Manifesto Mania

AIGA, the professional association for design, highlights manifestos.

From the story...

Karl Marx had one. The Unibomber had one. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he drafted the manifesto that launched the American Revolution. Graphic design would not exist as we know it today if F.T. Marinetti hadn’t published his manifestos and instigated Futurism. By inventing the idea of art as a branded public enterprise, Marinetti compelled many poets, painters and designers after him to state their principles in compact, incendiary speech.

A manifesto is a short document that “manifests” or makes public a set of ideas and goals. A manifesto is passionate, personal and vivid. Such calls to action went out of fashion during the mid-20th century, replaced by more businesslike, professionally oriented statements of purpose and principle. But at the turn of the new century, just as at the turn of the old one, manifestos came back.