Not at Your Service: Manifestos for Design brings together the broad spectrum of beliefs, subjects and practices of designers at Zurich University of the Arts. It offers different approaches and insights on the present-day role and impact of design. It is not conceived as a finished project, but as a fluid document of its time. Collaborative design, interaction within complex systems, attention economics, the ecological shift, visual literacy, gender-neutral design, “quick and dirty” design ethnography, social responsibility, the value of ugliness, death futures, immersive technologies, identity and crises, design as a transformative discipline – all of these topics are presented for debate with passion, conviction and professional expertise.
526 pages (PDF), Birkhäuser, 2021
ISBN 978-3-0356-2275-1
The project Not at Your Service: Manifestos for Design brings together a wide range of voices in order to illustrate the ways in which design mutates, infects unfamiliar territories and sometimes turns into an empty word devoid of meaning, but also to show how it can open up innovative, socially relevant and cross-disciplinary fields for sustainability, technological innovation and aesthetic practices, and have a positive effect on society.
Not at Your Service: Manifestos for Design brings together the broad spectrum of beliefs, subjects and practices of designers at Zurich University of the Arts. It offers different approaches and insights on the present-day role and impact of design. It is not conceived as a finished project, but as a fluid document of its time. Collaborative design, interaction within complex systems, attention economics, the ecological shift, visual literacy, gender-neutral design, “quick and dirty” design ethnography, social responsibility, the value of ugliness, death futures, immersive technologies, identity and crises, design as a transformative discipline – all of these topics are presented for debate with passion, conviction and professional expertise.
526 pages, Birkhäuser, 2021
ISBN 978-3-0356-2272-0
Das Lehrbuch entwickelt Methoden für die Designrecherche, denn Designen erfordert und erzeugt zugleich Wissen, was in der Praxis oftmals intuitiv passiert. Wird die Erzeugung dieses Wissens jedoch methodisch geleitet und reflektiert, dann stärkt dies die Designdisziplin und begünstigt ihre interdisziplinäre Vernetzung. Die Ethnografie ist hierzu eine geeignete Methode: Designethnografie bedeutet, dass eine Designerin in eine soziale Lebenswelt eintaucht, dort bestimmte Wirklichkeitsausschnitte beobachtet, analysiert und sie verändert – zum Beispiel mit Intervention und partizipativen Ansätzen. Werden solche Verfahren dokumentiert und theoretisch reflektiert, dann werden designspezifische Erkenntnismodi sichtbar.
332 Seiten, Springer, 2018
ISBN 978-3-658-21387-9
Ernst Keller (1891-1968). Teacher and pioneer of the Swiss Style
In various different places, particularly in the USA, when writing the history of graphic design, Ernst Keller is referred to as the father of Swiss Style, later International Typographic Style. This is down to the large number of Keller students, who later shaped this Swiss Style and made it famous. Keller’s achievement is shown purely using his oeuvre, primarily his poster designs and his work on lettering and graphic design in architecture.
Ernst Keller’s contribution to the development of innovative, non-academic didactic principles in design training plays a fundamental role. His teaching activity starting in 1918 can be defined as one of the first systematic training programmes for graphic design in the world.
253 pages, Triest Verlag, 2017
ISBN 978-3-0-3863023-4
Swiss Graphic Design Histories offers an entirely new redefinition of Switzerland’s graphic design landscape. Based on extensive research by scholars of design history and with a multiple and inclusive approach, it reaches beyond the usual canon and the well-known epicenters Basel and Zurich with the Germanophone fathers of what has become famous as the Swiss Style in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Edited by Davide Fornari, Robert Lzicar, Sarah Owens, Michael Renner, Arne Scheuermann and Peter J. Schneemann.
Named one of the Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2021.
814 pages in 4 volumes, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2021
ISBN: 978-3-85881-868-3
