Dori Griffin

Dori Griffin sees the history of visual communication design as an evolving field with an extensive body of unexplored people, practices, and artifacts awaiting scholarly attention. Her research focuses on popular visual culture and the narrative construction of social and personal identity, probing the relationships among commercial design practice, popular print media, and cultural contexts. Griffin’s book Type Specimens (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) explores how the type specimen as a professional practice and visual format has facilitated global typographic exchange, shaping today’s design landscape. Across leading journals, Griffin has documented and interrogated design’s role in shaping cultural concepts of national identity, healthcare, cross-cultural communication, sustainable futures, and design education itself.  Her work can be found in Design & CultureDialecticImago Mundi, the Journal of Communication Design, the Journal of Design History, and Visible Language.

Courses

Exploring Global Typography through Digital Archives, 2023