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The Detroit Printing Co-Op: The Politics of the Joys of Printing...expand[s] design history, and the politics of graphic design...
- Jarrett Fuller, Scratching the Surface
As documented in design historian Danielle Aubert's richly illustrated book 'The Detroit Printing Co-op: The Politics of the Joy of Printing,' the co-op was more than a mere publishing facility: It embodied [Freddy] Perlman's belief in the liberatory power of "combined daily activities," such as book design, typesetting, and printing [...] Aubert's research into the co-op's legacy ... reveals the project's surprising scope.
- Daniel Marcus, Artforum
In the 1970s, The Detroit Printing Co-op showed the revolutionary potential of design.The prolific producer of leftist literature worked to define a different relationship to wage labor, materials, and politics.
- Danielle Aubert, AIGA
Danielle Aubert’s history of the Detroit Printing Co-op offers a refreshing example of graphic design as it was practiced in the most alternative of ways—not only outside of the mainstream design profession, but also against the prevailing capitalist economy premised on private ownership. For enthusiasts of graphic design, Fredy Perlman’s unexpected visually inventive designs for politically salient works offer a much needed example of how self-publishing and DIY printing, so in vogue today, can be used to not just make something, but to also say something.
- Andrew Blauvelt, Director, Cranbrook Museum of Art
Operating between 1969 and 1980 out of southwest Detroit, the Co-op would print the first English translation of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle and journals like Radical America, produced by the Students for a Democratic Society; books such as The Political Thought of James Forman printed by the League of Revolutionary Black Workers; and the occasional broadsheet, such as Judy Campbell's stirring indictment, Open letter from 'white bitch' to the black youths who beat up on me and my friend.
Fredy Perlman was not a printer or a designer by training, but was deeply engaged in the ideas, issues, processes and materiality of printing. Under his direction, the Detroit Printing Co-op radically rethought the possibilities of print by experimenting with overprinting, collage techniques, different kinds of papers and so on. Behind the calls to action and class consciousness written in his publications, there was an innate sense of the politics of design, experimentation and pride of craft.
Building on research conducted by Danielle Aubert, a Detroit-based designer, educator and co-author of Thanks for the view, Mr. Mies, The Politics of the Joy of Printing explores the history, output and legacy of Perlman and the Co-op in a highly illustrated testament to the power of printing, publishing, design and distribution.