Powwows to Pages: Deconstructing Design Methods in Publishing

January 18, 2025

Acclaimed designer Brian Johnson and McClelland & Stewart Publisher Stephanie Sinclair joined us for a conversation about the unique challenges and successes of Indigenous design and publishing in North America. They shared their personal journeys and offered a behind-the-scenes look at the entire publishing process, from the initial idea to the final printed book. Topics included appropriation versus appreciation, the impact of capitalism and globalization, breaking down silos, and finding your voice and building community.

Brian Johnson is a partner of Polymode, where he focuses on creative direction, design production, writing, and teaching. Born into a family of printers, he is deeply invested in producing good design without sacrificing our humanity or environment. He is a member of the Monacan Nation and holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has guest lectured at the School of Visual Arts, Washington University, University of California Santa Barbara, and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. His recent clients include Glenn Kaino Studio, the Getty Museum, Studio Museum Harlem, Pulitzer Art Foundation, Phaidon Press, The New Museum, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, where his writing appears in Willi Smith: Street Couture. His most recent publication, Queering the Grid: Reading Codes in Dan Friedman's Teachings (with Silas Munro), led to his current design writing research on Friedman's 1994 Radical Manifesto, which was approaching its thirty-year anniversary at the time.

Stephanie Sinclair is the Publisher of McClelland & Stewart. She is Cree, Ojibwe, and a German/Jewish settler. She has worked for more than twenty years in the performing and creative arts, and in literary management from 2012 to 2022. She began at Transatlantic Agency in 2012, where she rose to senior agent, representing literary fiction and non-fiction with a focus on Indigenous creators and political engagement, and helped manage translation rights programs for Page Two Books and Drawn & Quarterly. Her authors were acknowledged by virtually every major awards jury in the country, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the LAMBDA Awards, and the Toronto Book Award. In 2020, she joined CookeMcDermid Literary Management and became the #1 ranked agent in the country in both fiction and non-fiction, according to Publishers Marketplace. She has been a fierce advocate and activist, serving as a mentor and curator and organizing publishing events to challenge colonial practices in publishing and advance reconciliation.

 

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