Studios/ Designers I am interested in

1. Leah Maldonado 

https://leahmaldonado.com/GlyphWorld

GlyphWorld is a free typeface of nine fonts. It’s set in a mythical alternate font-world made of nine landscapes: Forest, Meadow, Flower, Mountain, Airland, Animal Soul, Glacier, Desert, and Wasteland. The project pushes the boundaries of what a typeface can be by using the medium of letterforms to reflect an emotional connection to our environment. 

https://www.instagram.com/obviousplant/

I like this because the artist uses recognisable/ inconspicuous graphic design to sneak absurdism into peoples daily lives. It makes me question what is real.

"‘Obvious Plant’ Leaves Hilarious Fake Products In Real Stores

There's no better feeling in the world than making somebody laugh. Well, other than making somebody laugh and forcing them to wonder whether what they’re seeing is, in fact, real. Genius prankster Jeff Wysaski, founder of the hilarious Obvious Plant project, is at it again. He hid even more amazing fake toys and other products among real ones, and it should be positively criminal how great they are.

We don’t grow out of toys just because we grow up. Obvious Plant obviously (pun intended) seems to know this and loves putting a satirical twist on things, so our jaws drop with wonder and confusion. Have a look through Obvious Plant’s newest practical jokes, upvote your faves and remember to let everyone know what you think of the project in the comments below! We all know how much everyone loves Obvious Plant’s funny pranks, so here are our previous posts about fake Christmas gifts, animal facts, self-help books, IKEA in-store reviews, and bootleg Avengers."

3. Bottom text:

bottom text is a meme collective. they have a tv show on adult swim where they review recent meme trends and create their own versions. Cynicism, irony and sarcasm are key in all of the images they produce, often using absurdism to comment on current political and social issues. It's purposefully anti-design - design faux pars are used on purpose. The images all appear lighthearted yet the messages behind them range from nonsense to addressing topics as serious as police brutality.

(what is a meme? memes are pieces of ‘cultural information’ that are passed between and within groups, that are constantly changing shape and fighting for survival)

The group is made up of @djinn_kazama, who often deals with existentialism, sexuality and perception of self in her memes, as well as her Asian-American heritage. 

@males_are_cancelled, who intersperses self portrait art in with their artwork

one could argue that posting memes is not a valid form of art or design, however I would argue that in an age where so much of our communication is done digitally, memes are a perfectly valid way of expressing political beliefs, philosophical ideas, social commentary and as an expressive art form. In a way, meme culture has made self expression much more accessible.

4. Polyester Zine

Polyester is a self published, intersectional feminist arts and culture publication aiming to bridge the gap of URL cyberfeminism with the IRL world.

I love polyesters hyper-feminine aesthetic. I admire that they are a small DIY publisher, giving a platform to female and LGBTQ creatives. I love the concept of zines as a whole - self publishing is radical.

5. autonomous design group - I found out about this group after seeing one of their posters in Hyde Park where I currently live and being directed to their website. This was the poster:

It immediately caught my attention as I agreed with the message - upon visiting the website I found out more about the group. Their webpage has collection of posters designed by the group, all promoting socialist ideas. The posters are all public domain and can be downloaded for free by anyone. The idea is that people can print the posters to display them in their own communities, making socialist ideas accessible to people who may not hear about them otherwise. They specifically design outside of the traditional leftist aesthetic of red/black, stencil style art as they 'believe [it] comes across as dated and out of touch.'

I have written about them before in a previous module when exploring ideas but ended up taking the project in a different direction.

Many of these above practitioners I am interested in are not people who are commercially successful - many of them operate independently and are not profit driven. I personally hope in the future to use graphic design to communicate my own ideas, and making loads of money isn't important to me - especially not if it would mean going against my values.

I think there is a large range of creative represented here - whilst graphic design is my primary practice, I love doing photography, illustration and performance art and will always tie my other interests into my graphic design where I can, and I think this is shown in my broad range of interests.