This dissertation studies the role of graphic methods in planning, broadly defined, in the United States in the 1910s–30s. In this period, ‘planning’ was a capacious term that applied to practices of resource, regional, and urban planning, as well as broader efforts on the part of private corporations and public (often federal) agencies to bring a certain kind of order to economic and social affairs. Graphic methods, particularly graphing and mapping, became embedded in these practices, and the circulation of graphs, maps, and charts also conveyed the principles and outcomes of planning to broader audiences. I study how these techniques and images were understood and operated, and moreover how they came to carry surplus meanings— notions such as accuracy, epistemic authority, growth, and progress— that graphic designers wielded and further entrenched through broader applications in popular and corporate imagery.
Ph.D. Candidate, Art History & Archeology, GSAS
Charting the Future: Graphic Methods, Graphic Design & Planning in the U.S., c. 1910–40