This essay challenges a formalist definition of ‘systems’ in graphic design—often through fiction—and many dimensions of the discipline, from Instagram to competition.
Volume 5 of Modes of Criticism –Design Systems, with contributions by Francisco Laranjo, Luiza Prado, Pedro Oliveira, ACED, Ruben Pater, Demystification Committee, Shannon Mattern, Ian Lynam, Brave New Alps and Georgina Voss.
Interview with the political theorist Angela Mitropoulos on the idea of rebranding as political strategy and political language, from ‘graphic dissent’ to the ‘alt-right’.
Issue 3 of Modes of Criticism –Design and Democracy, with contributions by Els Kuijpers, Angela Mitropoulos, Laura Gordon, Decolonising Design Group, Silvio Lorusso, Luke Pendrell and James Trafford.
In 2025, designers are data managers. Design bots work for and with marketing bots. Automation was looming in 2015 but designers were too busy funding nostalgia on kickstarter. Essay published on Eye Magazine.
Essay by Ahmed Ansari providing a critical survey of two terms that have been present in numerous conferences, books and toolkits related to social design: design methods and design thinking.
Article by Anne Bush investigating the current state of graphic design criticism, distorted conceptions of what it means to be critical, proposing alternative approaches.
Issue 2 of Modes of Criticism –Critique of Method, with contributions by Anne Bush, Peter Buwert, Jan van Toorn, Noel Waite, Ahmed Ansari and Matthew Kiem.
Critical Everything was originally published on Grafik (2015), proposing critical challenges for designers and work operating under the terms critical and speculative graphic design and design fiction.
In this essay, Kenneth FitzGerald debates the seminal article Fuck Content (2005) by Michael Rock, challenging the fallacious idea that the history of graphic design is a history of form, not content.
Interview with designer James Langdon about the project and publications A School for Design Fiction (2014) and A School for Design Fiction Workbook (2014).
In this essay, Luiza Prado and Pedro Oliveira argue that speculative and critical design are going through a troubled adolescence, alerting to their recurrent shortfalls but also highlighting their potential.
Brave New Alps introduce the research project Precarity Pilot, which seeks ways to organise a financially-sustainable, socially and politically-engaged design practice.
In this essay, Randy Nakamura debates the shift from genealogy to catalog in curating graphic design using the exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production (2011) as case-study.
This essay explores the concept of instant nostalgia in relation to graphic design by drawing parallels between popular culture and western and eastern design.
This essay, which serves as the editorial for Modes of Criticism 1, traces the heritage of the term ‘post-critical’ in graphic design discourse by connecting it to other related ‘posts’. Avoiding the Post-critical is preceded by the visual essay The Architecture of Gambling.
Issue 1 of Modes of Criticism –Critical, Uncritical, Post-critical, with contributions by Francisco Laranjo (editor), Ian Lynam, Randy Nakamura, Brave New Alps, Luiza Prado and Pedro Oliveira, Cameron Tonkinwise, James Langdon and Kenneth FitzGerald.
Review of the exhibition Freedom of Image – Visual Communication in Portugal (1974–86), held in several spaces in Porto, Portugal (2014). Originally published in Eye Magazine 89.
Review of the exhibition Staging the Message: The Open Work of Jan van Toorn (2014) at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Originally published on the Eye Magazine blog.
Visual identity of the conference Designing for Exhibitions (2014) which focused on the roles of design in exhibitions and exhibition making, held at Central Saint Martins, London, UK. The projects seeks to expose the politics of the museum and confront the role of the exhibition designer in the context of not only an evolving discipline but also of contemporary political and cultural phenomena.
This article investigates the heritage of the term ‘critical graphic design’ by highlighting its precedents and manifestations in contemporary graphic design practice and education. Originally published on Design Obsever. Republished in The Graphic Design Reader (Bloomsbury, 2015).
Cover for the ‘Occupied Times’ 24 (2014), which focuses on the politics of madness. The cover seeks to reveal connections between politics, economics and mental health by proposing multiple readings of the financial and political news provided by mainstream media.
Review of the exhibition Almanac – An History of Portuguese Graphic Design in Magazines (2013) at the gallery Espaço Quadra in Matosinhos, Portugal. Originally published in Pli 5 (ESAD, 2014).
Review of the visual identity of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, titled Close, Closer. (2013), designed by the studio Zak Group, and curated by Beatrice Galilee.
‘Connect the Dots’ was the title of an evening of two talks on graphic design, politics and criticism at the London College of Communication on the 16 January 2014. The first explored the Conservative Party’s use of the billboard poster prior to the British General Election between 1979 and 2010. The second proposed a definition of the terms ‘critical design’ and ‘critical practice’ through a series of case studies.
This is the third iteration of an essay that first appeared in the German typography magazine Slanted 19. It is a contextual analysis and introduction to the issues at hand when considering cross-cultural discussions of graphic design between Asia and the Western World at present.
Review of the visual identity of the Whitney Museum of American Art designed by the Dutch design studio Experimental Jetset. Originally published on Design Observer.
This essay was originally published in a Spanish booklet about the work of the Dutch design studio Experimental Jetset, in 2010. It was written in response to the awkwardly-posed question “What to you is Experimental Jetset?”. I’ve been listening to shittier music lately.
New World Parkville (EDP Foundation, 2011) is a book that critically archives the latest work by the Portuguese artist Margarida Correia. It investigates the visual legacy and cultural traditions of Portuguese immigrants in Connecticut (US), by photographically documenting objects, photos and members of the local community.
Review of the main exhibition of the ‘Anti-design Festival’ (2010), curated by the designer Neville Brody. Originally published on the London Design Festival blog.
