Printed stuff
Fanette Mellier works in an artisanal way in her studio in Paris. She practices a radical and colorful graphic design. She will present in this conference her latest projects: visual identities for cultural structures, typographical plaids, and experimental books produced in parallel. Lots of printed stuff!

Specializing in print design, Fanette Mellier (1977) creates mainly atypical works in the cultural field. Besides commissioned work, through which she handles several themes, Mellier invests herself in experimental projects that freely shuffle fundamental aspects of graphic design: typography, color, printing process and relation to public spaces.

Her works have been displayed in numerous contemporary art museums and centres, such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.

Design for the Times

The New York Times Magazine is known for bringing together ambitious journalism, powerful visuals and daring typographic systems. Creative Director, Gail Bichler will discuss how her team approaches designing for the diverse range of content that the magazine publishes including designing for current events in real-time.

She will talk about the current role of the magazine within the larger context of the Times, give a behind the scenes look at how their conceptual covers are made, and share her thoughts on the role of experimentation in everything from the magazine’s special issues to their digital presence to some of their forays into other mediums like audio and print only sections of the paper.

Gail Bichler is the creative director of The New York Times Magazine where she leads the creative team responsible for the design and art direction of The Magazine and its supplements. She and her team have won numerous awards for their print and interactive design from organizations including the Art Directors Club, the Society of Publication Designers, D&AD, the American Institute for Graphic Arts, the Type Directors Club and Creative Review, among others. Gail has taught and lectured internationally. She is a member of AGI and a former board member of the SPD.

In the last session we will see a selection of books designed by Irma Boom, one of the most renowned graphic designers of the moment. We will be able to take a journey from her first designs in the 1980s to recent examples, taking as a guiding thread the third edition of the retrospective miniature catalogue that she herself periodically updates.

Irma Boom’s work is a tribute to the history and present day of the book, a celebration of its powerful presence as an object and a testimony to its survival in times of electronic publications.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.

Is it better than a Tree?

Design books in 2023

High on Type is a collective of five calligraphers, artists and/or designers. Writing is the basis for everything they do. Whether they are organising a festival, doing a residency, creating an exhibition or giving a lecture. In this lecture, which Ivo and Guido will be giving, they will show why it is so important to keep playing in a making process, using mainly two major recent projects.  

Guido de Boer, born 1988 is an independent visual artist with a background as designer. His work consists of images that you can read and texts that you can expe- rience visually. His work is large, monumental and handmade and therefore expressive, but also co- mes across as graphic. In addition to his artistic practice, Guido is a teacher at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. 

Ivo Brouwer, born 1992 is a type and graphic artist based in The Hague. His work compiles of experimental type and graphic pat- terns made by translating tactile methods to digital environments and the other way around. He holds a Master‘s degree in Type Design from KABK Royal Academy of Arts The Hague. In 2022, he received a fund for Talent Development by the Creative Industries Fund NL. 

In this session we will focus on the figure of Joost Grootens, a Dutch graphic designer specialising in the design of books on architecture, urban planning and art. His work is characterised by the handling of large amounts of information in the form of statistical data, maps and diagrams. His ability to visualise data has made him a benchmark in the field of visual communication. 

Taking as a starting point a retrospective book of his own work entitled “I swear I use no art at all”, we can get to know his design philosophy and some notable examples of his editorial production.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.

Letters can be drawn in so many different ways. Cyrus Highsmith’s approach is based heavily on the importance of white space and sensitivity to shapes. It’s a method he applies to type design as well as image making of all kinds. For Highsmith, it’s a way of seeing the world. This workshop will be a messy, hands-on, and computer-free exploration of drawing, making, and thinking about letters.

Cyrus Highsmith is a letter drawer, teacher, author, and graphic artist. He teaches type design at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

He wrote and illustrated the acclaimed primer Inside Paragraphs: Typographic Fundamentals.

In 2015, he received the Gerrit Noordzij Prize for extraordinary contributions to the fields of type design, typography, and type education.

In 2017, he became Creative Director for Latin Type Development at Morisawa USA.
He goes to bed very early.

In this second session we will focus on contemporary books, analysing some examples that have won awards in recent years.

What is currently considered a well-designed book? 

