Graphic Design Criticism
Img. Karel Martens
Graphic design criticism is a website run by Anna Craemer. After having spent a great deal of my sunday afternoon watching her collection of interviews I thought I’d send her an email with some questions about the project. I was curious to hear why she started it and in what kind of framework, weather its on hold or an ongoing research.
I started this project three years ago, during my MA at the Central Saint Martins London. Struggling to find the perfect Master project I observed a big difficulties amongst my colleagues as well. We were no longer looking for the best form, it was all about finding the perfect content. Preferably something social or political. One night I read the text “Fuck Content” by Michael Rock that opened my mind. In this text he states: “The content became the holy grail.” So I was wondering why we think creating content is a more valuable act then creating form? I started researching what graphic design really is, what it not is, what power it has and what weaknesses. First by interviewing students and friends and then professional Graphic Designer by video. I started with my tutor Paulus M. Dreibholz. When I sent him the interview, cut down to 5 min, he was so excited and encouraged me to go on with this project. After I uploaded the interviews, I got emails from all over the world, how thankful they are for this videos and how much they learned. Encouraged by that I continued and the research became the project itself. Back in germany I was asked to write a book about it, which I’m writing on right now. Writing this book I realised that what I was doing all the time was Graphic Design Criticism and that there is very little Graphic Design Criticism in Europe compared to for example Architecture Criticism. This project aims at encouraging people to think more critical about graphic design to raise the quality of it and lower the struggling.
Anna also shared with us the planned launch for a new website by september. I’ll let you know when the website is there and when the book is out.
