The Manifesto Handbook

Manifestos may often resemble isolated bubbles unto themselves, but read together en masse they support the opposite of bubble thinking—you can’t help but see the plurality and diversity of human thought.

The designers Charles and Ray Eames did a famous Q&A in 1972, not unlike a manifesto, where they described design as “The sum of all constraints.” When asked in a follow-up question, “Does Design obey laws?” they answered by asking: “Aren’t constraints enough?” Coming up with new constraints, as manifestos often do, is one way of breaking out o

The language of desire is the best way to win converts. Guillaume Apollinaire once told poets: “you should compete with the labels on perfume bottles.” At their most elemental, manifestos—like the advertisements they both ape and influence—are simply “machines to generate desire.”

Every manifesto in effect declares: Rip it up and start again.

If you don’t bleed writing it, the reader won’t bleed reading it. YOU WANT THE READER TO BLEED, DON’T YOU?

A manifesto must be launched in a style that makes it memorable.

Centuries ago, manifestos were used to issue declarations of war on neighboring kingdoms. Take this as your model. Declare war on your opponent. Speak like a monarch. Stick to your principles—the big points. Don’t get hung up on details, which must be negotiated after the battle is over.

Social media is teaching us to perform our outrage and desire in public in the most impactful—and some would say least articulate and most harmful—possible terms. Good or bad, this is a reflex that aligns well to manifesto writing, and says something about the manifesto’s current vogue.

Manifestos are always, often literally, at the bleeding edge of culture and politics. The threats they contain are potent because they are sincere: there is always enough instability, enough wildness about the manifesto to give it real menace—the possibility, near or distant, of real danger, real action, actual revolution.

Aided by graphic design, the manifesto embodies the values of the movement just as a good advertisement embodies its brand.