CAPS LOCK uses clear language and striking visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are inextricably linked. The book contains many case studies of designed objects related to capitalist societies and cultures, and also examines how the education and professional practice of (graphic) designers supports the market economy and how design practice is caught within that very system. The content of CAPS LOCK is structured in chapters with titles of professions that designers can occupy (such as Educator; Engineer, Hacker, Futurist, Activist, etc.). These titles respond to the importance of not just how designers make work, but also ...

The first art movement to use collage to collapse together images and ideas, Dada also pioneered concepts, ideas, approaches and modi operandi that were later transfused into contemporary digital tools, becoming commonplace in the digital environment. To celebrate DADA 100, from 5 February 2016 to 5 February 201 7 the online platform and collaborative project Dadaclub.online shared high quality digital copies of original Dada artworks and magazine covers, inviting artists from all over the world to use them in their work. This book documents the project, presenting 148 remixes produced and shared by participants. Dada is nothing, enjoy Dada!

Two oft-heard assertions inform today’s understanding of design: “everyone is a designer” and “everything is design.” It is within such professed design panism that designers (struggle to) articulate their role and position. But more than being a mere description of a reality, design panism is an interpretative framework, a rhetorical instrument and a semi-conscious expansion agenda. In a two-day seminar, we broke down the conflicting meanings of these statements in order to elucidate their consequences on the designer’s identity and sense of realization. By analyzing texts spanning more than half a century – from Norman Potter to Keller Easterling, from ...

“Digital publications are on the rise. In our daily lives we read more material than ever on electronic devices, while paper books – once everyday objects – are becoming collectible design objects. For publishers, visual designers and artists it can be difficult to keep up with these developments; few possess the knowledge and resources to develop a digital publishing practice of their own. For arts and design-oriented books, going electronic can be an extra challenge because form and content are deeply intertwined, while electronic book formats were not engineered with visual publications in mind. The Digital Publishing Toolkit initiative – a ...

Is electronic book technology really the way forward for these types of publications? Or does the answer lie in some hybrid form of publication, in which both print and electronic editions of the same basic content can be published in a parallel or complementary fashion? And perhaps more importantly, what are the changes in workflow and design mentality that will need to be implemented in order to allow for such hybrid publications? This Toolkit is meant for everyone working in art and design publishing. No specific expertise of digital technology, or indeed traditional publishing technology, is required. The Toolkit provides hands- ...

Graphic Design in the Post-Digital Age examines the challenges and opportunities in the wake of the rapid rise of creative coding within a growing community of designers opting to make their own design tools. This comprehensive overview covers educational approaches in design programs and the historic and economic contexts of programming in graphic design, as well as the implications surrounding the integration of coding with design. The book includes over twenty interviews in which major figures in design reflect upon the ways in which coding has innovated and transformed their design practice and strategies, and the directions it will take ...

MoneyLab is a network of artists, activists, and geeks experimenting with forms of financial democratization. Entering the 10th year of the global financial crisis, it still remains a difficult yet crucial task to distinguish old wine from its fancy new bottles. The MoneyLab network questions persistent beliefs, from Calvinist austerity, growth, and up-scaling, to trustless, automated decision making and (anarcho-)capitalist dreams of cybercurrencies and blockchained solutionism. We consider experiments with digital coops, internet-based payment and network-based revenue models as spaces of political imagination, with an equally important aesthetic program. In this second MoneyLab Reader the network delves into topics like the financialization ...

Printed Web presents new web-to-print work by artists who use screen capture, image grab, site scrape and search query. Published twice a year by Library of the Printed Web.

In this essay, initially published in Italian by NERO, the Rotterdam based writer, artist and designer Silvio Lorusso, discusses his idea of the “delegation society”, which he briefly outlined in his book Entreprecariat: Everyone Is an Entrepreneur. Nobody Is Safe (2018). The delegation society is no longer divided into Marxian classes but is instead formed into a new pyramidal order. At the top sits the professional élite who delegate reproductive work to the lower levels in order to gain time and be able to work more; at the bottom lies the highly fragmented servant class. In the middle an unstable professional class ...

Sara Giannini Dear Alessandro, thanks so much for your participation to Unfold as our 4th guest curator. Your Unfold#4: daily_unfold(ing) seems to show a structuralist approach to the digital folder, constituting the most meta Unfold issue so far! I am referring to the fact that the folders are rarely only containers but rather enunciation and narrative devices. Where did this exploration of the folder structure lead you? Alessandro Ludovico The folder has been used for its symbolic qualities by net artists and software artists since the ‘90s. These qualities include being a container which has a universal icon, but whose content is only limited by the OS structure or the ...

The Unlike Us Reader offers a critical examination of social media, bringing together theoretical essays, personal discussions, and artistic manifestos. How can we understand the social media we use everyday, or consciously choose not to use? We know very well that monopolies control social media, but what are the alternatives? While Facebook continues to increase its user population and combines loose privacy restrictions with control over data, many researchers, programmers, and activists turn towards designing a decentralized future. Through understanding the big networks from within, be it by philosophy or art, new perspectives emerge. Unlike Us is a research network of ...

Today, any inhabitant of a city is treated as a computational User by default. Smooth interfaces and real-time feedback loops augment our urban experiences, making us feel empowered, while subjecting us to processes of profiling, quantification, optimization and isolation. However, the sense of comfort and personal freedom that is gained comes at the cost of political agency and autonomy. This book aims to investigate what it means to be a human User in today’s technological infrastructures. While it attempts to grasp and map out a complex structural issue, it also reflects on the impossibility of addressing the problem alone, from a ...