A witty, tongue-in-cheek discussion of design's potentials and pitfalls

In focusing on creating preferable conditions, the discipline of design is optimistic by default. And yet, vernacular manifestations of skepticism, dissatisfaction and even resentment toward design abound. Instead of systematically discarding them, can these sad passions shed a valuable light on the blind spots of the field? Can disillusion be something more than disillusionment? Can it become an emotional method to unveil design's dysfunctions and contradictions?
Author Silvio Lorusso looks into historical and present manifestations of design disillusion to shorten the gap between expectations and reality when it comes to the everyday practice of designers. Using humorous and irreverent visuals, often containing jokes about design, Lorusso constructs thoughtful dichotomies on such topics as synthesis and autonomy, power and impotence, and aspirations and compromise. The result is an amusing yet academic consideration of the design profession and its future.
Silvio Lorusso (born 1985) is the author of Entreprecariat: Everyone Is an Entrepreneur. Nobody Is Safe. He holds a PhD in Design Sciences from the Iuav University of Venice, and is an assistant professor and vice-director of the Center for Other Worlds at the Lusófona University in Lisbon.

A practical guide to building your own design and branding firm, as told by a leading figure in the field

Part personal memoir and part professional manual by designer and creative strategist Matt Owens, A Visible Distance addresses the common challenges faced when building a practice in graphic design or branding. The book provides concrete strategies to tackle the complexities of balancing intuition and taste, technical and personal capability, strategic business decisions in design work and the demands of modern brand building. The book spans the last several decades: from Owens' roots in DIY, punk and skateboarding in the later '80s, to the advent of the commercialization of the internet in the late 1990s, building and growing a creative agency, to the present disruption of artificial intelligence, automation and distributed hybrid teams. A Visible Distance is a testimony to learning new things and embracing fundamental changes in popular culture, tools, technologies and processes to make your own way in design.
Matt Owens was born and raised in Texas. He is the founder of multiple design studios and creative agencies including One9ine and Athletics, where he has worked with clients including Sony, Nike, Madlib, Cooper Hewitt, IBM, Google and others. He is currently based in Brooklyn.

A user-friendly manual to research methods in art and design practices

This volume presents the Circle of Doing Research: a model to get you started in art and design research. Conceived within the contextual setting of the art school, it is holistic, multidisciplinary and prioritizes practice. It consists of six actions. The basis of the circle is formed by the following: research by making, research of context and participatory research, where information, prototypes, encounters and experiences are gathered and produced. The remaining three actions are concerned with documenting research, publicizing research and reflecting on research. The Circle of Doing Research is an open, accessible and non-linear model. Each action can be an entry point, whether you want to start with material experiments, conversations with others, or in the library. All actions are connected and inform each other which encourages a process of iteration and constant reflection. The Circle can be enriched with methods, sources and focal points according to specific disciplines and needs. The book contains research trajectories of art and design students throughout, illustrating the rich possibilities to be uncovered in the unfolding of a research project. This illuminating model can be useful to all, from those beginning to learn about research in art and design to more advanced practitioners.

On the conditions and limits of critical thinking for design culture under capitalism

Design schools increasingly urge students to address social, political and environmental issues in their work. But who can afford to work in this way after graduation?
In a dynamic style that draws from multiple contributors, Who Can Afford to Be Critical? discusses the limits that affordability, class and labor impose upon the educational promise of holding a critical practice. Why do we tend to ignore the material and socioeconomic constraints that bind us as designers, claiming instead that we can be powerful agents of change? Instead of focusing on the dream of ethical work under capitalism, could we instead focus first on designers' own working conditions, as one immediate site for collective action? Over the course of four chapters, this publication delves into the modes of precarity in critical graphic work and possible paths toward emancipation from that position.

A conversational, impassioned treatise on the realities of a socially engaged design practice

Packed with conversational interviews, personal and critical essays, and a wide-ranging collection of graphic works, Design against Design examines the realities and relations that constitute a socially engaged design practice. Canadian designer Kevin Yuen Kit Lo (born 1978) offers candid, almost confessional, insights that challenge the status quo of design writing, demanding that we think more critically about the politics of visual culture under contemporary capitalism, and importantly, how we can act against it.
The collection is organized around four key themes: Critique presents a political economic analysis of graphic design in relation to capitalism and considers practical ways to resist it; Practice looks critically at how designers work toward (and sometimes against) social change; Materiality focuses on the craft of graphic design; and Autonomy considers the emotional and relational aspects of graphic design.

