Publications, exhibitions and other formats on the subject of design culture and design history of our members.

The Prize of Success. The Swiss Design Awards and the Closed Networks of Promotion

Author: Jonas Berthod
Publisher, year of publication: Transcript 2024
ISBN: 978-3-8394-7191-3

In the small world of Swiss graphic design, prizes such as the Swiss Design Awards (SDA) are followed closely. The generous prize money allows designers to launch their careers and focus on lesser paid but critically recognised work. Awards thus play the role of bellwethers of the scene. However, criticisms inevitably arise. Speaking in hushed tones, designers speculate as to why a colleague won over another. Rumours have it that jury members favour their inner circles and exclude competitors. Analysing this universe in detail, Jonas Berthod retraces the recent history of the SDA and the emergence of a new design culture in Switzerland.

Designkritik. Theorie, Geschichte, Lehre (Design criticism. Theory, history, teaching)

Authors: Siegfried Gronert, Thilo Schwer (ed.)
Publisher, year of publication: AV Edition, 2018
ISBN: 978-3-8394-7191-3

More than almost any other creative practice, design is linked to everyday life, politics, and the economy of a society. Technological change, social upheaval and global crises challenge the design profession to redefine itself. "Designkritik" reflects the field of tension of an expanded design practice within a complex media landscape. Against the backdrop of economic and political upheavals, new approaches to design criticism are discussed and historical references in the context of design, media and society are examined. It examines how design journalism and criticism reflect and communicate this changed concept of design.

Sach&Krach (fact&noise)

Author: Rosmarie Baltensweiler (Podcast)
Publisher, year of publication: Hochparterre, 2024
Link: https://www.hochparterre.ch/

Rosmarie Baltensweiler worked as a designer, producer, and entrepreneur for seven decades - for a long time alongside her husband Rico Baltensweiler, and later together with her children and her team. Despite her success, she always saw herself as part of a collective - in design as well as in life. Design theorist Meret Ernst and product designer Jörg Boner contributed to the monograph. In the podcast, they talk about their personal experiences with Rosmarie Baltensweiler and what sets her apart as a designer.

Design Leben (design life)

Authors: Gabriel, Karin und Steffie Baltensweiler, Mirjam Fischer (ed.)
Publisher, year of publication: Hochparterre, 2024
ISBN: 978-3-909928-88-0

The designer, interior architect and entrepreneur saw design as integrative and multifaceted. Rosmarie Baltensweiler (1927-2020) and her husband Rico Baltensweiler (1920-1987) founded a lighting company in Lucerne that is still active today and focused on sustainability early on. Various text contributions and a rich photo series draw on the extensive company and family archive and provide an overview of the development of luminaire design and the company for the first time. Letters and diary entries provide a biographical insight into Rosmarie Baltensweiler's partnership, family life and circle of friends.

Memory Full? Reimagining the Relations between Design and History, DHS Annual Conference 2021

Authors: Meret Ernst and Mònica Gaspar (eds.)
Publisher, year of publication: Mediathek HGK / FHNW Basel, 2021
Link: https://mediathek.hgk.fhnw.ch/amp/search/zotero2-2545256.DWWJ7DT2

The 2021 DHS Annual Conference took place fully online, hosted by the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel (2.-4.09.2021). The programme was arranged around three perspectives: locating archives and design matters, narrating the blind spots, and intersecting design practice and historiography. 104 speakers presented their papers to an audience of 254 participants from 34 countries. This link directs to the conference’s digital legacy, consisting of the following items: book of abstracts, proceedings (in full length or searchable by author and article), video recordings of keynote speakers, book presentations, virtual tours, and the pre-conference programme.

Archigraphy – Lettering on Buildings

Authors: Agnès Laube, Michael Widrig
Publisher, year of publication: Birkhäuser, 2016
ISBN: 978-3-0356-0559-4

Whether small and subtle or eye-catching and large-scale - lettering on buildings and in public spaces characterises the urban environment. But how can architecture and graphics meet at a high design level? The core of the handbook is formed by 26 current archigraphies. Each of these integral projects is an example of a strategy for responding to existing or planned architecture with graphic designs - constructively, materially or visually. The methods presented serve as inspiration for your own design. A well-founded collection of labelling techniques, practical tips on project management and a glossary of technical terms make the handbook a practical planning tool.

Exhibition Archigraphy – Lettering on Buildings

Authors: Agnès Laube, Michael Widrig
Place, year: Architekturforum Zürich, 2009

Exhibition on the subject of ‘Lettering on buildings’ at the Architekturforum Zürich. In addition to a theoretical and urban planning introduction to the multifaceted topic, the exhibition showed the range of lettering on buildings and in public spaces in 12 thematic clusters using countless historical and current projects. The work images were complemented by a shelf with hand models, neon lettering and a film projection. The wide-ranging research and interpretation formed the basis for the subsequent publication project ‘Archigrafie - Schrift am Bau’ from 2016.

