Call for Papers – Progetto Grafico International Graphic Design Magazine (IT) – Topic: Traces

progetto grafico 26

Traces

edited by Luigi Farrauto, Claude Marzotto, Silvia Sfligiotti

In this issue of Progetto grafico, devoted to “Traces”—indices, markers, clues, imprints, and diagrams—we would like to explore visual communications that, rather than focusing on mere representation, deal with the dimension of time.

First and foremost, traces have historical value: in any and every artifact, they take us back to the moment the object was thought up, revealing the reasoning and techniques by which it was produced. Oftentimes, they also reveal subjective choices and incidents during development that betray an underlying human factor that seemingly contradicts the presumed neutrality of graphic design.

Just as documents’ permanent home is the archive, our individual
and collective memories are a layering of narrative traces in constant transformation. Accumulated signs of use determine the identity of places and objects as well as texts, which can confront and converse with their own past in various ways.

Defining a graphic design methodology that is distinct from that of figurative art means recognizing traces as visual tools. György Kepes’s
1944 book The Language of Vision described a kind of vision based not on verisimilitude or resemblance, but rather on photographic recording, an adherence to production techniques, and a transparent creative process: from the veins of a leaf to the path a pencil traces across a sheet of paper, all forms can be read as “space-time diagrams,” visual syntheses of a series of cause-and-effect relationships.

Even today, as Kepes said, visual designers love to play “the role of the midwife” and try out “techniques that give the fewest obstacles to the free flow of organic formation.” New tools allow us to visualize the ebb and flow of digital traces in real time, as well as create dynamic representations of territories, activities, and experiences. On the analog front, the signs left on the surface of a physical object by the passage of time and unexpected events play a leading role in the designs of those who choose to use manual techniques.

We welcome contributions dealing with theory, research, and the analysis of projects in which the concept of the trace is manifested in one of the aforementioned ways. We are interested in approaches from all different disciplines, as long as they relate to the field of visual communication and its cultural implications in a relevant way.

• release: Autumn 2014
• submission deadline: 15 January 2014
send your submissions to: redazione_progettografico@aiap.it

Progetto grafico is the international graphic design magazine published by Aiap

http://www.aiap.it/progettografico/

editors // Riccardo Falcinelli, Silvia Sfligiotti

editorial board // Serena Brovelli, Maria Rosaria Digregorio, Luigi Farrauto, Claude Marzotto, Luciano Perondi, Carlo Vinti, Stefano Vittori