“The Eskimo in the Mojave Desert”: Herbert Matter, a Designer Across Scenes and Genres

with Jonas Berthod, Louise Paradis, Gilles Gavillet

Matter’s career was that of a multidisciplinary, international designer working across commerce and culture. He was not only a graphic artist but also a photographer, type designer, art director, teacher and film-maker. His work in the field of advertising and editorial design, his collaborations with artists, his self-commissioned work, his photography and film outputs and his long-serving position as an educator provide as many entry points to analyse the impact of migration and an international network on a graphic designer’s career. It also provides a case study to analyse the professional model of the designer working as photographer and layout artist simultaneously.

The Cultural Turn in Swiss Graphic Design from the 1980s to 2020

with Davide Fornari, Jonas Berthod, Chiara Barbieri

The research project investigates the discourse on graphic design in Switzerland in the under-researched period from 1980 to 2020. While the 1950s and 1960s saw graphic design in Switzerland reach international recognition and commercial expansion under the label “Swiss style”, a paradigm shift emerged in the following decades. The attention of many practitioners turned away from design as a pure service for the industrial and service sector and moved towards cultural commissions on a local, national and international level. Instead of aiming for maximum return, they chose their commissions according to whether they promised them creative freedom and whether they contributed to the profiling of their portfolio in alignment with their new definition of the profession as a lifestyle. This project examines the emergence and the development of this phenomenon, which became known as “cultural graphic design”, in professional graphic design in Switzerland.

Swiss Graphic Design and Typography Revisited

with Davide Fornari, Jonas Berthod

The research project Swiss Graphic Design and Typography Revisited is divided into three sub-projects: ‘Principles of Education’, ‘Networks of Practice’ and ‘Strategies of Dissemination’. This three-year project is the biggest research collaboration established in the design field since the SNSF began its activities.

The Sources of Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography

with Davide Fornari, Matthieu Cortat, Jonas Berthod, Chiara Barbieri

Jan Tschichold’s essay Die neue Typographie (The New Typography, 1928) is a game-changing book, acclaimed as the curtain raiser of modern graphic design. While it takes the form of a critical essay and an operative manual, its sources have been understudied because of their difficult identification. This project aims to reconstruct the body of sources that Tschichold drew on to understand the broader cultural context of the book, through an international conference on its impact and a travelling exhibition.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Jonas Berthod – Chroniques d'une disparition

by Jonas Berthod

“ This work tells the story of boxer and poet Arthur Cravan, precursor of Dada and Surrealism, who was born in Switzerland in 1887 and vanished somewhere in the Pacific Ocean in 1918. When I discovered his story in bits, I was struck by the number of lives he led, all full and intense. In order to tell them, I reenacted them in a visual enquiry, with a series of different design objects. Assembled and edited in a report completing my investigation, they retrace the facets of Arthur Cravan. This work in two phases allowed me to make a foray, through my interests (art, the function and role of design, history, the materiality of print…), into the ways of telling a life beyond words — experimenting on the one hand with storytelling and on the other hand with the tools, both technical and visual, of design. ” Jonas Berthod

Jonas Berthod – Theoretical thesis

by Jonas Berthod

Towards consciousness Design graphique

LECTURES

Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography: Its Roots and Impact on National Scenes,
26.04.2023,
IKEA Auditorium, ECAL

On Wednesday, April 26, 2023, ECAL welcomes scholars from the fields of art and design history and print culture for an international conference aiming to provide a better understanding of the cultural context of Jan Tschichold's book and the typographic movement that emerged from it.