Designed to Be Red: Native American & Indigenous Poster Works

Native designers are not often shown as authors of their own ideas or images, controlling neither how and when their stories are depicted, nor through what channels and mediums. Instead, Indigenous existence has been historically reduced to iconography that supports the American mythos that its numerous and distinct tribes are dead and in the past. Mythmakers and marketing teams have long used graphic design to tell stories about Native Americans, First Nations, Métis, Alaska Natives, and other Indigenous peoples rather than with them, creating reductive, inaccurate, and harmful representations of a living, vibrant, and varied group of people. 

Despite this, Native graphic art has a rich history that shows that its practitioners are not merely subjects of design but shapers of it—innovators who have created dynamic, subversive, and optimistic work despite centuries of cultural obliteration, land theft, and socio-economic marginalization. Through examples spanning nearly two centuries and representing over 60 tribes and nations, this exhibition reveals and celebrates design histories that have always existed alongside, despite, and in resistance to dominant colonial narratives, illustrating the full spectrum of Native life.

Brian Johnson (Monacan Indian Nation) is a designer, curator, and partner at Polymode. He is a co-founder of BIPOC Design History, an online learning platform, and has lectured and led workshops at the Walker Art Center, the School of Visual Arts, the Institute of American Indian Arts, AIGA’s National Design Conference, and the Rhode Island School of Design. His clients include The New York Times Magazine, MIT Press, A24, Nike, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. A 2025 Mellon Fellow at IAIA’s Research Center for Contemporary Native Arts and recipient of the 2023–24 Hyperallergic Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators, his work centers Native-made design to combat erasure and decolonize the field.