publication · every canonical record

01Governed, not accumulatedRecords enter through stated conditions. What is published, held, or excluded is decided by rule, and the rule is written down.
02Every record names its sourceCatalogues that disagree on date, attribution or object type are reconciled against their own sources — never averaged into a false consensus.
03Absence is a findingWhat the archive leaves out stays recorded, countable, and labelled unresolved. A gap is evidence about the record, not a hole in the work.
04Three gates, never oneMetadata, rights and evidence are assessed separately. Clearing one never implies clearing another — a described record is not a cleared image.
05Bounded by evidenceAssociation is offered only where evidence qualifies it, and stays generic and non-directional. No causal or quantitative claim is generated.

Releases are identified, hashed and re-derivable, so any result can be returned to and checked against the state that produced it. The field below plots the same records by how far each still sits from publication — absence drawn, not omitted.

Built through research,
not aggregation.More than a collection.
A research foundation.2026

Start with what you know.

IndexBrowse.When you know a period, region, or theme.Move through the public archive chronologically and through governed categories.SearchFind.When you know a title, designer, place, or ID.Search the public archive directly from anywhere in MGDA.TRACEExplore.Desktop onlyWhen you have a research question rather than a single record.Use Context Canvas and Exploration to examine governed research representations.
04 · Research status · state of the archive · v4914,393 records · 1900–2026

00 / 03 · the figureAbove the line, public records by place — 7,493. Below it, held — 6,900. One ribbon is one place; thickness is records per five years; colour is rank by total. 1,530 records dated before 1900 are on the panorama that follows.

01 / 03 · 1965–691965–1969: 1,514 records in five years, 850 of them dated 1965 — one bulk capture, and the widest band on the sheet. It is a fact about gathering, not about the year.

02 / 03 · publicPublic, ranked by records 1900–2026: United Kingdom 2,828 · United States 1,094 · Norway 549 · Germany 393 · Russia 230. Where the archive's sources are, the archive is published.

03 / 03 · heldHeld, ranked the same way: Indonesia (SE Asia) 707 · Kazakhstan 282 · Bolivia 266 · Algeria 258 · Peru 238. All five are held in full — every record keeps its year, place and source, and waits on evidence and rights, not on rediscovery.

Above the line
public · 7,493
Below the line
held · 6,900
One ribbon
one place
Thickness
per 5 years
Colour
rank by total
Before 1900
1,530 · below
Every year · 1800–2026 · 15,923 recordsone column a year · blue — public · rose — held · depth of colour is records on a square-root scale

A stable release, not a finished history.

MGDA publishes versioned research records and governed research interfaces while keeping uncertainty, missingness and unresolved evidence visible.

Release
v49
Anchored
21 August 2026
Status
Public research release
Objects
15,923
Public / held
7,995 / 7,928

Stable

Public records and identifiersBound to a versioned release.

Source and citation provenanceInspectable independently of MGDA.

Governed research interfacesIndex, Search and TRACE read governed data; they do not generate archive facts at request time.

Open

Historical coverageIncomplete. This is not a complete history of modern graphic design.

Unresolved research questionsHeld separately from validated structure, never folded into it.

Visual availability and rightsA public record does not imply identical visual access for every object.

Future corrections and expansionNew evidence may extend or reclassify records without rewriting cited releases.

5,036 named creators · 272 sources · 424 places · 15,923 objects
Modern Graphic Design Archive — Modern Graphic Design Archive