As a visual communications designer and design historian on the faculty of the University of Florida School of Art + Art History, I occupy a disciplinary space informed by both practice and scholarship. My design research focuses on popular visual culture and the narrative construction of social and personal identity. Through this research, I probe the evolving aesthetic and theoretical relationships between visual culture, cultural identity, and image narratives. Graphic design's history is an emergent field of research with an extensive body of unexplored practices and artifacts awaiting scholarly attention. My research is situated at the convergence of commercial graphic design practice, the artifacts of popular print media, and their associated inter-cultural narratives. My recent book Type Specimens (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) features 250 color illustrations of type specimens from 24 countries and in 15 different global scripts. As both a visual format and professional practice, the type specimen has facilitated global typographic exchange, shaping today's design landscape. This book explores that process.