Using data, diagrams, maps and visualizations to challenge dominant narratives and support the resilience of marginalized communities

This volume collects contemporary artworks and projects that use data, diagrams, maps and visualizations as ways of challenging dominant narratives and supporting the resilience of marginalized communities.
The artists and designers featured critique conventionalized and established truths that obscure important histories or perpetuate oppressive regimes; they also contribute to positive social change by engaging communities and providing alternative strategies for storytelling, communication and organizing. Historical and contemporary uses of data and visualization in colonization, surveillance and management are problematized through critical interventions that use performance, embodiment and counternarratives. The publication is the product of an exhibition organized by Onsite Gallery at OCAD University, Toronto, in 2018.
Contributors include: Joshua Akers, Burak Arikan, Josh Begley, Joseph Beuys, Alexis Bhagat, Vincent Brown, Bureau d'Études, Teddy Cruz, Department of Unusual Certainties, Peter Hall, Alex Hill, W.E.B. DuBois, Patricio Dávila, Catherine D'Ignazio.

Part design experiment, part critical theory, part how-to manual, What Is Post-Branding? offers a creative counter to branding's neoliberal orthodoxy

Brands aren't just intruding on culture, they are our culture: they are the sponsored mechanisms for constructing and manipulating meaning and human identity. But should we cede such a fundamental human need to the market? If not, why not, and is there an alternative?
A compact pocketbook composed of four main sections, What Is Post Branding? is a work of practical theory. The first section, DIS-BRANDED, consists of 20 short page-long chapters exposing the ideological underbelly and real-world impact of branding. The second, Mixed Messages, is a provocative visual essay illuminating the texts' main themes. The third section, Manual, presents a framework for a critical alternative to corporate branding, humorously appropriating vintage instructional diagrams as a brand manual satire. This section also includes examples of contemporary projects that have implemented post-branding principles. The book concludes with Context, which features a conversation with cultural theorist Brian Holmes and a discussion with design historian Steven Heller.

Back in a new compact edition, this field guide to our new world of hybrid specimens--gorgeously printed in silver ink on black paper--catalogs the conflation of the technosphere and the biosphere

Plastiglomerates, surveillance robot dogs, fordite, artificial grass, antenna trees, Covid, decapitated mountains, drone-fighting eagles, standardized bananas: all of these specimens--some more familiar than others--are examples of the hybridity that shapes the current landscapes of science, technology and everyday life. Inspired by medieval bestiaries and the increasingly visible effects of climate change on the planet, French researcher Nicolas Nova and art collective DISNOVATION.ORG provide an ethnographic guide to the post-natural era in which we live, highlighting the amalgamations of nature and artifice that already coexist in the 21st century.
A sort of field handbook, A Bestiary of the Anthropocene aims to help us orient ourselves within the technosphere and the biosphere. What happens when technologies and their unintended consequences become so ubiquitous that it is difficult to define what is natural or not? What does it mean to live in a hybrid environment made of organic and synthetic matter? In order to answer such questions, Nova and DISNOVATION.ORG bring their own research together with contributions from collectives such as the Center for Genomic Gastronomy and Aliens in Green as well as text by scholars and researchers from around the world. Polish graphic designer Maria Roszkowska provides illustrations.

Literary Titan Gold Award Winner!

Once upon a mudnest, EGG-spectations are high as Mom-to-be-Flamingo sits atop a perfect egg. But what will happen when her chick, Flo, hatches and proves to be drastically different from the others?

Join Flo as she tries her best to fit in only to discover that she was born to stand out. Through her funny antics and kind nature, she shows the other flamingos that love and acceptance don't require perfection.

A funny and inspiring picture book about the importance of embracing diversity and celebrating who you are.

This book offers:

- A heartwarming story that teaches children to recognize their own differences and appreciate uniqueness in others.

- A valuable lesson on diversity, promoting self-awareness, self-acceptance, empathy, and inclusion.

- Vibrant, eye-catching illustrations sure to capture young readers' attention.

- Engaging rhymes that are easy to understand.

- Delightful characters that children will love and relate to.

A meditative, research-driven narrative dive into the history of Malayan filmmaking

An experimental novel intertwining 1950s Malayan film scripts and film narratives, a fictionalized autobiographic diary, film theory and more, Slander! brings voice to the culture of Southeast Asia's Hollywood counterpart.