Through the verdict of the jury of the LAUS awards and the “Best Book Design From All Over The World” we will be able to take a look at recent editorial design and detect what the trends are in this field. We will be able to assess the adequacy between form and content and explore the role of the designer in the process of creating a book.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.

The Work of Repair

Amica will reflect on how architectural and creative practices can orientate themselves away from invention and innovation towards the patient and slow work of repair, and consider work that is based on making long-term, personal or ethical commitments to sites, situations, and social contexts. She will cover some of Assemble’s early work, before discussing a set of projects that reorientated her and the studio’s attitudes towards the city and the rural, material ethics and intergenerational justice. 

Amica Dall is an inter-disciplinary practitioner focused on architecture and city culture and children’s right to the city. She is a founding member of Assemble, where she delivered more than 15 major projects over ten years. Her work as a writer and filmmaker has been broadcast on the BBC, exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and published in E-Flux. She recently co-wrote a book on post-carbon future for architecture with architecture practice, Material Cultures. Amica has taught across a wide range of subjects and works with both children and post-graduates.

Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen. Turner Prize in 2016, and nominated in 2022 to the Royal Academy in recognition of their collective contribution to the culture of city making.

Rewind and fastforward

Luna Maurer will elaborate on Moniker’s relation with technology in the past 20 years and its impact on their practice. Moniker is currently developing a new outlook and perspective on technology, sparked by recent rapid developments in the field. The web changed from an emancipating democratizing network into an infrastructure for big capital, the screen from a desktop publishing interface to a fundamental extension of our identity. Luna will share their latest experiments.

Luna Maurer is an interaction and media design artist. Originally from Stuttgart (Germany), she completed her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.

With Roel Wouters she heads the Amsterdam based studio Moniker. Moniker is well known for authoring the Conditional Design Manifesto (together with Edo Paulus and Jonathan Puckey). Luna Maurer has been teaching media courses at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, the Sandberg Institute, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, HfG Karlsruhe and at Yale University School of Art.

Dahyun will talk about how we can convert analog into digital things and explore the possibilities of the web. Furthermore, how can we create exciting websites in unexpected ways? And how can we use online tools for better communication nowadays?

Dahyun Hwang is a graphic designer. She studied visual communication at University of Seoul in Korea and finished her master’s at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. She thinks about how we can connect analog and digital. She is also a co-initiator of HHHA, a creative coding collective. She has participated in ‘Post Modern Child’ Exhibition in MoCA Busan and ‘POST IT!’ Exhibition in Tokyo. Her works have been featured in Monthly Design, It’s Nice That, CA Magazine, and so on.

HHHA (Hej Hello Hallo Annyeong) is a creative coding collective in which female creators gather to share and explore web-based works. Dahyun Hwang co-initiated HHHA with Naree Shin, and they gathered other teammates living in various places such as Germany, Denmark, and Korea.

To curate means to care. Literally. In the case of design, these objects – and the exhibitions they are featured in – talk about the human drive for progress, about creative leadership, about material economies and technological innovations. But what does it mean to curate within the field of design in the 21st century? How can exhibitions and books make a contribution to fostering more just, socially and ecologically sustainable societies? In her lecture, she will provide insights into the hands-on practice of curating, and into the broader issues that may inform how we present, discuss and practice design in the future. 

Viviane Stappmanns is a curator at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein. She is interested in exploring the contribution curators can make to rethinking design as a practice concerned with ecological and social sustainability. In her exhibition and teaching work, she experiments with new, collaborative approaches to curating and exhibiting. She has taught at different schools and universities, among them the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia and, most recently the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe.

Prior to working at the Vitra Design Museum, Viviane has worked as an editor and curator within architecture and design contexts in Australia and Germany, and holds degrees in Interior Design and Journalism.

The exhibition “Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today!” (2021) will open at the Barcelona Design Museum in October 2023. Currently, she is working on the international travelling exhibition “Garden Futures”, due to open at the Vitra Design Museum in Spring 2023.

Folch Creative-driven brand ecosystem. Acid House (creative and business innovation hub in Barcelona and Madrid), White Horse (creative production), Avanti Studio (city branding & way finding ), NOW (digital innovation and transformation), Creative Services (fashion and e-commerce), PILLS (digital education), Gallery Studio (New music formats), G.Records (Record label), Gallery (Music Innovation), Eldorado Agency (outdoor creative agency), J.Franc (3D visualization and AR/VR solutions), FFF (Digital type foundry) and Self (talent management).

