This page is an ongoing working document, and a space for occasional notes related to my design practice. [last edited in June 2025] * * * My work as a graphic designer departs from a wider interest in language and communication: “The language needed in order to redistribute somebody else's work, and the attention towards that kind of language” (Will Holder) “The space between two languages, is a space like no other” writes poet and scholar Anne Carson. It is this liminal space of translation – present in how a given thing is articulated visually – that sustains my interest in graphic design as a craft and a form of expression. Talking to a friend about the minute details that “nobody will notice”, but we nonetheless put care and effort into. His remark that that there is an almost spiritual dimension to this kind of labour – that we charge the objects we make with the attention we put into them. The close readings and conversations generated by the process of designing/editing, as a way of being present in a world completely oversaturated by (visual) information. To pay attention is a political act. To work from an editorial position, rather than based on a certain visual “style” which is then imposed on the material. (It was a compliment when a former classmate said that she could hardly tell if something was designed by me, only by the way it looked.) * Working on a visual identity for a (contemporary) art exhibition, and finding myself sketching out a proposal that resembles something like an old Hippie/DIY crafts journal from the 70s. Although I am intrigued by the way it looks, and despite that the visual form has at least some relation to the wider context of the exhibition, I still have a nagging feeling that I have lured myself into a trap – mirroring certain aesthetic archetypes of the past (that emerged out a different cultural and technological state) and “reintroducing” them in the present moment, as a kind of visual trick. A feeling that I am in some way lacking solid ground beneath my feet. Digging out one obscure and/or “forgotten” typeface after another from books and websites. Getting inspiration from designs made by hand, on typewriters and phototypesetting machines, while working almost exclusively in Indesign. The feeling that one is able to shop/steal from all the stylistic shelves in an instant, and despite working closely and intensely – committed to “getting it right” – also ending up with something that I feel weirdly disconnected from. To speak of that which is contemporary – does this mean anything made now? Spending hours messing around in Photoshop, applying various textures to an image; bitmapping and inverting, layering one on top of the other, in order to make it appear somehow less “digital” (although every step of the process is exactly that). Or in order to exorcise some kind of authorship? That kind of process as opposed to asking an AI to generate 50 versions of the same image and choosing one that fits the best. In the words of Studio Ghibli's founder Hayao Miyazaki that latter option is “an insult to life itself”. Harun Farocki: “You don't have to search for new images, ones never seen before, but you do have to utilize the existing ones in such a way that they become new” (from: Imprint / Nachdruck) Too many images, consumed too fast. Too much knowledge on what everybody else is doing – or has (just) done. Harun Farocki: “Today I can hardly write a word, if there isn't an image on the screen at the same time” (from: Schnittstelle / Interface, 1995) I feel guilt for the kind of short-term memory and attention span, that present day technologies enforce on my being. N’s comment on the silliness of Instagram when looking at it on a computer. How the change of format from a small to a big screen changes the hypnotic character of the app. How all the images are blown up, and the low resolution exposed. Clicking on the like-button becomes awkwardly mechanical. Compared to looking on a phone: I once heard someone say that the frequency of the scrolling motion, combined with the space between each post, triggers a stimulation in the brain that equates to a form of hypnosis. (Talk about the power of design...) * I tend to appreciate the less visible practices more. Those that make work without drawing too much attention to themselves in terms of self-mediation. Though within the present attention economy, the question of visibility is by no means straightforward. * Note from 2022: “I tried for several months to search for the right image for the cover, which would add to the content, but I kept feeling like I was trying to force something over the book, never able to settle on a good solution – or to come to terms with my own position as a white middleclass designer proposing a layout for a book about growing up on the margins of society, in a poor neighborhood (including all the visual/pop cultural clichés that one is made to think of by default). In the end I went with what I considered the safest choice at the time, which was to do a simple typographic cover (avoiding any real risk?) in black with the title of the book set in the typeface Blur – which I also (happily) discovered was used for Mathieu Kassovitz' film ‘La Haine’. It seemed like an apt reference to make at the time, though by now it annoys me. This impulse to make sense of the design choices I make, always seem to end up killing the energy of the work. In hindsight the most interesting idea of a kind of imagery to use for the cover, would have been to use an architectural rendering. The type of pre-visualization that you see all the time on billboards outside a construction site for a new building or a square, with people shopping, sitting at a café, strolling with a baby jogger. From an idea that the people you never see on these type of images are the actual subject of this book. Those without money, who are the most exposed to modern city planning and gentrification processes. To me, this kind of imagery would have been an acute representation (and extension) of the kind of dystopia, that drives the book. I typeset the inside in Times New Roman, with nearly no margins on the sides and not much space between the lines. To reflect the claustrophobic stream-of-consciousness-like style of writing. Long sentences rapidly following one another. When I looked at the Swedish original it was typeset as if it was a literary classic by Marguerite Duras or so. Classic, formal. Plenty of margins and space between the lines. It felt completely without connection to the actual writing it conveyed, which annoyed me. Though I wonder, in hindsight, if my version – despite reflecting the content more directly, visually – was also pushing the reader away by being too present.” * An invitation to consider writing (and making) as a “gathering of voices” rather than “an exteriorisation of the singular ‘inner’ voice of ‘genius.’” (Note from reading group with Amelia Groom, 2018) * “I actually am a great fan of aesthetics and thinking about things formalistically and making aesthetic judgements. But there are times when I think it is inappropriate to do that, particularly when aesthetic judgements are used as a way of obscuring information that deserves to be heard and grasped on its own.” (Adrian Piper) * Thinking about how practical constraints (budgets, deadlines, technologies) and various forms of distance (cultural, historical, geographical) seeps into the visual form. For example this: “Tucked away in the stacks were faded copies of the 'Ashanti Pioneer', a pre-independence newspaper subsequently suppressed by Kwame Nkrumah. At some point the paper had begun to run out of typefaces and wasn't in a position to replace them. So the typesetters simply put whatever they had into the type boxes. In any given word there could be a mix of bold, italic and indeed entirely different fonts.” (Ormond Simpson in: The London Review of Books, 2025) * To be in the work in an honest and unpretentious way: “Filmmaking should just remain a way of life sometimes, like taking a walk, reading a newspaper, eating, writing notes, driving a car, or shooting this film here, for instance, from day to day, carried along by nothing other than its curiosity.” (Wim Wenders in: Notebook on Cities and Clothes, 1989)