Can a symbol ever escape its most nefarious usages and connotations? And should it? Renowned art director and writer Steven Heller, co-chair of MFA Design at SVA, has spent much of his career wrestling with such questions—about where designs come from and the lasting influence of a brand. But one symbol, in particular, has been an object of long-term study. The Swastika and Symbols of Hate: Extremist Iconography Today, co-published by SVA and Allworth Press and released earlier this fall, is Heller's treatise on the swastika, the hooked cross adopted and ultimately weaponized by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis between 1920 and the end of World War II, as well as one of the oldest and most widely used symbols in human history.

First published in 2000 and then revised in 2008, the book was originally titled The Swastika: A Symbol Beyond Redemption? "It was just a way of purging my own interests and looking at it from its truly benign perspective and seeing how it evolved," Heller says. The first edition entertained the possibility that the swastika could be reformed, or perhaps more accurately returned to its associations with good fortune and spirituality that predate the Nazi usage and are, in fact, still its primary significations today in many parts of the world.

"Initially, I was sympathetic [to rehabilitation efforts]," he writes in the new edition's introduction, "however, as long the Nazi iteration continues to elicit destructive power, there is no way it will ever be redeemed." Writing about such a stance, he has noted that, "People for whom the swastika has spiritual import have a right to this symbol. Nonetheless, I would feel even more guilty if I did not take a stand against its use in our cultural context as anything other than an icon of evil."

Disturbingly relevant circumstances outside his own study and reflection motivated the new polemic. "This version was really prompted by Charlottesville," he says, referring to the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Virginia that killed a counter-protester and led President Donald Trump to famously equivocate about the "very fine people" on both sides. "What could I do to make some sort of statement about the Trumpian period?" Accordingly, the revised edition includes additional material on old and new hate logos, as it examines graphic design's role in far-right extremist ideology today.

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