I'm Kimberly Atkins-Store and this is On Point.

George McCalman is an artist, graphic designer, and creative director based in San Francisco.

He's the author, illustrator, and designer of a new book, Illustrated Black History,

honoring the iconic and the unseen, which is now now George McCalman.

Welcome to On Point.

Thank you so much.

So tell us what is this book?

What are you conveying in this book?

This book was created in a vacuum.

I started a project originally 60 years ago, where I was illustrating and painting

Black History pioneers on a daily basis.

Once I was in the process, several friends suggested that I should make this a book and I

assumed that it already was.

Once I finished the project and looked around, started doing my research, realized that

there was nothing there aside from children's books and academic and historical books.

I was really shocked and decided that I would make it my purpose to make this book.

And what is it in this book?

Was it that you were searching for and did not find that you put in this book?

Well, basically an accessible packaging of Black Americans' contributions to American

culture.

It was just kind of a basic thing and the absence of it just became a ring sound in my ears

where I felt that I needed to attend to this.

...