In line with this year’s theme, Stories Within, Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller, celebrated designer, writer, activist, and educator, will kick off her book tour and memoir in her home place as the keynote speaker for DC Design Week with all ticket sales benefitting AIGA DC's Design Contiuum Fund.

As a founding member of the Duke Ellington School of Arts – which is celebrating its 50th anniversary – she and former Executive Director of AIGA and VP of Throughline, Inc., Julie Anixter, will have a fireside chat discussing Homes-Miller’s latest release, HERE: Where the Black Designers Are.

Following the fireside chat, Holmes-Miller will sign books at a reception.

Speakers

Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller

Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller is the leading voice for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the graphic design industry. Holmes-Miller is an American BIPOC communications designer, writer, artist, activist, and theologian, best known as a design justice advocate and decolonizing historian. Connecticut. Holmes-Miller has been awarded the AIGA Medal and a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award as a Design Visionary, and she is a One Club Creative Hall of Fame inductee and an IBM Honorary Design Scholar.

She is legendary for her decades of scholarship and activism and is known as a touchstone and conscience for the design profession. This long-awaited book documents the history of the question she has been asking for decades: “Where are the Black designers?” along with related questions that are urgent to the design profession: Where did they originate? Where have they been? Why haven't they been represented in design histories and canons?

Julie Anixter

Julie Anixter calls herself a design activist – because she believes that the world needs designers to bring their creative agency and share it fully – no matter who they are, what they do, or where they went to school. Designers envision and shape the future.

As a Design Leader and VP at Throughline, a Washington DC based Design and Enterprise Strategy firm, Julie and the team practice Mission Driven Design for the US Military, Government Agencies, commercial companies and non-profits. They may be the only design firm founded and led by US Navy CIOs. They specialize in helping leaders tell their stories and then helping make them come true across the enterprise.

She serves as a Board Member of Project Osmosis, and co-chairs their 25th Anniversary project, focused on helping scale K-12 arts and design education.

She is the past Executive Director of AIGA, the professional association for design, where she gratefully served the design community, focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, and helping extend its influence through partnerships and alliances. She met Cheryl Holmes Miller during her tenure and has been a fan and supporter ever since.

Book Release

HERE: Where the Black Designers Are

This long-awaited book documents the history of the question she has been asking for decades: “Where are the Black designers?” along with related questions that are urgent to the design profession: Where did they originate? Where have they been? Why haven't they been represented in design histories and canons?

Venue

Duke Ellington School of Arts

Duke Ellington School of the Arts (DESA) was established in 1974 by two trailblazing African-American artists and activists, Peggy Cooper-Cafritz and Mike Malone. Their vision was to provide equitable access to a life-changing arts education for the District's talented youth, regardless of background or ability to pay. Today, that legacy lives on through musicians and artists of all mediums around the world including alumni like Ari Lennox and Dave Chappelle and Corey Hawkins

Design Contiuum Fund

AIGA DC runs the Design Continuum Fund Scholarship, which provides scholarships for underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students who are studying art and design disciplines in colleges and universities in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area. A portion of profit from DCDW 2024 will automatically be routed to this fund.