1. How can work itself be social?
With her exhibition design for RADICAL NATURE at the Barbican in 2009 she was trying to learn a lot from her research. Therefore she set up a manifesto of what sustainable, green graphic design is (which ink and paper should be used, dealing cleverly with resources,…). For the exhibition, they were recycling interior from former exhibitions. New furniture was constructed without power tools. Instead of gluing exhibition captions to the wall, they were just using nails. Since the Barbican’s archive was full of unused posters, they decided to use the reverse of those (which is in general blue) for creating a new poster series for their exhibition. The catalogue of the show was printed in a very low edition, every extra catalogue that was requested was printed on demand. Sara managed to keep the resources for this exhibition very low and in that sense green.
2.
For the artissima 18 art fair in Turin, they experienced that graphic design itself can be social. Instead of catching people’s attention with images or simple type posters, they decided to come up with in depth information. An artificial company was created that was growing and generating data, based on the recent and past artissima Art fairs. The information was presented to the public on posters, invites, flyers, even on the facade of the venue. Information was revealed in unusual ways. Playfull statistics brought artists and gallerys to the centre of attention. With the result that visitors have been very interested in understanding and reading the offered information, and enabled a vivid interaction.3. Graphic designers as a social community
Occasional papers is a self initiated project that allows ‘content heavy’ publishing, and understands the book as a generator of conversation. Books should be affordable, and available for everyone, in order to achieve an enriching exchange of ideas. This is a continuing project, and always allows new directions and point of views which are often gathered at workshops.
Sara De Bondt
Thank you Sara for being such an inspiring, graphic designer, showing us, that content based graphics can look different from the broad mass, and be beautiful and clever at the same time.
By Sandra and Julia / Graphic Birdwatching