Alicia Yin Cheng is a founding partner of MGMT. design in Brooklyn, New York. She currently serves as an external critic for the MFA program at the Rhode Island School of Design and has taught at Yale University, Maryland Institute College of Art, Barnard College, and Cooper Union. Cheng was a past board member of the AIGA/NY chapter and the Fine Arts Federation.
""This artful volume will fascinate anyone interested in America's
political history...[A] noteworthy contribution to U.S. political
history."
- ALA/Choice,
"
"In This Is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual History of the
Printed Ballot, author Alicia Yin Cheng, looks at ballots
throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Cheng reveals how their
colors, text, images, and decoration often say even more than the
candidates up for election that cycle. The ballots are material
evidence that show the evolution of voting--and democracy--in the
U.S."
- Fast Company
"This Is What Democracy Looked Like is bookended by the same humble
artifact: the 'butterfly ballot' that notoriously swung the 2000
election. As an introductory essay notes, 'the structure and design
of the ballot can have enormous consequences for how politics
function or fail us.' Showing hundreds of examples of voting
ephemera, Cheng stresses their relations to historical power
struggles. The ballot was--and is--also a site of conflict for
disenfranchised groups, who fought for the monumental mundanity of
suffrage. 'While the more contemporary versions may be less
graphically outrageous, ' Cheng writes, 'that is also the
point.'
- Metropolis
"Today's dry ballot designs and campaign materials might have you
hankering for a more expressive past--but be careful what you wish
for, because they are indeed a mixed bag....[The is What Democracy
Looked Like] sheds light on what is today a little-known electoral
period in U.S. history, when there was zero federal government
oversight of ballots."
- PRINT Magazine
"With so much at stake in every election--and especially this
one--Cheng's fascinating book is a timely reminder to always read
between the lines and to exercise your right to vote."
- The Slowdown
"Among the many fights, legal victories, and historic moments that
mark this evolution [of American democracy], there is an artifact
that stands out as a record of the journey: the electoral ballot.
It is, to be sure, an ephemeral one. As designer Alicia Yin Cheng
writes in the introduction, "as a material tool of democracy, the
ballot should not, by its nature, be collectible." Her book,
tracing the history of the paper ballot with a wealth of
reproductions of electoral artifacts from the early 19th century to
2018."
- Quartz
"Generally speaking, ballots are as exciting as you'd expect a
bureaucratic document to be. That wasn't always the case. They used
to be colorful, both literally and figuratively, with vivid
iconography, ostentatious embellishments and, on occasion,
ridiculous punctuation. (One Whig ticket from 1815 contained 15
exclamation points.) Graphic designer Alicia Yin Cheng explores the
evolution of ballot design in her book, This Is What Democracy
Looked Like: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot."
- The Washington Post
Alicia Yin Cheng's "This Is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual
History of the Printed Ballot" arrives with unnerving pertinence.
As you may have noticed, this year there's a presidential election,
it's especially fraught, and part of the fraughtness has to do with
voter suppression, mail-in ballots, and the prospect of voting
irregularities....The most intriguing aspect of Cheng's book isn't
visual but conceptual. She takes something that's inherently
private and makes it public.
- The Boston Globe
"Alicia Yin Cheng's This is What Democracy Looked Like provides a
concise yet detailed look at the history of the printed electoral
ballot in the United States. Given the tumultuous aftermath of the
2020 US Presidential election, with outgoing President Trump making
unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud, the recent storming of
the US Capitol building by his supporters and Trump's subsequent
impeachment, the book is just as relevant now, if not more so, than
when it was initially published last summer."
- LSE Review of Books
"For those interested in typography, graphic design, letterpress
printing, user experience design, or democracy: This Is What
Democracy Looked Like balances design and history splendidly."
- TYPE Magazine
"Cheng has produced a truly interdisciplinary work, employing the
material culture of this country's elections as the centerpiece of
three essays on the democratic process....Almost 200 glorious
examples of printed, mostly letterpress, ballots, many with
candidates' names set in serpentine lines of type beneath
semicircular party names and illustrations of flags, eagles,
municipal buildings, and candidates' portraits."
- Library Journal
"The first illustrated history of the printed ballot. It shows that
controversy and confrontation at the polls is nothing new. The
ballots offer insight into periods of tectonic shifts in the
electoral system, and the fraud, disenfranchisement, scams and
skullduggery that have historically plagued the electoral
process."
- Design Arts Daily
"Vividly illustrates how our ballots reveal the history of
America's evolving politics and prejudices."
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ask a Question About this Product More... |