Design Against Design LOKI
I have copy edited Kevin Lo’s book Design Against Design: Cause and consequence of a dissident graphic practice. It features original essays and interviews with with Philippe and Nancy Vermes, Sandy Kaltenborn, Kaie Kellough, Chadi Marouf and Sabine Friesinger, Sarah Auches, and Jenn Clamen. An introduction to the volume can be read here.
It is published by Set Margains’.
Kevin Yuen Kit Lo is a graphic designer, educator and community organizer based in Montréal.
It is published by Set Margains’.
Kevin Yuen Kit Lo is a graphic designer, educator and community organizer based in Montréal.
Design Against Design demands that we think more intimately about the politics of visual culture under contemporary capitalism and, importantly, how we can act against it. Both a passionate indictment of the discipline of graphic design, and a utopian love letter to its radical potential, Kevin Yuen Kit Lo’s collection of almost confessional, candid essays challenge the status quo of design writing.
Design Against Design is organized around four key themes: Critique presents a political-economic analysis of graphic design in relationship to capitalism and considers practical ways to resist it. Practice looks critically at how designers work towards (and sometimes against) social change within both a professional studio context and alongside social movements. Materiality focuses on the craft of graphic design; on language and typography, legibility, and illegibility, on the acts of speaking and making. Autonomy considers the emotional and relational aspects of graphic design, understanding that interdependence is intricately bound to any possibility for self-determination within and beyond design.
Design Against Design is organized around four key themes: Critique presents a political-economic analysis of graphic design in relationship to capitalism and considers practical ways to resist it. Practice looks critically at how designers work towards (and sometimes against) social change within both a professional studio context and alongside social movements. Materiality focuses on the craft of graphic design; on language and typography, legibility, and illegibility, on the acts of speaking and making. Autonomy considers the emotional and relational aspects of graphic design, understanding that interdependence is intricately bound to any possibility for self-determination within and beyond design.