Now back in print, this field guide to our new world of hybrid specimens--gorgeously printed in silver ink on black paper--catalogs the conflation of the technosphere and the biosphere

Plastiglomerates, surveillance robot dogs, fordite, artificial grass, antenna trees, Covid, decapitated mountains, drone-fighting eagles, standardized bananas: all of these specimens--some more familiar than others--are examples of the hybridity that shapes the current landscapes of science, technology and everyday life. Inspired by medieval bestiaries and the increasingly visible effects of climate change on the planet, French researcher Nicolas Nova & art collective DISNOVATION.ORG provide an ethnographic guide to the post-natural era in which we live, highlighting the amalgamations of nature and artifice that already co-exist in the 21st century.
A sort of field handbook, A Bestiary of the Anthropocene aims to help us orient ourselves within the technosphere and the biosphere. What happens when technologies and their unintended consequences become so ubiquitous that it is difficult to define what is natural or not? What does it mean to live in a hybrid environment made of organic and synthetic matter? In order to answer such questions, Nova & DISNOVATION.ORG bring their own research together with contributions from collectives such as the Center for Genomic Gastronomy and Aliens in Green as well as text by scholars and researchers from around the world. Polish graphic designer Maria Roszkowska provides illustrations.

The need-to-know names of Japanese graphic design from the late 19th century to the pre-digital decade, presented alongside more than 500 color images of vintage ephemera

With Fracture, author Ian Lynam presents a survey of Japanese design across a century as told through the biographies of its most influential creators. The chronology begins less than two decades after Japan's opening to the West, ending a 200-year isolationist policy. Lynam features the stories of more than 90 pacesetters shaping the country's modern aesthetic. We meet Hani Motoko, considered Japan's first female journalist, who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build the Hall for Tomorrow schoolhouse in Toshima City, Tokyo. Amid the national propaganda of the interwar period, a vision of the modern Japanese woman emerges in the advertisements of Hisui Sugiura and Tada Hokuu. The 1964 Olympics marked a watershed moment for Japanese design on the international stage, with Yusaku Kamehura's red circle logo and the design of pictograms used in the competition for the first time. Finally, the survey concludes with the rise of women's liberation or ribu, and the state of graphic design at the threshold of the digital age.
Illustrated with children's book pages, travel posters, maps, product advertisements, erotic magazine covers and more, Fracture functions as a visual treasure trove of Japanese ephemera while also introducing readers to the creative minds behind these formative designs.
Ian Lynam (born 1972) holds an MFA in graphic design from California Institute of the Arts. He is a faculty member at Temple University Japan Campus as well as at Vermont College of Fine Arts. His previous books on design include War with Myself, The Failed Painter and The Impossibility of Silence.

Back in print, the acclaimed compendium diagramming global power structures

Panoramic in scope and conceptually both profound and accessible, this acclaimed volume is an atlas for an emancipatory new model of citizenship, from the local to the global.
For the last several years, the artist-duo Bureau d'études--comprising Paris-based artists Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt--has been producing maps of contemporary political, social and economic systems through various infographics. These maps aim to inform, reposition and empower readers. Revealing what normally remains invisible, often in the shape of oversized banners, and contextualizing apparently unconnected elements within new frameworks, these visualizations of interests and relations rearticulate the dominant symbolic order in legible terms. The book contains alternative and rigorously researched information relevant to information designers, activists, community workers and anyone interested in topics such as the commons and data mining.

Empathetic approaches to creating sustainable, sympathetic cultural production

In this collection of essays and musings, Freek Lomme shares his collected and sometimes contradictory experiences of striving for independent, progressive and sustainable creative production. Using a grassroots approach based on activist engagement, entrepreneurship, design pedagogy and more, Lomme offers multiple perspectives on how to maintain a liberal mindset in an era of burgeoning neo-conservatism. Discussing everything from punk rock to the silent majority, he contextualizes the facade of technocratic capitalism as built by politics, marketing and the invisible hand of the oligarchy. Care Where No One Does sparks a different kind of production economy: one based on trust and engagement wherever possible.
Freek Lomme, founder and owner of Set Margins' publications, is an editor, publisher, producer, graphic designer, writer and lecturer. Lomme is best known for founding Onomatopee with graphic designer Remco van Bladel in 2006.

