Critical and creative publishing
to rethink and evolve visual communication
and forms of cooperation.
BOOKS
Set Margins' #1
Can you feel it?
Effectuating tactility and print in the contemporary
By Freek Lomme (Ed.)
Hands reaching and feeling, noses sniffing, eyes scrolling: the magic at book shops and at book fairs is also very much a tactile one.
But what exactly is the tactile, in a world in which a rising technocracy exploits the designed environment we feel? Who authorizes and who writes, what tradition do we stand in and how can we touch base?
This reader explores how our interaction with printed matter affects us through theory, thoughts, and practices in the field of graphic design, materiality, philosophy, science and art.
Although the core of this book rests upon theory and thoughts, with eight writings from scientists and philosophers to a paper-specialist and art writers, this book also compiles practice-based experiments by six international artists and includes animated introductions of printing techniques in the form of fictionalized characters.
Specs:
148 x 105 mm / 6 x 4 inch . 192 pages, linen + silkscreened spine. Part 4/4, mostly 1/1
ISBN 978-90-832706-0-9
20 EURO
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Colophon
Editor/initiator: Freek Lomme
Artists and authors: Lars Bang Larsen (DK), Sema Bekirovic (NL), Matthieu Blanchard (FR), Christopher Breu (US), Lieven De Boeck(BE), Johanna Drucker (US), Frederic Geurts (BE), Alessandro Ludovico (IT), Esther Krop / De Monsterkamer (NL), Ulrike Mohr (DE), Thomas Rentmeister (DE), Rik Peters (NL), Marieke Sonneveld (NL)
Graphic design: Pierre Martin / Vielcazat
Print paid by Freek
Initially commissioned by Z33 and the Frans Masereel Centrum
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Set Margins' #2
Diagrammatic writing
By Johanna Drucker
Diagrammatic writing is a poetic demonstration of the capacity of format to produce meaning. The articulation of the codex, as a space of semantically generative relations, has rarely (if ever) been subject to so highly focused and detailed a study. The text and graphical presentation are fully integrated, co-dependent, and mutually self-reflexive.
This small book work should be of interest to writers, bibliographers, designers, conceptual artists, and anyone interested in the meta-language of diagrammatic thought in graphic form.
Johanna Drucker is a writer and book artist known for her work in experimental typography. She has published and lectured widely on topics related to the history of the book, contemporary art, graphic design, and digital aesthetics. She is the Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies in the Information Studies Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Drucker wrote this text during residence at the Banff Art Centre, February 12-18, 2013.
Specs:
140 x 215 MM / 5.51 x 8.46 inch. 36 pages.
ISBN 978-90-832706-1-6
10 EURO
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Colophon
Author and graphic designer: Johanna Drucker
Special thanks to Iman Salehian for cover designs.
Print paid by Freek
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Set Margins' #4
We Are All ..... Now
Drawing on Strategic Universalism
By Daniel Tucker
‘We Are All ..... Now’ is inspired by a rhetorical phenomenon disseminated in the media with the intention of implicating people with an agenda. Sourced and quoted from the ‘We Are All socialists Now’ dating back to 1887 up to ‘We Are All Ukrainians Now’ dated 2022, this project presents a non-exhaustive list and illustrated artist visualizations of this rhetorical device named strategic universalism by artist / activist / researcher Daniel Tucker, presented here along with a new dialogue with the artist Dan S. Wang.
Because the original quotations are at times conflicting, this series of hand-drawn responses to each strategically universalist implication draws out a wide range of idiosyncratic symbolic approaches to interpretation - laying bare the struggle of different identities involved in the commitment to stand together.
“This is a delightful project about the promise and pitfalls of affiliative imaginaries. Daniel Tucker’s wry exploration of all the people and things we’ve claimed to “all be all now” should spark numerous and multifarious conversations!”
- Rebecca Zorach
“Strategic universalisms is great! Just when I thought it might get corny, it becomes more intense and interesting and goofy and quizzical and spot on and hilarious and all-too-familiar.”
- Brian Holmes
“The circle as the framing device they share implies a ground/tableau, and I am the viewer,
outside, above, looking in... but the subjectivity is very particular, there is a strong sense of the mind of the situated artist thinking, and at the same time a (strategic) universal standpoint, like an aesthetic 'common sense', a mutual intelligibility of forms.”
Specs:
Swiss bound with linen bound book-block
170 x 240 mm / 6,69 x 9,45 inch portrait
128 pages, all black/ white except for inside of the 6 page cover (flap)
ISBN 978-90-832706-4-7
17 euro
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Colophon
Artist / editor: Daniel Tucker
Editorial advisor / graphic design: Freek Lomme
Contributing author: Dan S. Wang
Made possible thanks to:
Daniel's free work, Freek's free work and Freek's investment in printing costs.
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Set Margins' #7
ATLAS OF AGENDAS
Mapping the power, mapping the commons
By Bureau d'Etudes
The Atlas of Agendas is a political, social and economic atlas: informing the public about socio-political power structures and activating opportunities for the self and the commons.