Self-transformation and charismatic evangelical identity

Author: Francis Müller
Publisher, year of publication: Springer Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2015
ISBN: 978-3-658-09250-4

Francis Müller examines a Swiss and a Ghanaian charismatic evangelical community in the greater Zurich area. Conversion emerges as a central element in the two communities, which is associated with different cultural themes in the two communities. Different techniques and normative identities are conveyed in the two communities, which show how to deal with this discontinuity and how to live in a modern, secular world.

Living with disability in Angola

Authors: Francis Müller, Bitten Stetter, Domingos Joao Pecho Bernardo
Publisher, year of publication: transcript, 2016
ISBN: 978-3-8376-3480-8

Around 10% of people in Angola have a physical disability. The ethnographic research in Angola shows that many people with disabilities in Luanda have individualistic values and engage in creative practices, even if they live in abject poverty: In the musekes - the slums in Luanda - people with disabilities live locally on a small scale, but at the same time in a high level of cultural diversity. The ethnographic report is introduced by a photo series in which the Angolan Domingos Joao Pecho Bernardo portrays his everyday life, and supplemented by observations of everyday phenomena and photographs by the designer Bitten Stetter.

Eventizing the city

Authors: Gabriela Muri Koller, Daniel Späti, Philipp Klaus, Francis Müller
Publisher, year of publication: Jovis, 2019
ISBN: 978-3-86859-493-5

Events have become an integral part of our everyday lives. They are professionally planned, designed using sophisticated dramaturgy and convey a sense of exclusivity. The concept of the event stands for a specific field of tension between economic utilization contexts and popular practical dimensions. Against the background of this conceptual blurring, the book focuses on processes of urban development and the normative potential of patterns of event production and reception.

Design ethnography. Methodology and practical examples

Author: Francis Müller
Publisher, year of publication: VS Springer, 2018
ISBN: 978-3-658-21387-9

The textbook develops methods for design research, because designing both requires and generates knowledge, which often happens intuitively in practice. However, if the generation of this knowledge is methodically guided and reflected upon, this strengthens the design discipline and favours its interdisciplinary networking. Ethnography is a suitable method for this: design ethnography means that a designer immerses herself in a social environment, observes and analyses certain sections of reality there and changes them - for example with intervention and participatory approaches. If such procedures are documented and theoretically reflected upon, then design-specific modes of cognition become visible.

Design Ethnography. Epistemology and Methodology

Author: Francis Müller
Publisher, year of publication: SpringerBriefs in Anthropology, 2021
ISBN: 978-3-030-60396-0

The book posits that ethnography is an appropriate method for design research because it constantly orients itself, like design projects, towards social realities. Through the use of the ethnographic method in design, this book shows how design researchers can question the certainties of the everyday world, deconstruct reality into singular aesthetic and semantic phenomena, and reconfigure them into new contexts of signification. It shows that design ethnography is a process in which the epistemic and creative elements flow into one another in iterative loops.

Context dying

Authors: Corina Caduff, Minou Afzali, Francis Müller, Eva Soom Ammann
Publisher, year of publication: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2022
ISBN: ISBN: 978-3-03942-050-6

In today's society, there is a growing interest in the end of life, dying and death. Experiences with incurable diseases and with professional support at the end of life through palliative care are increasingly being discussed in the media and are becoming the focus of public attention as well as of various fields of research. The texts in this anthology combine previously separate specialist perspectives on the topic to create an innovative, interdisciplinary approach.

Shaping dying: Spaces of possibility at the end of life

Authors: Corina Caduff, Bitten Stetter, Minou Afzali, Francis Müller, Eva Soom Ammann
Publisher, year of publication: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2024
ISBN: 978-3-03942-190-9

Dying is embedded in social practices, rules, rituals, objects and images that are culturally and historically variable. Increased life expectancy and advances in medicine also mean that dying is becoming more predictable, plannable and therefore more manageable. In palliative care in particular, a large number of professionals with different interests and values are involved in shaping the dying process. This raises questions: Who shapes what, how, for whom and from what position and motivation?

Mapping Graphic Design History in Switzerland

Author: Franziska Nyffenegger; Robert Lzicar und Davide Fornari (Editors)
Publisher, year of publication: Triest Verlag, 2016
ISBN: 978-3-03863-009-8

This collection of essays covers a broad spectrum of topics in the history of graphic design in Switzerland, including “Alpine Arcadia on Funny Cows. On a Whimsical Phenomenon of Swiss Graphic Design History” by Franziska Nyffenegger.

No Style; Ernst Keller (1891-1968) teacher and pioneer of Swiss Style

Authors: Peter Vetter, Katharina Leuenberger, Meike Eckstein
Publisher, year of publication: Triest Verlag, 2017
ISBN: 978-3-03863-022-7 (DE) 978-3-03863-023-4 (EN)

From 1918 to 1956, Ernst Keller was head of the graphic design class at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts and created one of the world's first systematic training programs for graphic design in the 1920s. During his long activity as lecturer, all the renowned graphic artists who later shaped the so-called "Swiss style" completed their professional education under Keller. The publications also illustrate the entire oeuvre of Ernst Keller, much of which was unknown, and provide an insight into his teaching. The book is the result of a nine-year research project and is based on many conversations and memories of former students.