Introduction to the Enric Bricall Special Collection, a collection of books whose design and typography represent excellence in 20th century editorial design. We will offer a historical review from 1900 to Postmodernism, passing through the interwar avant-garde, the New Typography and Swiss graphics.

We will look at some representative books from each period and analyse their characteristics. We will try to understand where their importance lies and why they have gone down in the history of graphic design as canonical examples of editorial design in the last century.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.

We, humans, struggle to build empathy towards large amounts of information. ¿How do we solve these challenges when the problems we face today are so inherently big, interconnected, wicked, and globalized? In this talk, we will explore some humble experiments done to overcome this lack of empathy through art, technology, and participatory experiences.

Pau Garcia is a media designer and the co-founder of Domestic Data Streamers, a 25 people studio that since 2013 has been focused on creating info-experiences. He also leads de Master in Data Design at Elisava. He is a guest lecturer at The New School (NYC), Hong Kong Design Institute, the Royal College of Arts (London), Politecnico di Milano and the Barcelona School of Economics. He built and permanently lives in the Residence for Artists HeyHuman! and is part of the Posttraumatic Collective. Usually, he doesn’t speak in the third person.

Domestic Data Streamers is an award-winning studio exploring how to express data through film, robotics, code, theater, or architecture in schools, prisons, cinemas, the streets of many cities, and even the United Nations Headquarters. They work for commercial brands and all kinds of old-school and new-kinky institutions. They truly believe data can be a real trigger of change and build bridges in a polarized society.

Pràctica: Graphic Hunting

Exploring our reality allows us to understand the creative potential that lies behind everything that surrounds us; In this session we will analyse, through visualising the latest Pràctica case studies, how our environment and surroundings can become an inexhaustible source of inspiration if we really pay attention.

Anna Berbiela

Graphic designer, creative director, and illustrator based in Barcelona. Anna Berbiela is co-founder, together with Javier Arizu, Carlos Bermúdez, and Albert Porta, of the design studio Pràctica. With offices in Barcelona and New York, Pràctica believes that design it’s a process involving researching, thinking, sharing, challenging… then giving all this a definitive shape. 

Pràctica is a design and identity studio based in Barcelona and New York that seeks to reveal the particular truth of each brand. By simplifying complexity and shaping concepts, creates work that makes sense.

Making a book means undertaking a complex task which is eminently collective. In addition to those who create content, design it and print the resulting book, other roles and knowledge must be involved whose participation is not always visible from the outside. This session will review all of the agents involved in editorial publishing, as well as some of the types of balance that can be established between such roles throughout the work process.

In her professional career, Mela Dávila Freire has combined institutional work – at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Museo Reina Sofía, among others– with research,writing, editing and curating. Her work focuses in particular on artist publications and art archives, spanning topics such as the theoretical and practical overlaps between archives and art collections, the ideological biases in archival structures,and the feminist revision of the genre of artists’ publications.

Her most recent book, Mission and Commission: documenta and the Art Market, 1955 – 1968, deals with the relationship between the early documenta exhibitions and the incipient art market through the publication of multiples and graphic works.

Blanding, The Branding Paradox

Thierry Brunfaut is a creative director and one of the founding partners of Base Design, the international network of branding studios based in Brussels, New York, Geneva, and Melbourne. He is the author of the renowned 5–Minute poster series, a professor, and a regular speaker at design and branding conferences around the world. Thierry bears a striking and seemingly contradictory resemblance both to Moby and Kermit the frog.

Base Design creates brands with cultural impact. Our team of creatives, strategists, and digital experts design and develop simple yet powerful brands, and build unique personalities. Base knows that branding is first and foremost about people, so specializes in helping companies – whether new or established; large or small – to become human-centric brands with vision, clarity, and empathy. Founded in the early ‘90s, the company has evolved continuously over the years and is now steered by partners across all four studios.

Off track

In this lecture Vrints-Kolsteren will take you into their creative process. From their sources of inspiration to the way they build visual systems.

Like a game, a visual identity is build up from a set of rules. How to apply these rules will determine the end result. The trick is to navigate freely within the game, like a traveler that goes off track but has a map to feel safe.

