I'm a visual communications designer and design historian on the faculty of the University of Florida's School of Art + Art History. I occupy a disciplinary space informed by both practice and scholarship, focusing on visual culture and its use in the narrative construction of social and personal identity. Graphic design's history is an emergent field of research with an extensive, global 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 media, and their associated inter-cultural narratives. For instance, 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 both design history and today's design landscape. This book explores that process.