The anatomy of our bodies requires sitting; but do we design seats in the same way? Has our meaning of sitting been colonised by Modern design? And how is the diverse, social-cultural act of sitting itself reflected in this functional commodity? In observing and analysing social and cultural differences through chairs from eight cultures in the most populated countries, Sicilian designer Matteo Guarnaccia went on a field research to portray each country, in collaboration with selected local d...

Moving beyond the usual genres of form in graphic design’s canonical history, ‘Designing History’ proposes a model centred on bureaucratic instruments of identity, ownership, value, and permission: money, passports, certificates, property deeds, etc. It considers the implications of a design history of the document, where the designer shifts from being a practitioner of conventional design histories to become subject and agency of bureaucratic authority. The book is a revised edition of...

Providing tactical strategies and creative support 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, this book speaks to students, educators, and seasoned professionals. Part personal memoir and part professional manual by Matt Owens, A Visible Distance, Craft, Creativity, and the Business of Design is a reality check to challenges when building a practice in gra...

This publication emerges from the 2023 London Design Biennale. It involves an international working group facilitated by Delany Boutkan and Setareh Noorani, both researchers at the Nieuwe Instituut, which confronted the intricate and often uncomfortable dynamics of collaboration. Through public sessions and intimate dialogues in London and Rotterdam, the realities of collaboration and collectivity were examined. Two transcripts from the public events are reworked in this publication, along wi...

Candles is a photographic essay by Tim Onderbeke. Fascinated by the sacred, ritual, and cerebral act of lighting a candle, the artist began collecting images of candles and candlesticks in an artistic or art-historical context. In Candles, Onderbeke uses his own work and that of others to research what he calls “the colour of darkness,” or negative space – a concept he borrowed from the Japanese writer and essayist Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. Tanizaki describes this intense experience he ha...

Authored by Jeroen van den Eijnde, professor of product and interior design at ‎ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, this book explores how scientific thinking and artisanal making are inextricably linked. Based on the fact that the regulations at some universities in the Netherlands make it possible to obtain a doctoral degree with artistic work, this book discusses both Van den Eijnde's views on the type of research he advocates in an art college and why this type of research by artistically moti...

Capitalism could not exist without the coins, banknotes, documents, information graphics, interfaces, branding, and advertisements made by graphic designers. Even anti-consumerist strategies such as social design and speculative design are appropriated to serve economic growth. It seems design is locked in a cycle of exploitation and extraction, furthering inequality and environmental collapse. CAPS LOCK uses clear language and visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are ine...

Ruim zestig jaar ontwerpen en vormgeven, zes decennia ontwikkeling en vernieuwing, meer dan een halve eeuw verrassing en verwondering. Het lijkt een onwaarschijnlijke en onmogelijke prestatie, maar HENRIK BARENDS (Amsterdam, 1945) doet het en het bewijs wordt geleverd in dit tweedelige boek, dat met recht een oeuvreboek genoemd mag worden. GRAPHIC ADVENTURES - BARENDS & PIJNAPPEL bevat een chronologische selectie van Henriks grafisch werk vanaf zijn eerste ontwerp in 1961 tot heden. Sinds 198...