Vrints-Kolsteren is an Antwerp based design studio founded by Vincent Vrints and Naomi Kolsteren in 2015, working both locally and internationally. The bureau’s forte is developing visual identities with a clear and strong focus on typography. When working on an identity, they create a system, a set of rules, which can evolve over time.

Additionally, dealing with the organic opposed to rudimentary shapes and straight lines is a recurring narrative within their practice.

Vrints-Kolsteren puts an emphasis on collaboration and likes to work closely with their clients. They don’t want to view the client as a client, in the strict sense of the word, rather they consider all parties to be equal.

Vrints-Kolsteren is influenced by the modernist period, with clear references to that time, its designers and artists, which can be soon in their attention for form, linework, and most importantly, the use of grids and rulesets.

The work of the designers Muriel Cooper and Irma Boom serves to reflect on the phenomenon of the designer as author. Learning from Las Vegas was one of the seminal texts of postmodern architecture, but the design of the book was the cause of confrontation between its authors and Muriel Cooper due to the lack of adequacy between substance and form. A similar case is that of Irma Boom, who claims her creative autonomy in the process of creating the book. Two very strong personalities that refute the image of the “invisible designer”.

Modernism and Postmodernism are the driving forces that have shaped 20th century architecture, art and design.

The Modern Movement began at the end of the 19th century, ran vigorously through the century and began to be questioned at the beginning of the 1960s, before finally fading away in the 1990s with the advent of the Internet and the paradigm shift it brought with it.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund. The books that make up the collection are documented in the main accounts of the history of 20th century graphic design.

In this talk, artist and designer, Sarah Boris will talk about her shifting practice from being an in house designer and art director for some of the leading art institutions in the UK, to setting up her own studio in 2015. She will present some of her personal and non commercial projects that have shaped her practice and are informing new directions including self-published projects such as ‘Global Warming Anyone?’, or her artist book ‘Le Théâtre Graphique’ and her latest sculptural heart shaped bench design.

Sarah Boris is an artist and graphic designer based in London. After working for over ten years for organisations such as Phaidon, the Barbican Centre and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, she set up on her own in 2015, with a focus on visual identities, editorial design and developing her personal art practice. Her clients include The Photographers’ Gallery, Tate, The National Gallery and Christie’s to name a few.

In parallel to commissioned projects Sarah creates screenprinted artworks during artist residencies. Her work was acquired by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and was exhibited at the Design Museum in London and at Une Saison Graphique, Le Havre, France. She was judge president for D&AD book design in 2016 and is on the graphic design jury for the Latin American Design Awards 2022.

In the 1960s the modern canon began to be questioned. Social unrest and countercultural movements found their way into graphic design. A new aesthetic far removed from the Swiss grid gave way to playful typographical compositions that connected with the “words in freedom” of the artistic avant-gardes of the early 20th century, especially Futurism and Dadaism. Robert Massin in France and Corita Kent in the USA mastered the use of the printed word in their creations.

Modernism and Postmodernism are the driving forces that have shaped 20th century architecture, art and design.

The Modern Movement began at the end of the 19th century, ran vigorously through the century and began to be questioned at the beginning of the 1960s, before finally fading away in the 1990s with the advent of the Internet and the paradigm shift it brought with it.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund. The books that make up the collection are documented in the main accounts of the history of 20th century graphic design.

Influenced as much by feminism as Swiss typography, Lucienne will share her graphic design journey from utopian zeal to dystopian dilemma. She has always considered graphic design to be a political act. In the early days this message was greeted with incredulity but when her book Good: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design hit the streets the subject was inching onto the agenda. Since then, she and colleagues have curated / designed exhibitions about graphic design in health and politics:

(Can Graphic Design Save Your Life? and Hope to Nope: Graphic Design and Politics 2008–18), worked on multiple NGO campaigns; helped spread the word about climate change; and most recently developed the installation Perhaps it’s not you, it’s me. in which Lucienne contemplates ‘leaving’ her long-standing partner Graphic Design. Here she explains why divorce was an option, argues for the value of graphic design and ponders on what we all need to do next.

Lucienne Roberts is founder of design studio LR+ and co-founder of advocacy initiative GD&. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, Lucienne’s practice is characterised by her abiding interest in ethical design. LR+ work spans exhibition design, books and corporate identity. GD& creates vivid books and exhibitions that explore how graphic design connects with all other things. Projects include the originating and co-curation of two critically-acclaimed London exhibitions: Can Graphic Design Save Your Life? and Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008–18.

