Dead History

Paul Scott Makela was a graphic designer, multimedia designer and type designer. Among other work, he was especially noted for the design of Dead History, a postmodern typeface that combined features of a rounded sans serif typeface and a crisp neo-classical serif typeface. With the emergence of the personal computer in the mid-1980s, Makela was among the first to explore digital programs such as Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. As a result, he created an idiosyncratic, original and highly controversial design aesthetic. In particular, his disregard for clean, modernist, problem-solving design agendas—synonymous with contemporary corporate graphic design—caused much debate among powerful, old-guard designers such as Massimo Vignelli, Paul Rand, and Henry Wolf.