The third issue of Le Signe Design (the Cahiers of the National Graphic Design Center) is about DIY practices and is based on the work of Gilles de Brock, graphic designer who became a ceramic tile manufacturer.

Do It Yourself practices are not, as is commonly assumed, limited to home improvement, nor just a way of subverting—hacking—a given social and political organization. They are also a way of looking both forward and backward, at our future and our heritage. They involve our heritage insofar as they allow constituted groups to revive past knowledge and skills threatened with extinction. They look forward in that they make it possible to create tools that do not yet exist but could.

The applications of the Do It Yourself approach range from niche practices to everything everywhere, and what they have in common is that they are always in opposition to the mass market. Some examples of this extremely diversified movement include self-publishing, cosplay, biotechnology, hacking (especially in the sense of programming), and producing digital artworks and music. Its most mediatized (and often romanticized) contemporary manifestation is what are called fablabs, but this term is too limited to cover the phenomenon in all its vast variety.

The roots of the DIY movement go back to the magazines Popular Mechanics(1902) and Mechanix Illustrated (1928), popular education publications meant for readers in small towns and the countryside who needed to be self-reliant and repair broken manufactured items rather than buying new ones. The late 1960s saw the emergence of movements motivated by environmental concerns and a distrust of consumer society. Many people—like some student co-op members, hippies in North America and punks in Europe—wanted to share resources. Stewart Brand's famous Whole Earth Catalogue, subtitled "Access to tools", launched in 1968, constitutes our contemporary reference.

This issue is appearing in parallel with the solo exhibition retracing the career of Gilles de Brock, whose production is deeply infused with the DIY spirit. Yet his practice can't be reduced to the things he has actually made. It is part of the kind of knowledge-sharing economy proclaimed in Brand's counter-culture manifesto, able to go even further today thanks to the participatory and interactive Web 2.0.

Texts by Pao Lien Djie, Maya Ober, Nina Paim, Anthony Masure, Guillaume Helleu, Tereza Bettinardi, Jean-Michel Géridan.

The first issue of the Cahiers du centre national du graphisme, around the relationship between graphic design and feminism.

Speaking about Chaumont and its festival, Vanna Pinter once wrote rather modestly, “The graphic design faith has remained in dependable legitimate hands, the hands that ensure the transfer of power.” To act outside of those transfers of power, from a co-opting of use, is to run the risk of a possible delegitimization. Acting on the fringe, adopting another vantage point, is therefore not without its risks—in terms of territorial thinking—but must be an absolute in a global context.

At the second iteration of the International Graphic Design Biennial in 2019, we tackled a number of themes, from invisiblization with Silvia Baum, Claudia Scheer and Lea Sievertsen [Not a Muse], and the postcolonial question with Jonathan Castro, to transformations of capital and the repercussion on the economy of a discipline with Tereza Ruller [The Rodina], and the notion of commitment with Teresa Sdralevich. In that context we found many more allies than fans of a “Bingo du Male Tears.”

Opening this first issue of our periodical and titling it “A Feminist Issue” around the figure of Anja Kaiser is about approaching graphic design from a feminist, collaborative and co-constructionist perspective. It is a perspective that a number of others have joined here, including Anna Jehle, Juliane Schickedanz, Fabrice Bourlez, and Loraine Furter. The title of this issue implies another, such as “An other Feminist Issue” coming after “Another Feminist Issue,” for there are many voices and they require us to lend them an ear while being attentive and precise. Le Signe Design [LSD], designed by officeabc, is the periodical of a platform for production, distribution, creative support, dialogue, and mediation between the artistic field of graphic design and the public, what the National Center for Graphic Design is all about. Le Signe Design is not so much a communications forum as a new way to enter a field of study. 

Texts by Anja Kaiser, Loraine Furter, Fabrice Bourlez, Anna Jehle, Juliane Schickedanz.