McQuiston, Liz 1952–

views updated

McQuiston, Liz 1952–

PERSONAL: Born March 2, 1952, in Pittsburgh, PA; immigrated to England, 1972; daughter of George Edward and Nellie (Glass) McQuiston. Education: Attended Carnegie Mellon University, 1970–72; London College of Printing, certificate, 1973; Royal College of Art, London, M.A., 1972.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—34 Winiforton St., Greenwich, London SE10 8UR, England.

CAREER: Graphic designer and educator. Freelance designer and teacher, 1975; London College of Printing, London, England, taught typography, 1980–83; Leicester Polytechnic, Leicester, England, taught graphic design,1983–85; Royal College of Art, London, chair of graphic art and design department, 1985–87; freelance designer, writer, lecturer, in London, 1987–. Has also served as an examiner and moderator of design courses at Harrow College of Higher Education, Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design, and Newham Community College, all London.

MEMBER: Royal Society of Arts (fellow).

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Julian Bicknell) Design for Need: The Social Contribution of Design: An Anthology of Papers Presented to the Symposium at the Royal College of Art, London, April, 1976, Pergamon Press (New York, NY), 1977.

(With Barry Kitts) Graphic Design Source Book, Macdonald Orbis (London, England), 1987.

Women in Design: A Contemporary View, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1988.

Graphic Agitation: Social and Political Graphics since the Sixties, Phaidon (London, England), 1993.

Suffragettes to She-Devils: Women's Liberation and Beyond, foreword by Germaine Greer, Phaidon (London, England), 1997.

Graphic Agitation 2: Social and Political Graphics in the Digital Age, Phaidon (London, England), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Liz McQuiston is a graphic designer and teacher who has written about design in terms of society, politics, and women's liberation. "I'm an old believer," McQuiston was quoted as saying in an article on the Joe Clark Web site. "I've been involved in social movements for years, and I will never give up." In her book Graphic Agitation: Social and Political Graphics since the Sixties, McQuiston presents graphic art that has been used for both protest and propaganda, from national political agendas to the environmental movement. The book includes 300 color illustrations by a variety of designers and artists, as well as commentary by McQuiston. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the book a "vibrant album," and went on to note: "This book is an enlightening, kinetic social history of political graphics and a rich resource for artists, designers and activists."

In Graphic Agitation 2: Social and Political Graphics in the Digital Age McQuiston once again looks at graphic art in the political and social arenas, focusing primarily on how graphic protest has been used since the Gulf War in 1991. The author uses the globalization of capitalism as the link that ties together many of the issues she discusses through graphic art, including several wars, animal rights, the environment, increasing corporate power, and new approaches to government propaganda. She addresses the role that graphic arts has played in the new approach to protest and propaganda brought about by relatively new high-tech tools such as the Internet. Writing in the Library Journal, Eric Linderman noted that "Both the current volume and its predecessor are unique and effective because they focus on the graphic art of liberal groups and cover a wide international scope." Print contributor Victor Margolin remarked that the author "explains how artists and designers have used new media to change the rules of protest." He added that "McQuiston has created an ambitious collection of protest graphics that preserves the astounding variety of the genre's visual forms."

Suffragettes to She-Devils: Women's Liberation and Beyond is McQuiston's study of graphics and art in association with the women's movement of the twentieth century. Here the author not only studies the designs and art used to further women's rights but also how design was used to belittle women's places and roles in society. Among the many issues discussed are voting rights, physical abuse, abortion, lesbianism, peace, economic inequality, racism, family, and Third World women's health. The images presented date from the early twentieth century, when the suffragette movement was a rising force, to the 1950s and its sentimental depictions of the housewife, and finally to the 1990s and the rise of e-mail and Internet campaigns.

Writing in the New York Times Book Review Steven Heller explained that Suffragettes to She-Devils "rejects issues of esthetics in favor of the contexts in which art is made and the constituencies that it serves." In a review in Women's Review of Books, Arlene Raven further observed, "If there is one prevailing idea here, it is that graphic images produced in the context of second-and third-wave feminism are revolutionary in nature and international in scope." Raven also called the book "exceptional" and noted that readers should not "miss the text, because the sequential narrative as well as the chronology and bibliography make a critical contribution to the literature about … [modern] and contemporary women's art." Print contributor Julie Gray declared Suffragettes to She-Devils "a marvel of research, containing protest material from around the globe," and added that it is an "exhaustive and useful collection."

Discussing both the "Graphic Agitation" books, as well as Suffragettes to She-Devils, Margolin concluded that McQuiston's "three collections of protest graphics constitute a phenomenal archive: we can only hope that she will continue to document activism's graphic manifestations, reinforcing the importance of graphic design in changing the world."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Advertising Age, June 28, 2004, Richard Linnett, review of Graphic Agitation 2: Social and Political Graphics in the Digital Age, p. 56.

Design Week, July 29, 2004, review of Graphic Agitation 2, p. 36.

Library Journal, January 1, 2005, Eric Linderman, review of Graphic Agitation 2, p. 108.

New York Times Book Review, October 19, 1997, Steven Heller, review of Suffragettes to She-Devils: Women's Liberation and Beyond, p. 27.

Print, November-December, 1997, Julie Gray, review of Suffragettes to She-Devils, p. 26; November-December, 2004, Victor Margolin, review of Graphic Agitation 2, p. 46.

Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1993, review of Graphic Agitation: Social and Political Graphics since the Sixties, p. 63.

Women's Review of Books, March, 1998, Arlene Raven, review of Suffragettes to She-Devils, p. 8.