Lost in Translation

Serge Rompza

After graduating from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Serge Rompza has co-founded the Berlin and Oslo based design studio NODE in 2003, together with Anders Hofgaard.

The two offices collaboratively focus on identity, print, exhibition and interactive work. Clients include Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Vitra, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), Lithuanian Pavilion / La Biennale di Venezia, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Since 2004, he has regularly been teaching at art and design academies across Europe.

Swiss graphics led the international scene after the Second World War. In the 1950s and 1960s the Swiss style, a refined version of the New Typography, had become the universal solution to any visual communication need from book design to poster design to advertising and corporate image. Max Bill and Karl Gerstner, among many others, created a sophisticated language rooted in the avant-garde to communicate with the consumer society.

Modernism and Postmodernism are the driving forces that have shaped 20th century architecture, art and design.

The Modern Movement began at the end of the 19th century, ran vigorously through the century and began to be questioned at the beginning of the 1960s, before finally fading away in the 1990s with the advent of the Internet and the paradigm shift it brought with it.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund. The books that make up the collection are documented in the main accounts of the history of 20th century graphic design.

Systemic Type Design

Martin Lorenz

might as well have become a cook, a comic artist or an architect, were it not for an internship at Müller+Volkmann. Lorenz studied Graphic Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt and the Royal Academy of Arts (KABK) in The Hague. After working four years at the design agency Hort, he moved to Barcelona to found TwoPoints.Net with Lupi Asensio and do his MA and PhD in Design Research at the UB. Lorenz has taught since 2006 for Elisava and still likes to cook.

This lecture talks about the diverse trials faced when attempting to expand the range of our capacity within web environments by questioning standard web design templates. The talk features Anti-User-Friendly, an ongoing project that challenges the concept of user-friendliness by creating a content-focused website.
Web tools work as a bridge connecting the user and the device-website to narrow the world wide web down to a ‘village wide web’ and transform the web into an extended space.

Yehwan Song is a graphic web designer. She runs her own independent design studio focusing on the strategic use of technologies. Her work involves projects with multiple cultural organizations, including ifa, LIMA Media Art, Rhizome, Typojanchi, and Seoul Museum of Art.
She has participated in a number of exhibitions—Venice Biennale (Korean pavilion), Seoul Biennale(SBAU), and others; and her works have been featured in such magazines as Étapes, Monthly DESIGN, It’s Nice That, among others.

Yehwan Song Studio is a web design and a web development studio questioning standardized design and interface conventions that frame users’ behavior and the templates that make them lose their content awareness and become accustomed to oversimplification. We construct outside-the-frame devices and interfaces in order to challenge the notion of user-friendliness. We pursue diversity and variety in the web environment above efficiency.

We will reflect from some projects elaborated in 131 during the last years, in which starting from typography we work to recover the local and collective memory.

Esteve Padilla.

Barcelona, 1983
Graphic designer, half of the 131 studio and occasional teacher at various universities. Graduated in graphic design at Eina (UAB).

131

(Pau Llop, Esteve Padilla) is a graphic design office based in Barcelona and Lleida. Typography understood as image, form or letter is a substantial element in all the projects we do. Our work includes art direction, identities, editorial projects, websites and typography.

Pràctica: Process

Pràctica does not have a style, but it follows a process; In this session, we will analyze, through the case studies of the latest studio projects, the process that Pràctica follows to develop its work.

Anna Berbiela

Graphic designer based in Barcelona. Anna founded the studio Pràctica together with Javier Arizu, Carlos Bermúdez and Albert Porta in 2018. With offices in Barcelona and New York, Pràctica is a studio that works for institutional, cultural, and commercial clients, developing communication projects in printed, digital, and environmental matters.

Pràctica is a full-service design studio based in Barcelona and New York. Working for institutional, cultural, and commercial clients, always seeks powerful concepts, bold visual codes, and customized solutions for each project. This is translated into a very eclectic job; Their style is the lack of one, it’s finding the best solution for each project.

The act of making something public

This session addresses the methods, tools and implications of publishing activities. 

— What does the publication does/mean? And how is it going to exist/circulate?

— How does it achieve its aspirations through form?

