Graphic Design Worlds – Process & Show
Triennale di Milano Design Museum
January 25 – March 27, 2011
Graphic Design Worlds
This exhibition displays ‘the multivarious worlds of graphic design by featuring the work, the ideas and the stories of some of the most interesting designers in the contemporary international scene.’
Graphic Design Worlds – Process
In the space assigned to me, I thought I should represent DIY print-driven designers, the people with ‘dirty hands’. I wanted to achieve this by recreating the atmosphere of the printshop inside the museum through models of the major tools for screenprinting, reproduced in wood at a 1:1 scale.
The initial wooden objects, designed by product designer Lowies van Zanen, soon turned out to be too heavy. To keep packaging and transportation costs at a reasonable level, all objects were made more abstract and open.
Only accustomed to IKEA-level construction, I was worried the many instructional drawings prepared by Lowies would be too complicated for me while installing in Milan…
Thanks to my assistants Riccardo Rudi and Leonardo Romano, smart design students at the local Polytechnic, everything worked out fine!
The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of the book Graphic Design Worlds/ Words, edited by Giorgio Camuffo and Maddalena Dalla Mura, published by Electa. The book – available in both an Italian and English edition – presents interviews made with the designers invited for the exhibition, as well as essays and interviews with figures who are variously contributing to advance the critical discourse on graphic design.
‘A Diary of an Exhibition’ documents the process of curating and installing the show. Featured on this blog are texts, interviews, videos, pictures, and photographs, as well as thoughts and considerations, that provide a look behind the scenes of the making of the exhibition.
GDW invitation card
Participants (selection): Geoff Mc. Fetridge, MM (Paris), Mathias Schweizer, MetaHaven, Designpolitie, Thonik, NORM, Experimental Jetset, Abåka, Mieke Gerritzen and others. The show was curated by Giorgio Camuffo, Camuffo Lab, Venice.