I can’t remember the last time I picked up a newspaper. At least ten years, maybe even twenty. But this morning, as I walked into my hotel restaurant for breakfast, they had one copy of today’s San Francisco Chronicle left. And I grabbed it.

I used to read the Chronicle all the time. Whether I bought it for a quarter from one of the hundreds of yellow and blue machines that dotted every corner in downtown San Francisco, from a newsstand sold by someone wearing fingerless gloves but whose fingertips were black with ink, or from somewhere within ten feet of my front door depending on the paperboy’s aim that morning.

I rarely read each story in every edition of the Chronicle. Instead, I had some favorite sections. I’d usually read the main stories in the A section and then US news. The B section was world news, which I often skipped. Usually, a few stories in the C section, Business, piqued my interest. And I always read through the Datebook, the paper’s entertainment and lifestyle area.

Reading a newspaper encourages discovery. In the Datebook section, I stumbled into the Comics & Puzzles spread. The signature green-tinted Sporting Green section is pictured behind.

Way before streaming, TV schedules were printed in newspapers and in TV Guide. I guess the Chronicle still does.

Physically, the newspaper is an ephemeral object. Its thin, crispy paper with perforated top and bottom edges dotted with small punched holes from the grabber, and ink that is kissed onto the paper with just enough resolution for the type and photos, but not enough to make them beautiful. There is no binding, no staples or glue to hold pages together—only folding. Each section is folded together, and the first section holds all the sections in a bundle. The newspaper is disposable; its only purpose is to convey the news, the content printed on its surface. It is not a keepsake. The paper stock yellows, and the ink fades relatively quickly, reflecting the freshness of the news within.

Reading a newspaper is an experience. Its sheer size is unwieldy and not exactly the best user experience. But there is something about spreading your arms wide to unfold it, hearing the crinkling of the paper, getting a whiff of the ink, and feeling the dryness of the stock between your fingers. This tactile experience engages more than just your eyes.

And maybe that is why I was hit with such a wave of nostalgia this morning when I picked up the Chronicle. I remembered Sunday mornings in a North Beach cafe, sipping a cappuccino and nibbling on a scone. Italian music was in the air mixed with the gurgles of the espresso machine and clanks of saucers and spoons. All while reading the newspaper for hours.

This was originally published as an item in Issue 005 of the designspun email newsletter.

Great art can be born out of great unrest. Anti-government, anti-evil propaganda harnesses the frustration and despair people feel in times of crisis. Mark Fox and Angie Wang (aka Design Is Play) are following up their award-winning “Trump 24K Gold-Plated” poster with a new series of anti-Trump agitprop. The pair have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund three posters, “Trump: Lord of the Lies” and a diptych called “White Lies Matter.”

From their Kickstarter page:

We designed Trump: Lord of the Lies to create a succinct mnemonic for Donald Trump’s corruption. Likewise, the White Lies Matter diptych crystallizes Donald Trump’s history of rhetorical flirtations with white supremacists. And after he is voted out of office, this work will add to the body of evidence that many Americans can still tell the difference between what is true, and what is false.

(Side note: I used Design Is Play’s No Trump symbol in my little anti-Trump agitprop, Inside Trump’s Brain, a single-page website to protest then-candidate Trump.)

Protest art is created all around the world. Hong Kong-based designers last year made many compelling posters. Most take the stance of solidarity in the face of an overbearing and overreaching authority. Hence images that reference the Galactic Empire from Star Wars or homages to Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.

Raw defiance gives way to a more hopeful aesthetic from Shepard Fairey’s We the People series from three years ago. Slogans such as “Defend Dignity” and “We the Resilient have been here before” adorn striking portraits of people of color. I remember seeing so many of these during the Women’s March in Los Angeles.

In The New Yorker, Nell Painter highlights a couple of anti-racist artists from the 1960s, photographer Howard L. Bingham who took many pictures of the Black Panther Party, and Emory Douglas:

More intriguing to me now is the agitprop artwork of Emory Douglas, the B.P.P. Minister of Culture, which was published in the The Black Panther newspaper and plastered around the Bay Area as posters. Week after week, Douglas’s searing wit visualized the urgency for action, such as this image of children carrying photographs, one that shows police victimizing a child…