— How do content, editorial concept and design come together?

— How to think publishing as complement and supplement to working practices?

— In which terms can ‘making public’ act as a tool for bringing common shared interests and concerns?

Book Bindery

The BB allows the production of books and publications in small editions and specific manipulations of paper and cardboard. All processes are always done entirely by hand and pushing the limits of what is possible.

Next to being a technical workshop, the BB functions as a cross-departmental point in our institution. We believe the publishing practice is an emancipatory process. We support project such as: PUB.sandberg.nl, Radio Rietveld and Rietveld Journal.

Miquel Hervás Gómez

(Terrassa, 19 April 1985). Handy graphic design freelancer based in the www. Running as a workshop manager at the BB. Tutor for Disarming Design at the Sandberg Instituut and Preparatory Course at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, while being member of fanfare and Carne Kids.

fanfare was established in the observation of a context, a network, within which design and art interactions resulted in projects not suiting within the existing platforms for presentation. fanfare creates a framework to connect already existing structures. What organically happened in this context was the creation of new structures, new networks, new initiatives. We allow ourselves in the context of today to speak about fanfare as framework for (non)physical publishing.

fanfare is a platform and design studio for cross-disciplinary collaboration and visual communication. Through an active programme, fanfare generates, explores, and curates environments for visual interactions.  

Since the start in 2014, fanfare has created a unique space for experiments, explorations and collaborations in the realm of graphic design and related disciplines. Through their research and design practice, fanfare sharpens and challenges the notion of visual communication. 

Miquel Hervás Gómez

(Terrassa, 19 de abril de 1985). Diseñador gráfico autónomo afincado en la www. Funcionando como jefe de taller en la BB. Tutor de Disarming Design en el Sandberg Instituut y del Curso Preparatorio en la Gerrit Rietveld Academie, a la vez que miembro de fanfare y Carne Kids.

Ruben Pater (1977, NL) (he/him) works between journalism and graphic design. Under the name Untold Stories, Pater creates visual narratives that support solidarity, justice, and equality. Pater finds himself being a designer at a time when design is last thing the world needs. Until more ethical approaches present themselves, he designs, writes, and teaches. He is a tutor at the BA Graphic Design, and the MA Non Linear Narrative at KABK. The Politics of Design, is his first book about cultural bias in graphic design. His second book CAPS LOCK looks at the role of graphic design in capitalism.

CAPS LOCK

Capitalism could not exist without the coins, notes, documents, graphics, interfaces, branding and advertisements; artefacts that have been (partly) created by graphic designers. Even anti-consumerist strategies such as social design and speculative design are being appropriated within capitalist societies to serve economic growth. It seems that design is locked in a system of exploitation and profit, a cycle that fosters inequality and the depletion of natural resources.

CAPS LOCK uses clear language and striking visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are inextricably linked. The book contains many case studies of designed objects related to capitalist societies and cultures, and also examines how the education and professional practice of (graphic) designers supports the market economy and how design practice is caught within that very system.

CAPS LOCK is an inspirational book full of sources for design students, educators and visual communicators all over the world, just like Ruben’s first book The Politics of Design.

Two crucial works of New Typography, the avant-garde movement that revolutionised graphic design in the interwar period. The increasing availability of the photographic image played a fundamental role in this new approach to editorial design. Moholy-Nagy, a member of the legendary Bauhaus, and Jan Tschichold, author of the landmark work Die neue Typographie, radically changed the face of the printed page, producing a lasting impact whose effects continue to this day.

Modernism and Postmodernism are the driving forces that have shaped 20th century architecture, art and design.

The Modern Movement began at the end of the 19th century, ran vigorously through the century and began to be questioned at the beginning of the 1960s, before finally fading away in the 1990s with the advent of the Internet and the paradigm shift it brought with it.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund. The books that make up the collection are documented in the main accounts of the history of 20th century graphic design.

Two hours filled with semantics, politics and graphic design, appropriately illustrated with works by Bendita Gloria.

Santi Fuster

Graphic designer.

50% of Bendita Gloria. 

Bendita Gloria is a design studio founded by Alba Rosell and Santi Fuster. Focusing on identity and editorial projects, their work has won certain attention because of its particular conceptual approach. Since 2007, Bendita Gloria strives to turn their projects into interesting reading matter.