Archie Boston

Named by AIGA Los Angeles, 2007

Archie Boston

Archie Boston is a nationally recognized art director, designer, author and educator. He chaired the graphic design program at California State University Long Beach for 12 terms over a period of 32 years, and was named Outstanding Professor of the Year in 2004. He has also operated his design-consulting firm, Archie Boston Graphic Design, for the past 32 years. He has served two terms as president of the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles.

Considered one of the nation’s leading design instructors and a highly respected graphic designer, Boston has been featured in Graphic Design: USA magazine as one of 35 design pioneers. In 2001, Boston published Fly in the Buttermilk: Memoirs of an African American in Advertising Design & Design Education, in which he describes his experiences as a minority in the creative community.

Boston’s work has consistently been honored by many distinguished competitions, including: the New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles Art Directors Clubs’ annual shows, Communication Arts and Art Direction Magazine shows, Western Art Director’s show, Print magazine’s Regional Design Annual, the Type Directors Club and the AIGA Annual Design Competitions, The Los Angeles Belding Awards shows, Graphis Annual and “Typomondus 20,” an international exposition of the best graphics of the 20th century.

In 2007, Boston was the first African American to receive the prestigious AIGA Fellows Award from AIGA Los Angeles. That same year, Boston also transferred his 20 Outstanding Los Angeles Designers documentaries to DVD, interviews which he videotaped on a sabbatical leave project in 1986. He sold the DVDs on eBay and donated a portion of the proceeds to AIGA and his high school alma mater. These historical design documentaries are now in university libraries across the country.