Citizen Printer 0103

Written by Luke Dorny around March 29th, 2025 and then saddled up.

Punching with Ink

Citizen Printer book cover — Cover for *Citizen Printer* with insert behind showcasing the “All artists are political” print.
By: Luke Dorny Lic: CC BY-ND 4.0

I am finally holding my own copy of this gloriously printed book.

I love print. I love art. I love design. I also love the combining of these topics in the poster artwork such as those that are displayed here in our local Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.

Thank you for compiling it, Letterform Archive, and especially to you, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., for this priceless body of powerful work.

I initially heard about this book from Scott Boms in 2024, who shared that he was heading to the release of the book locally at the Letterform Archive near San Francisco.

You know those coffee table sized books that are all words and little show? …Especially when they’re large and about visual mediums? Yeah, this ain’t that.

This book is an incredible activist message in heavy ink and heavy type, driving the points home with no confusion. This is a beautiful representation of Mr. Kennedy’s career in Detroit, and reflects the eras in which he has worked, and are all collected here in page after page of powerful activism. From the civil rights era to today, these messages are clearly still relevant.

The quote from one of my favorite design quarterlies said this (from the Letterform Archives’ page):

“Kennedy’s fearless handbills and posters on social justice, politics, race, and capitalism, bursting with color, are powerful, expressive statements of intuitive, spontaneous print activism…. Citizen Printer has a dynamic, generous design and layout, [and] high production values support a tactile, craft-like, print workshop feeling, right down to its sturdy board cover.”
— Eye

Kenedy claims he is not a designer or an artist, just a printer, and id have to argue that though he makes a great case for this, I’d still say he is all three.

The printed medium itself plays a large role in shaping the perceptions and interactions in society.

For example, I’m remembering the ideals of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Marshall McLuhan in regards to the weight of words and the power in the repetition of a message, especially in ’truth-telling’.

Kennedy’s words on the printed paper push this idea in a bold, unforgiving, and impactful way. When a message is constantly in front of your eyes, it’s hard to look away, hard to not face the realities, and hard not to remember the messages of his prints.

So, where McLuhan talks about how the media shapes us, King spreads the ideals of bold truths that should not be forgotten, here Kennedy’s work not only supports a conscious awareness of these… realities, but does so in a manner that can transform a culture’s understanding of events.

“Agitate, agitate, agitate.”

Kennedy would like to be remembered as the Blues and Jazz of print. A messy, beautiful, human, imperfect, and unexpectedly gripping form of art and design. As he says in the book:

“…to use printing to express negro culture. To do to printing what the blues and spirituals did to music.”

Kennedy has taken some of my favorite artforms, letterpress and poster design, and turned them into powerful and physical objects that Agitate, as he puts it. For sure the tactile and visual qualities of the posters enhance the impact of their messages.

I am happy that the art and mind of Kennedy is now in my life. What an inspiration to artists, printers, and to all active resistors of inhumanities. The world needs more of this. Sharing it is the least we can do, and it supports his thoughts about community and togetherness in society.

Book

A fantastically printed work of art, with numerous full-bleed pages and a hefty chipboard hardback binding, this book is a beast to behold and a powerful reminder of our past, our present, too… …and our potential future.

As it says on the back cover: