The new social enterprise GraphicDesign& launches tonight, marking the beginning of an inexhaustive graphic design journey. The name gives a clue to where this journey might lead…
Attendees of the GraphicDesign& launch event, to be held at the Design Museum tonight, will become part of the first unique collaborative GraphicDesign& project. Along with Alain de Botton, Anthony Burrill, Tony Brook and other inquisitive thinkers and graphic designers, the evening will be both delightful and brain teasing, offering an exploration of knowledge, classification and the joys of interconnectivity.
Through a variety of projects, each a collaboration between graphic designers and experts in other fields, GraphicDesign& will illuminate the way that graphic design is connected to almost every other subject imaginable. At this first event, Alain de Botton will challenge notions of hierarchy and categorisation of knowledge before Anthony Burrill reveals the unique collaborative work created by these two leaders in their fields. Vanda Broughton from the Bliss Classification Association will explain (amongst other things) why in her world WFG stands for graphic design and LSE postgraduate researcher Nikandre Kopcke will speedily gather some revealing data from the audience to demonstrate ‘live’ how essential design is in making information visible. Exterior projections by graphic design students from Kingston University will announce the inception of GraphicDesign&, an introductory goody bag will be available and the exhibition Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey will be open too.
GraphicDesign& will publish books and papers, host events and use its online presence to explore and celebrate the symbiotic nature of graphic design practice. From philosophers to chemists, anthropologists to economists, psychologists to theologians, all alliances are possible. Varying in tone, perspective and ambition each output will be a newly commissioned piece of work, designed to appeal to the culturally curious and be educationally valuable in the broadest sense.
The Bliss Bibliographic Classification system, developed in the 1930s and 1940s, is the framework that GraphicDesign& will use to link graphic design to other subjects. The launch will be brought to you by Bliss subject area ‘Generalia, Phenomena, Knowledge, Information Science and Technology’ (!).
[Bliss code: WFG& 2/9]
