Swiss Graphic Design Histories—Multiple V Oices

Swiss Graphic Design Histories—Multiple Voices Design Histories—Multiple Voices Swiss Graphic Swiss Multiple Voices advertisement Graphic Design associations Histories awards career Tempting Terms clients culture and commerce curriculum design scenes diversity Tempting Terms France good design Italy local and international national label networks politics practice profession representation schools self-promotion skills stereotypes Swiss Style Swissness teaching technology type design typography Swiss Visual Arguments Graphic Design Histories advertisement alternative actors Arts and Crafts associations awards canonization career Multiple Voices clients culture and commerce advertisement curriculum associations design scenes awards discourse career diversity clients education policy culture and commerce exhibition design curriculum Tempting Terms exhibitions design scenes gender diversity advertisement handwriting France alternative actors historiography good design Arts and Crafts identity Italy associations Italy local and international awards magazines national label canonization Modernism networks clients national identity politics culture and commerce networks practice design promotion photographs profession design scenes politics representation discourse posters schools education policy practice self-promotion ephemera profession skills exhibition design publications stereotypes exhibitions regionalism Swiss Style France representation Swissness good design schools teaching historiography self-promotion technology identity skills type design Italy standardization typography local and international stereotypes magazines Swissness Modernism Swiss Style museum teaching national identity technology national label templates networks training origins type design politics typography posters practice printing industry private collectors profession publications schools self-promotion standardization training typography Swiss Multiple Voices Graphic Design Histories Edited by Chiara Barbieri, Jonas Berthod, Constance Delamadeleine, Davide Fornari, and Sarah Owens Scheidegger & Spiess Table of Contents Figures of Speech Training Chiara Barbieri, Jonas Berthod, Chiara Barbieri Constance Delamadeleine, p. 141 Davide Fornari, Sarah Owens p. 7 Typography Constance Delamadeleine Associations p. 161 Chiara Barbieri p. 12 List of Interviews p. 172 Awards Jonas Berthod Biographies p. 19 p. 175 Careers Jonas Berthod p. 32 Clients Chiara Barbieri p. 49 Collaboration Jonas Berthod p. 63 Gender Chiara Barbieri p. 83 Location Constance Delamadeleine p. 96 Studio Jonas Berthod p. 112 Swiss Made Constance Delamadeleine p. 127 DOI: 10.53788/SWBE0200 Introduction 7 Figures of Speech sets of values that impact on everyday design practice. Instead of defining what Swiss Chiara Barbieri, Jonas Berthod, graphic design is or is not, these accounts tell Constance Delamadeleine, us how and by whom it has been defined, Davide Fornari, Sarah Owens understood, performed, and criticized from the postwar period onwards. As such, this volume provides the reader with some glimpses of how Swiss graphic design was constructed both formally and informally, negotiated, This volume gathers together the accounts and transmitted as a design discourse over of people who—willingly or not—have taken the years and across different countries. It part in, contributed to, and been influenced indicates entanglements, missing links, and by histories of Swiss graphic design. “Multiple central nodes that have played a role within Voices” are the voices of designers and social and professional networks and have their collaborators, peers, and clients that given meaning to Swiss graphic design, with- have been collected through interviews out making any claim to provide an exhaustive and other forms of oral communication such mapping of it. as speeches, minutes, or conversations. The voices collected here tell us only a Some of them have seldom been heard in the partial story. In line with our book’s over- literature, or have even been silenced. The arching aim, this volume does not offer any voices and perspectives of different gener- final interpretation of the voices we quote ations tell us how and by whom Swiss graphic here, but instead contextualizes them and design was given meaning within specific presents them to the reader as material for contexts, and show how that meaning has further research. It diverts our focus away changed over the years, depending on circum- from the so-called pioneers of Swiss graphic stances. The expression “figure of speech” design and their iconic works, and towards usually refers to a phrase having a meaning the broader discourses that surround them different from its literal sense, such as a and altogether constitute a meaningful metaphor or a simile. The multiple voices canon of national design. The voices we have collected in this volume likewise offer more selected enliven stereotypical discourses, than their literal accounts. They give an contradict rules that have been taken for insight into how stories are also told as illus- granted, provide insights and different per- trative, metaphorical accounts of the topics spectives that break up linear narratives, they deal with. and are grouped around eleven terms: asso- National design canons are constructed ciations, awards, careers, clients, collabo- narratives that are historically and geo- ration, gender, location, studio, Swiss Made, graphically specific.1 Swiss graphic design is training, and typography. a resilient narrative that resonates loudly within design historiography. By giving a voice The most common way of engaging with to people who partook in the construction graphic design history is by looking. Academ- of this narrative, negotiated and mediated its ics, designers, and students rely primarily meaning, or were opposed to it, this volume on analyzing or referencing artifacts such provides evidence that national design canons as books, posters, typefaces, websites, and are not abstract concepts, but meaningful archival materials. Books and exhibitions Introduction 8 reinforce the prevalence of the visible, and Oral history is not without its fair share even their design plays a leading role in of debates, which have been well- communicating history and meaning. In documented.8 Some critics have argued fact, “their visual aspect is often more that oral history is not objective, though important than their text.”2 This prioritization the same can be said of any source.9 Oral obscures the fact that our acquisition of history does not claim neutrality, but knowledge about design also draws on instead proposes to focus on the subjec- verbal and written accounts: conversations tivity of memory.10 Indeed, “interviews and debates on design emphasize that it are locally managed occasions of interac- is, in essence, a social practice produced tion in which participants collaboratively by networks of people.3 A whole dimension construct meaning” and, as such, they of history would be dismissed if we as both recount and shape the past.11 This histo rians engaged exclusively with visual means that they “tell us less about events outputs, which is why this volume chooses than about their meaning.”12 to focus on voices rather than images. By Most of the accounts published in this engaging in a dialogue with actors of design book are excerpts from semi-structured history, we are able to provide a sociolo- interviews. This format offers the possibility gical perspective that complements visual of addressing specific questions while analysis: oral history allows us to lend an leaving space for new meanings to emerge ear to the people behind the artifacts in during the discussion.13 This is valuable, as order to gain access to new vantage points. interviews sometimes prompt us to rethink This methodology has a long history. It what we thought we knew.14 This volume has become well-recognized through also contains other forms of accounts: tran- numerous scholarly contributions,4 and its scripts of speeches, excerpts from pub- use in design history is not new.5 By speak- lished interviews, and protocols. While ing to those who have played a direct or these are not strictly oral history,15 they are indirect role in design, we can shift the focus valuable contributions to the discourse of our history and open up new areas of and to writing history,16 and share an origin inquiry.6 Oral history focuses on people so in oral forms of communication. Further- that it might deal with more, while the interviews “simultaneously engage with the period being discussed memory, veracity, the meaning of and the period during which the inter view narratives, “recovering” unheard is occurring,”17 the accounts repub lished voices and stories, challenging from other sources offer an opportunity meta-narratives, the relationship to access the past as it was experienced at between verbal and visual modes the time. of repre sentation and attending An interview becomes oral history to oral histories both as resource once it has been “recorded, processed in and topic.7 some way, made available […] or repro- duced in relatively verbatim form for publi- This methodology is therefore especially cation.”18 These transcripts are never valuable for going beyond the repetition wholly neutral.19 Nevertheless, oral history of a stereotypical narrative about the does not stop at the mere publication of success story of Swiss Graphic Design. interviews, but includes their interpretation Introduction 9 as well.20 In this volume,

Load more