The French research and design group Bureau d´Études has been producing maps of contemporary political, social and economic systems that allow people to inform, reposition and empower themselves. Revealing what normally remains invisible, often in the shape of large-sized banners, and contextualizing apparently separate elements within new frameworks, these visualizations of interests and relations re-articulate the dominant symbolic order and actualize existing structures that otherwise remain concealed and unknown.
This large-size hardcover book, panoramic in scope and theoretically both profound and accessible, is the atlas for an emancipatory new citizenship that utilises the opportunities of info-graphics from the local to the global and back again.
Specs
Hardcover, 9 x 11.75 in. or 305 x 235 mm / 270 pgs / 54 color / 54 duotone / 64 bw.
ISBN 978-90-832706-5-4
32 EURO
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Colophon
Editors: Bureau d'Etudes with Brian Holmes and Freek Lomme
Graphic design book: Bureau d'Etudes
Made possible by Freek
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Set Margins' #9
The Impossibillity of Silence
Writing for Designers, Artists & Photographers
By Ian Lynam
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SILENCE is a book for artists, designers and photographers interested in approaching writing about their vocation and culture. Drawing upon decades of experience as a writer, designer, artist and teacher, Ian Lynam offers up a plethora of inspirational and concrete approaches to writing about creative fields.
“Joyfully and skillfully straddling the line between creator and critic, theorist and practitioner, formalist and rebel, American and expatriate, serious analyst and humorous deconstructor, Ian Lynam always brings a wholly original perspective to his writing on design. The insights are always fresh, and the stakes are always extremely high.”
- W. David Marx, author of Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style.
“Lynam is a bitingly humorous writer - gifted with the intuition to give stories depth.”
- Lars Harmsen, Slanted Magazine
“Lynam adeptly juggles platters of diverse knowledge that include history, theory, philosophy, humanities, and the gamut of pop culture.”
– Louise Sandhaus, author of Earthquakes Mudslides Fires & Riots: California & Graphic Design, 1936-1986
“Ian Lynam is the Hunter S. Thompson of design writing.”
– Sereina Rothenberger, Jan Van Eyck Academie
Specs:
softcover, 8 page cover, 105 mm x 175 mm / 4.1 x 6.9 inches portrait, 212 pages
ISBN 978-90-832706-8-5
20 EURO
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Colophon
Written by Ian Lynam
Graphic design by Ian Lynam
Print paid by Freek Lomme
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Set Margins' #11
Who can afford to be critical?
An inquiry into what we can’t do alone, as designers, and into what we might be able to do together, as people.By Afonso Matos (Ed.)
With contributions by: Silvio Lorusso, J. Dakota Brown, Marianela D'Aprile, Evening Class, Somnath Batt, Danielle Aubert, Jack Henrie Fisher, Alan Smart, Greg Mihalko and DAE students 2021/2022.
‘Critical Designers’ produced by an increasing number of design schools are prompted to address social, political and environmental issues through their practices. Yet, who can afford to continue such effort after graduation?
In a dynamic style holding multiple voices, Who Can Afford To Be Critical? discusses the limits that affordability, class and labour impose upon the educational promise of holding a ‘critical’ practice. Why do we tend to ignore the material and socioeconomic constraints that bind us as designers, claiming instead that we can be powerful agents of change? In fact, where does our agency lie?
Instead of focusing on the dream of ethical work under capitalism, could we, instead, focus first on designers’ own working conditions, targeting them as one immediate site for collective action? And can we engage politically with the world not necessarily as designers, but as workers, as activists, as citizens?
Specs:
Perfect binding, 148 x 210 mm (portrait), 92 pages, 4 PMs + black.
ISBN 978-90-832706-3-0
The sales-price is 15 euro incl. VAT+ optional postage costs
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Colophon
Graphic design, author and editor: Afonso Matos
Overall advice: Freek Lomme
Print paid by Freek and Afonso
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Set Margins' #13
50 anniversaries
From the private collection of Freek Lomme
50-year-olds: they’re hung up in streets, stuck in dull, damp plastic sleeves; they are taped to lampposts, to electricity substations or traffic signs, or they’re attached to trees with drawing pins.
This publication explores the typically Dutch tradition of publicly displaying home made photo collages throughout streets and neighborhoods in celebration of a person’s 50th birthday.
Almost reminiscent of missing pet posters, amateur portrait photographs are distributed and displayed by being taped onto lamp posts and stapled to trees by friends or relatives, at the mercy of public opinion. Exposed to judgment and ridicule by friends, family and strangers, due to the usually demeaning nature of the photographs through unflattering holiday photos and the likes, individuals are exposed, raised out of anonymity and placed in the public eye.
To an extent the street becomes an exhibition space for the non art-oriented person. It’s a document of the democratisation of the public domain, through a tradition which allows artistic expression and experimentation for anyone, under the gaze of a watchful even if disengaged audience.
