Archie Boston

Professor Archie Boston is an internationally-known art director, designer, author, business owner, and educator. He was chair of the Graphic Design Program at California State University, Long Beach for 12 terms during his 33 years, and was named Outstanding Professor of the Year in 2004. He has also operated his design-consulting firm, Archie Boston Graphic Design, since 1972. He served two terms as president of the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles.

Considered one of the United States’ leading design instructors and a highly respected graphic designer, Boston was featured in Graphic Design: USA magazine as one of 35 design pioneers. In 2002, Boston published Fly in the Buttermilk: Memoirs of an African American in Advertising Design & Design Education, which described his experiences as a minority in the creative community. In 2009, Boston published, Lil’ Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City, a biography of growing up in St. Petersburg, Florida during the late 1940s and 1950s.

In 2007, Boston transferred 20 Outstanding Los Angeles Designers documentaries to DVD, which he videotaped on a sabbatical leave project in 1986. These historical design documentaries are now in university libraries across the US.

The Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum in St. Petersburg, FL, presented Boston’s, My Soul is a Witness, a retrospective exhibition extending over 50 years from 1963 to the 2014. The exhibition consists of historical local landmark oil paintings, award winning socially-conscious posters, historic books, and educational and spiritual videos.

Boston and his brother, David, created a documentary titled Black Pioneers of the Sunshine City, in 2016, which has been shown on WEDU in the Central Florida area during Black History Month since 2017. Boston was also interviewed and his posters were featured in the documentary, The Real Mad Men of Advertising of the 1960’s, which was donated to the Smithsonian Museums in 2018.