Designers discuss the possibilities of creative coding today

Through interviews with more than 20 designers, Graphic Design in the Post-Digital Age looks at the challenges and opportunities of the fast-changing world of creative coding within a growing community of designers opting to make their own design tools. The designers reflect upon the ways in which coding has transformed their design practice, and the directions it will take in the future. The book is designed entirely by code, featuring digital print on its cut edges and fluorescent colors.
Designers interviewed include: Dimitri Jeanottat, Ted Davis, Urs Hofer, Jeroen Barendse, Casey Reas, Yehwan Song, Luuse/Marianne Plano + L�onard Mabille, Sarah Garcin, Tancr�de Ottiger, J�rg Lehni, Loraine Furter, Raphael Bastide, Petr van Blokland, Dinamo/Fabian Harb + Fabiola Mej�a, Johnson/Kingston/Ivan Weiss + Michael Kryenb�hl, Eurostandard / Pierrick Br�geon + Ali-Eddine Abdelkhalek, Zach Lieberman, Samuel Weidmann, Erik van Blokland, Studio Dumbar / Sander Sturing and Stan Haanappel, �milie Pillet and Dia Studio/Mitch Paone.

A manual for ethically and effectively incorporating AI into graphic design, complemented by conversations with the world's leading design firms

Using the voice of AI in the persona of Steve, this book grows out of Melani De Luca's PhD research. Featuring testimonies from other graphic designers, the book offers practical support and a conceptual framework for incorporating AI and machine learning into the field. This book is the first to elaborately map out what AI brings to graphic design and to identity design in particular. The graphic field, and designers at large are seeking out for practical grip, ethical frameworks and more. This book offers this support.

A wide-ranging collection of essays spanning design, decolonization and history

Hot on the heels of his books The Impossibility of Silence and The Failed Painter, designer, writer and teacher Ian Lynam's latest body of work is an urgent and impassioned examination of the contemporary condition. War with Myself is a wide-ranging collection of essays spanning design, authenticity, empire, decolonization and history.
Originally hailing from New York, Ian Lynam holds a BS in graphic design from Portland State University and an MFA in graphic design from CalArts. He is faculty and former cochair at Vermont College of Fine Arts in the MFA Graphic Design program. Lynam is a cofounder of the critical cultural online journal Néojaponisme and the associated print journal NJP. He is a Mead Show winner and a two-time winner of both the STA 100 and the Asian Pacific Design Awards.

A poetical list of essential knowledge for designers that both politicizes and inspires

In 2018, the architect and activist Michael Sorkin published the now beloved essay-list Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know. Struck by the compelling form of this text, Danah Abdulla compiled a version for designers--a list based on a search for knowledge and a designer's commitment to making the world a better place, as she writes. Abdulla's list includes the experience of scents; how critical theory does not account for the colonial experience; the dangers of seeking out simplicity; visual pollution; and how certain emblems and symbols make people feel. It is meant to be approached as a series of prompts to consider, discard or spark a conversation.
Danah Abdulla (born 1986) is a Palestinian Canadian designer, educator and researcher. She is Program Director of Graphic Design at Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts, and a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform.

Essays and lectures on design pedagogy from a group founded by faculty members of Pratt Institute

How does design give form to social fictions? How does design and the professionalization of design schooling maintain the priorities of nations and capital? Through Witnessing names and wrestles with institutional design education's pseudo-neutral relationship with colonial capitalist world orders and what it means to teach and design today. It slowly weaves together ideas on designing as a mechanism of maintenance and teaching against bureaucratic inertia.
This volume compiles discussions from the Post-Radical Pedagogy lecture series organized by Nida Abdullah, Chris Lee and Xinyi Li, who are all assistant professors in the Undergraduate Communications Design Department at Pratt Institute in New York. The series operated as a vehicle to activate pedagogical practice through and against institutional inertia; it explored, antagonized, challenged and interrogated the values and legacies that shape design pedagogy today. Engaging in pedagogical expressions of rage, generosity, forgiveness, slowness and chaos, the lectures, essays and interviews in this book reflect on the possibilities and sometimes impossibilities toward un-doing and un-maintaining the enduring legacies of colonial powers.

Through onsite interventions, Giannotti challenges the existing order of public art institutions

Responding to the museum status quo, Aldo Giannotti's concepts and props reshape the institution's social and spatial architecture. Through dialogue with staff, guards and visitors, Giannotti engages with the museum and its underlying purpose.