Design as accomplice: Typography, heritage and racialization

This article examines graphic design and illustration as participants in heritage-making processes that actively produce racial meaning. Through 1882–1982–2019 , an experimental ‘chop suey’ typeface developed as a non-practical, discursive artefact, the article traces how illustrated lettering and typographic form have functioned historically within American nation-building and Asian racialization in the West. Drawing on critical race, ethnic and Whiteness studies, the project reframes chop suey typography not as a marginal, crude or inauthentic vernacular form but as a distinctly American genre emerging from illustrated satire, labour politics and liberal progress narratives. Methodologically, the article advances a practice-led, undisciplined mode of historical narration that treats typographic design as a tool for critical heritage inquiry rather than affirmative stylistic recovery. A comparative coda on Japanese mingei further situates design heritage, constituted against vernacular forms as an accomplice to state power, canon formation and racial ordering across contexts.