Design as investment - design and communication as a management tool.

Authors: Peter Vetter and Katharina Leuenberger with a foreword by Rudolf K. Sprüngli
Publisher, year of publication: Spielbein Publishers, 2016
ISBN: 978-3-946718-05-5 (DE), 978-3-946718-04-8 (EN)

Design and communication are the prerequisites for the economic success of companies and institutions. Only those who can reach their dialog groups effectively will prevail in the market. This text analyzes and comments on the various strategic aspects of successful identity, brand, and communication processes. These thoughts and suggestions are intended to support managers in realizing efficient, complex, and global communication projects.

Oliviero Toscani, Immaginare Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich 1961-1965

Authors: Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini, Peter Vetter
Publisher, year of publication: Museo M.A.X. Chiasso, 20218
ISBN: 2018, 9 788879 221382

In connection with the exhibition on the oeuvre of Oliviero Toscani, a publication on Toscani's training at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich (School of Arts and Crafts) was produced in collaboration with Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini. The publication attempts to recreate the atmosphere, the teaching, and the environment at the famous photography school in Zurich in the 1960s.

Hans Aeschbach *1911 - †1999 Graphic artist, painter, and teacher – Poetic synthesis of nature and geometry

Authors, Yujin Kim (ed.), Sara Zeller and Peter Vetter
Publisher, year of publication: Digiboo Verlag. 2021
ISBN: 2021, 978-3-03906-018-4

Hans Aeschbach was a well-known graphic artist and an important teacher in the preliminary course at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts, where he taught for more than thirty years. In contrast, his artistic work, which he never exhibited or published during his lifetime, was completely unknown. The book, edited by Yujin Kim, has now reappraised this oeuvre, Sara Zeller has paid tribute to his graphic work and Peter Vetter has contributed his personal experiences and memories.

The Landistuhl in detail

Author: Robert Wettstein
Publisher, year of publication: self-published, 2020

In the publication „Der Landistuhl im Detail“, Robert Wettstein shows in detail the various aspects of this chair, in particular the differences and variations that have emerged over time. It also includes catalogues and rare postcards with images of the chair from the period.

“Weltformat” as a framework The traveling exhibition “The Swiss Poster” (1949-1952) between national representation and creative competence

Author: Sara Zeller
Publisher, year of publication: edition metzel, 2023
ISBN: 978-3-88960-237-4

Sara Zeller shows the extent to which poster exhibitions were a key instrument in the worldwide establishment, dissemination and communication of the design style attributed to Switzerland and critically questions its significance for the historiography of design. In addition to analyzing the canonization of a national school, its specific aesthetics and rhetoric, its artistic achievements and perspectives as well as its reception abroad, Zeller shows how political dimensions and economic interests, which were subject to significant change, determined these distribution formats.

Design for all? Diversity as the norm

Curator: Sara Zeller
Place, year: Museum für Gestaltung (Zurich), 31.3. – 15.10.2023

Rarely does the designed environment meet the diverse needs of everyone. People who deviate from current norms are particularly affected. “Design for All? Diversity as the Norm” presents contemporary approaches to inclusive design and architecture, from apps, toys, and clothing to do-it-yourself projects and the design of public spaces. At the center of the exhibition are five international design studios that incorporate the diversity of society into their work and make our environment more accessible.

With contributions from: fem arc (Lara Stöhlmacher, Insa Streit, Ana Rodriguez Bisbicus), Berlin; MOB Industries, Vienna; JSA / MIXdesign, New York; Sara Hendren, Cambridge Masc.; Dis (Jordan Whitewood-Neal, James Zatka-Haas and Anna Curzon Price), London.

Repair Revolution

Curator: Sara Zeller
Place, year: Museum für Gestaltung (Zurich), 31.05.- 20.10.2024,

Things break all the time in our daily lives. Instead of repairing them, we often immediately buy a replacement. The consequences are growing mountains of waste and an intensifying scarcity of resources, with global impacts. How well an object can be repaired is already decided in the design process. In mechanical engineering, for example, maintenance and spare parts are an integral part of the design process, whereas in product design and architecture they are the exception. There is another way! Repairing is no longer an emergency solution, but a cultural, social and economic practice to be taken seriously, offering an alternative to the throwaway society.

ENTHUENTHUSIASTIC APPROVAL

Autor: Heike Schmitz-Esser
Website: https://enthusiastic-approval.com

ENTHUSIASTIC APPROVAL invites you to take a brief walk through design history from Viennese modernism to the post-war period.You will encounter furniture, ceramics and avant-garde costume jewelry. There are objects from renowned designers as well as from lesser known artists who deserve to be remembered. Heike Schmitz-Esser looks forward to open her showroom to you - be it for the joy of design or as a customer. Since she is not always on site, she kindly requests a short message to heike@schmitz-esser.ch