# Modern Graphic Design Archive — About

A verified, source-returnable archive for modern graphic design history.

Modern Graphic Design Archive gathers graphic design from more than a hundred institutions and open collections, then cleans, classifies, and researches it into an archive you can read, locate, cite, and check against its sources. Nearly 16,000 objects are catalogued; 7,995 are public to read now.

Verified means every public statement can be traced back to a source record and a review decision. Extensible means the archive grows in versioned steps — each research round adds to the record rather than overwriting it.

## Method

The unit of work is a source-grounded record tied to a stable locator. Gathering is not publishing: a captured record first enters a candidate pool, and only passes review gates for source, rights, classification, completeness, and readable text before it becomes something you can read here.

Coverage is weighted against imbalance rather than only counted, so the archive does not look finished merely because some regions and periods are easier to gather. No historical influence is ever inferred from proximity, a shared source, visual resemblance, or a shared period.

## Project implementation

### Project and contribution

Modern Graphic Design Archive is a rights-aware reading and research interface, not a complete history of graphic design. Dai Pan leads the project’s research, data governance, design and implementation, with AI-assisted development and verification.

### Current capabilities

Index, Search and Object records support public reading. Context Canvas and Exploration distinguish recorded context, validated associations and open inquiries. Spacetime is not released.

### Implementation

The application uses Next.js, React and TypeScript with generated, versioned server read models. PostgreSQL and Python support research and data preparation; public page reads do not require a live research database. Redis provides shared fixed-window request limits. Optional DeepSeek suggestions pass fact validation and have deterministic fallbacks; ordinary project and metadata reading does not call the model.

### Publication boundaries

7,995 public records include 5,423 reader-facing objects and 2,572 record-only entries. Normal Search and Index browse reader-facing objects; exact identifier Search can retrieve public record-only entries. Held material is not a public reading resource. Metadata publication does not grant image reuse or training rights.

### Verification and release

Local desktop and mobile acceptance and real provider tests have been performed. Automated checks cover data contracts, eligibility, fact boundaries and failure handling; assertion counts are not counts of user scenarios. Vercel integration is being prepared; remote production acceptance has not been completed. Source describes provenance and reproducibility.

## Rights

Modern Graphic Design Archive is an index and research interface. Copyright, database rights, moral rights, trademarks, personality rights, cultural protocols, and access terms may remain with original creators, publishers, institutions, estates, communities, or source platforms. Project-authored text, data normalization, and this interface design are research outputs, and no blanket reuse licence is granted. Individual object images and scans remain governed by their holding source.

[Source](https://mgdarchive.com/source) · [Public reading](https://mgdarchive.com/read-api)