A tribute to the incredible designers, artists, and people at the center of queer Black publishing.
Jon Key’s Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, and Trailblazers is a landmark publication that reclaims erased histories of Black queer creatives. With nearly 450 pages of images and narratives, the book challenges the exclusionary practice of art and design, offering a corrective archive that insists identity itself can be communicated through visual culture.
Key’s project is both scholarly and deeply personal. Growing up in Seale, Alabama, he struggled to see himself reflected in design history. This book is his response: a repository of memory and a manifesto for visibility.
Thing magazine is included in Jon Key’s book, in the section “Black Queer Mail as Survival,” further preserving Thing’s legacy within the broader narrative of queer Black design and publishing. Since Thing magazine remains a critical archive of queer Black resistance and joy, Key’s book resonates with Thing’s ethos, extending its mission into the present.
The archive spans from the 19th century to the present, documenting designers, artists, and cultural trailblazers whose contributions have often been overlooked. It is richly illustrated, weaving biography, cultural critique, and visual storytelling into a comprehensive narrative.
Black, Queer, and Untold Book Launch with Jon Key
On March 11, 2025, artist and designer Jon Key celebrated the launch of his book, Black, Queer, and Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, and Trailblazers, in Philadelphia. Key’s book invites us to consider how identity could be archived in a design canon that has consistently erased contributions by designers who were not white, straight, and male and pays tribute to the incredible designers, artists, and people who came before.
The program began with a reading by Key, followed by a conversation with graphic designer Nijel Taylor, artist Qualeasha Wood, and Rachell Morillo, ICA Philadelphia’s Director of Public Engagement and Research.
Milestones in Queer Black Publishing History
1920s–30s: Harlem Renaissance journals and anthologies, featuring queer voices like Richard Bruce Nugent.
1986: In the Life anthology, centering Black gay voices.
1989–1993: Thing magazine documents Chicago’s queer Black arts and nightlife.
1990s: Small press zines and HIV/AIDS activism publications.
2016: Outside the XY anthology amplifies queer Black and Brown masculinities.
2024: Jon Key’s Black, Queer, & Untold offers a comprehensive archive of Black queer designers and artists.
Queer Black publications are not just cultural artifacts—they are acts of preservation and resistance. These publications are more than cultural artifacts—they are acts of preservation and resistance. They ensure visibility, create spaces of belonging, and provide future generations with models of creativity and resilience. By documenting what mainstream archives ignore, they redefine what counts as design and art history.
Jon Key’s Black, Queer, & Untold is both a scholarly archive and a cultural intervention. In dialogue with predecessors like Thing magazine, it reminds us that queer Black publications are not supplements to history—they are essential archives of joy, innovation, and survival.
Learn more and purchase Black, Queer, & Untold at www.blackqueeruntold.com.
