AGI as canon: professional distinction and the question of difference

This paper examines the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) within the context of debates which have developed since the design historian Martha Scotford (1991) published the seminal study ‘Is there a Canon of Graphic Design History?’. Scotford analysed why the field of graphic design history, at that time ‘coming out if its infancy’, was unconsciously producing a canon that celebrated the achievements of a narrow group of designers at the expense of exploring the true scope of activity within the field. AGI’s history can be understood as a unique sub-section of graphic design history in general – a record of the work and practices deemed exceptional by a group of highly distinguished practitioners, as distinct from academic historians. AGI’s history also reflects many of the same biases that Scotford and others have identified at the core of the subject, a history that has largely been defined by the achievements of Western white males. Analysis will seek to demonstrate how the ‘elite’ nature of AGI is not simply related to professional distinction, but also the socially and economically privileged position of its members. Drawing on scholarship from the Decolonising Design group (Ansari, 2018), Wen Huei Chou (2006), Tony Fry (2015), and Arturo Escobar (2017), it will be considered whether aspiration toward a ‘pluriversal’ standard – as oxymoronic and theoretically incompatible as it might sound – would be a worthwhile goal for AGI, in light of its recently stated aims to establish a more diversely representative platform for the world’s foremost designers.