Censorship has always been a visual act, to show or not to show.
The look and function of restricting information have taken many forms throughout history. As technology has progressed, so has the visual arsenal of methods to censor media. Yet how these tools are shaped has remained simple in scope and design.
Composed of squares, circles, and lines, these basic figures, at their core, form a universal language—seen in ancient hieroglyphs and echoed throughout history in repeated use.
THE VISUAL
LANGUAGE of
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After The Great Depression, the Farm
Security Administration commissioned
photographers to expose poverty in
rural America. The mission was to document
the crisis without instilling fear.
Roy E. Stryker, the head of the
project, would signal which photos
were too distressing by punching a
circular hole in the negative,
blemishing it for future use and
eliminating it from publication.
1930s
Killed Negatives
1970s
BLACK
CENSOR
BARS
Black bars evolved into a blunt visual method for censoring nudity. Before this visual technique was introduced in film, filmmakers cleverly concealed risque body parts using strategically placed typography, props, and furniture.
Redaction has been around for centuries.
In 1966, the US Freedom of Information Act
was passed “to help create transparency
in government.” In spite of this goal, the
law necessitated black RECTANGULAR bars over
text that contained sensitive information.
This design tool has been used
internationally, including the Watergate
Papers and KGB documents among others.
1960s
Black Censor Bars
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2020s
Vanish
With a single tap of a key, data can be erased from entire government records and social media sites, no design tool required.
Authoritarian regimes will silence people who don’t align with their political or social ethos through acts of imprisonment, deportation, or “enforced disappearances.”
We’ve witnessed countless instances of this around the world. From the late 1950s - 80s in Latin America (The Disappeared or Los Desaparecidos), The Sri Lankan Civil War (1980s), Syria since 2011, detainees in Israel and Palestine, journalist Evan Gershkovich in 2023, Russia, and most recently The United States with the abduction of immigrant scholars.
2000s
FOGGING
Amorphous blurs have obscured pornos and surveillance footage since the 1970s. In 2010, major search engines like Google began using Fogging to conceal sensitive and violent imagery on their sites. Dubbed SafeSearch, the tool first filtered out explicit images. Now, you’ll see clouded results with a crossed-out eye icon overlaid.
Sensitive Content
This page may contain graphic content.
In the early 1980s, "pixel art" emerged. Artist Susan Kare drew inspiration from mosaics and Pointillism to create the first Apple computer graphics.
Simultaneously, Japanese pornos, known as hentai or pink films, were forced to censor genitalia. Due to the trending style, clusters of transparent squares became the signature censor of the flicks AND OTHER SENSITIVE INFORMATION.
1980s
MOVE ME
Pixelization
MOVE ME
