Risograph, edition of 50 + Tote bag. Printed in English and Korean.
All Possible Futures: Unrealized Archive uncovers “unrealized” graphic design projects that consumed many hours—sometimes years—of work, but were never produced. These fascinating proposals—ranging in form from PDFs to photos, dummies, models, and sketches—remain unmade but are deserving of serious discussion. Unlike in architecture and product design, where “unbuilt” work is forefronted as an important subject of critical discourse and forward progress, most of these projects have until now been buried in flat files or deep in hard-drive storage. We are intrigued by the possibility of making innovative but unrealized graphic design concepts visible to the public and available for critical discussion.
This publication catalogues a third group of unrealized works, categorized in this case under the theme “Large Format.” The graphic design cliché “make it bigger” often has negative connotations, referring to clients’ desire for typography or sponsor logos to increase in size without regard for the overall aesthetic effect. At the same time, designers also often use scale to add instant gravitas to an otherwise banal design. This issue highlights unrealized projects that explore extreme scale in a way that skirts the typical associations with such an approach. The works could be anything from supergraphics to systems that aggregate, grow, and replicate to work that augments our perception of space. Unlike architecture, graphic design is in most contexts limited in how big it can be. The ambition to make something “larger than life” can indeed be the downfall of an undertaking, the reason it never gets made.
Includes work by Sigrid Calon, Haeri Chung (aka SUPER SALAD), James Goggin / Practise , Robert J. Kett, Mathew Kneebone, Na Kim, and Leonardo Sonnoli and Irene Bacchi.
- Jon Sueda
- chris hamamoto
