Design
Alston W. Purvis
American design historian and Professor of Graphic Design at Boston University whose stewardship of Meggs' History of Graphic Design through its later editions has ensured the field's standard reference remains current, and whose independent scholarship on Dutch modernist design has expanded the discipline's historical awareness.
Why They Matter
Alston W. Purvis is an American design historian, educator, and author who has served as Professor of Graphic Design at Boston University's College of Fine Arts, where he teaches courses in design history, typography, and visual communication. His academic career has been shaped by the conviction that graphic design cannot be practiced responsibly or taught effectively without a deep and critical understanding of its historical development. This conviction places him in a lineage of design educators — including Philip Meggs, Richard Hollis, and Robin Kinross — who have argued that historical knowledge is not an academic luxury but a professional necessity, equipping designers to understand the origins and implications of the visual conventions they inherit and deploy.
Purvis's most prominent contribution to the field is his role as co-author and continuing editor of Meggs' History of Graphic Design, the definitive textbook of the discipline. Following the death of Philip B. Meggs in 2002, Purvis assumed responsibility for updating and expanding the book, preparing the fourth edition (2006), the fifth edition (2012), and the sixth edition (2016). His editorial stewardship has required navigating a delicate balance: extending the narrative to address the radical transformations wrought by digital technology, interactive media, social media platforms, and the globalization of design practice, while simultaneously preserving the scholarly coherence, narrative voice, and humanistic perspective that made the original a landmark. His additions have broadened the book's geographic scope to include design traditions from Asia, Latin America, and Africa that were underrepresented in earlier editions, reflecting the profession's growing awareness that the history of visual communication is not exclusively a Western story.
Purvis's independent scholarship focuses on European modernist design, with particular expertise in the graphic design and typography of the Netherlands. His books include Dutch Graphic Design 1918–1945 and monographic studies of the Dutch designer and printer Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, whose experimental typographic prints produced on a hand press in wartime Groningen represent one of the most extraordinary and overlooked bodies of work in twentieth-century design. Purvis's research on Werkman, based on extensive archival work in European collections, brought international attention to an artist whose isolation from the main centers of modernist activity had left him largely unknown outside the Netherlands. His work demonstrates the art-historical conviction that the canonical narratives of design history — dominated by the Bauhaus, Swiss Style, and a handful of celebrated practitioners — obscure a richer, more geographically and stylistically diverse reality.
Through his combined work as historian, editor, and educator, Purvis has played an essential role in maintaining and expanding the intellectual infrastructure of graphic design education. His contribution is that of the meticulous scholar and principled custodian: ensuring that the discipline's accumulated historical knowledge is transmitted accurately, expanded thoughtfully, and made available to each new generation of designers who might otherwise practice their craft in ignorance of its origins.