Tracing the adaptation and evolution of Black American rhetorical traditions throughout history
Book and Interaction Design Spring 2026
Overseen by Amy Auman 67th Communication Arts Design Shortlist Introduction
Signifyin’ (n): the Black American art of saying something twice: once on the surface, and once underneath
Signifyin' was my senior capstone project, a semester-long exploration of the history, adaptation, and evolution of Black American rhetorical traditions. The project takes the form of a 212-page archival book, printed and bound by hand, alongside a supplemental audio website.
My interest in this topic actually began at the simple intersection of my love for the rhythm of hiphop along with the delicate wordplay in poetry and wanted to create a project commemorating the two. As I did research and uncovered this lineage of Black American rhetorical traditions that began from West Africa, I found it fascinating. What started as a love letter to hip-hop and poetry became a recognition that these weren't just art forms I admired, but part of a continuous tradition of Black America.
One of the first questions I had to ask myself when beginning this project was whether it was mine to make. I am not Black American, and the traditions I'm documenting belong to a cultural lineage that I am outside of. But, through conversations with professors at WashU who work directly in African American literature and cultural history, I came to understand that there's a meaningful distinction between telling a story and creating a framework through which a story can be more clearly heard. These professors helped me understand that an outsider engaging seriously with this material, doing the research, and framing the argument is different from claiming ownership of it.
The book opens in West Africa in the 1500s and moves through six chapters, West African Oral Traditions, Slave Songs, Black Preaching, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and ends at modern day Hip Hop, tracing how Black American rhetorical traditions have evolved and adapted across centuries. The system is defined by the two themes of rhetorical tradition as response and accumulation over time.
These two themes became the structural logic of the entire book. Every decision, from color to type to layout, was meant to reflect the specific cultural moment of each era while still remaining legible as part of a single and most importantly continuous tradition.
The color system was built upon the historical contexts of each era and drawing upon art, imagery, and symbolism that would help differentiate each section from each other while still keeping it grounded. This helped me to make the distinction about what elements of my system would change throughout and what elements would remain consistent. Photography and art was also a huge part of the project along with the rhetoric, writing, and songs of Black America. I made sure to include historically relavant imagery for each section, usually including multiple spreads where photography and visual art could have its moment. With the color system firmly established, I assigned each section a unique rhetorical device, which was introduced at the beginning of a section along with a piece of writing, lyric, or speech that is representative of that era and its motifs. I organized new lockups for secondary text that would allow it to have similarities throughout the book but would help me understand how the text behaved on the page and the spatial composition. Each of the chapters had different lockups depending on how the rhetoric of that time was used to fight back against oppression, if the hymnals of the slavery era were more hidden and utilized the negative space more, the loud and direct poetry of the Black Arts Movement carved its way through the space and text. In addition to the lockups of the secondary type, I really drew inspiration from the rhyme schemes Genius often does for rap songs that highlights the inflections and intonations of the lyrics. What drew me to this approach was that it worked on two levels simultaneously: it isolated and highlighted what was unique to each era, while also making accumulation visible showcasing how lyrical text from the modern era still encapsulates the themes and rhetorical traditions from West Africa. In later sections there is a clear accumulation of highlighting of rhetorical devices from previous eras that are present even in more modern eras.
In turn, the highlighting motif became more than a functional marker, evolving into a textural element that treated the lyrical texts as sensory and auditory experiences rather than purely read ones. the jagged lines that emerged from this carried their own rhythm, operating as a visual layer for sound, even appearing as the cover. At the end of each section, colored fragments of the section openers bleed onto the final photograph of that section. With each new section, new fragments layer on top of the last showing a visual accumulation of buildup layer by layer. By the final spread, you are able to see six eras of images collapsed into one image which strengthens the concept of accumulation that is core to my project. The Website
As stated before, the website was meant to be a simple companion to the book. It acts as a supplemental asset: as lyrics, songs, and speeches appear throughout the book, they are demarcated with an alphabetical symbol that corresponds to the audio version of that piece on the website. While coming up with the context and framework for this project, I realized how important it was for viewers to both see and hear the spoken word.
On Display
The project concluded with a presentation to five design professionals and professors about my work throughout the semester, detailing both my process and design decisions that I had made. Once the presentations concluded, our work was put on display for both the WashU and St. Louis community to come and see.
This project tested my resolve multiple times throughout the semester, as I lost countless hours of sleep doing the research, trying to make iterations and obsessing over the little details. But, I love this project and the things it has taught me not only about design, but about myself as a designer, and it’s the kind of project that reminds me why I fell in love with design.