The presented collection of posters, possibly a study of non-intentional art under the scrutiny of the public eye, constitutes an archive and an ode to amateur, home made graphic design, made possible through the democratisation of artistic means and software such as word art, paint and clip art. A non-hierarchical demonstration of taste and aesthetic is catapulted into the streets and now gathered in the exhibition space. Perhaps involuntarily, the posters bear a sense of humour and irony to the rest of the on-looking public.
read the article on VICE NL (in Dutch only)
Specs
Softcover, full color, 100 pages, A4 size
ISBN 978-90-832706-2-3
10 EURO
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Colophon
Final editor: Freek Lomme
Graphic design book cover: Mook Attanath.
Made possible thanks to Freek’s savings.
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
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Set Margins' #3
What is post-branding?
How to Counter Fundamentalist Marketplace Semiotics
By Jason Grant & Oliver Vodeb
Part design experiment, part critical theory, and part how-to-manual, What
is Post-Branding? introduces a creative counter to branding’s neoliberal orthodoxy.
Post-Branding empowers better design of public communication for civic and activist groups by replacing corporate branding’s predatory principles with a new set of strategies embedded in a new culture of craft. A new way of being and knowing, for a new way of relating with the world.
Specs
Softcover, 105 x 165 mm or 9 x 11.75 inches / 260 pgs
138 full color images, 29 duotone images and 39 bw. images
ISBN 978-90-832706-7-8
PRE-ORDER SOON
Expected end February
Colophon
Writing, creative conceptualisation and curatorial by Jason Grant and Oliver Vodeb
Design by Inkahoots in Naarm (Melbourne) and Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia.
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Set Margins' #14
Artist-Run Europe
Practice/Projects/Spaces
By Mark Cullen and Gavin Murphy (Eds.)
Part how-to manual, part history, and part socio-political critique, Artist-Run Europe looks at the conditions, organisational models, and role of artist-led practice within contemporary art and society. The aim is to show how artist-run practice manifests itself, how artist-run spaces are a distinctive and central part of visual art culture, and how they present a complex, heterogeneous, and necessary set of alternatives to the art institution, museum and commercial gallery.
In a self-reflexive, critically questioning process, contributions discuss and analyse areas such as: What position do artist-run spaces occupy within the field of contemporary art today? Should they stand in opposition to or in parallel to other art-world structures? How is value ascribed to these often transitory practices, and is this value recognised within the field? How are these spaces organised? Can artist-run spaces develop and be sustained without the need to institutionalise? What do artist-run spaces add to the ecology of the civil society? What can we say about future (or hoped for) trajectories?
Such a publication is timely and unique, with case studies of spaces and projects: Triangle France, Transmission Gallery, Pallas Projects/Studios, Eastside Projects, Catalyst Arts, Pink Cube, Secession, Dienstgebaeude, Supermarket, 126 Artist-led Gallery, and The Artist-led Archive; and an expansive and detailed index of artist-run spaces in Europe. It will seek to develop and encourage discourse on the subject within the wider field of contemporary practice, be a source for academics and students, and act as a practical tool for those running or wishing to set up artist-run spaces.
Specs:
softcover, 8 page cover, 105 mm x 175 mm / 4.1 x 6.9 inches portrait, 212 pages
ISBN 978-90-832706-6-1
25 EURO
Expected end January
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Colophon
Contributors: Jason E. Bowman, AA Bronson, Noelle Collins, Valerie Connor, Mark Cullen, Céline Kopp & Alun Williams, Joanna Laws, Freek Lomme, Megs Morley, Gavin Murphy, Gavin Wade and Katherine Waugh.
Edited by Gavin Murphy & Mark Cullen (Pallas Projects Dublin)
Designed by WorkGroup, Dublin
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Set Margins' #15
Graphic Design in the Post-Digital Age
A Survey of Practices Fueled by Creative Coding
Graphic Design in the Post-Digital Age examines the challenges and opportunities in the wake of the rapid rise of creative coding within a growing community of designers opting to make their own design tools.
This comprehensive overview covers educational approaches in design programs and the historic and economic contexts of programming in graphic design, as well as the implications surrounding the integration of coding with design. The book includes over twenty interviews in which major figures in design reflect upon the ways in which coding has innovated and transformed their design practice and strategies, and the directions it will take in the future.
Introduction text by Demian Conrad, with an essay by Silvio Lorusso, and interviews by Demian Conrad and Rob van Leijsen with Dimitri Jeanottat (CH), Ted Davis (US), Urs Hofer (CH), Jeroen Barendse (NL), Casey Reas (US), Yehwan Song (KR), Luuse / Marianne Plano + Léonard Mabille (FR/BE), Sarah Garcin (FR), Tancrède Ottiger (CH), Jürg Lehni (CH), Loraine Furter (CH), Raphael Bastide (FR), Petr van Blokland (NL), Dinamo / Fabian Harb + Fabiola Mejía (CH), Johnson/Kingston / Ivan Weiss + Michael Kryenbühl (CH), Eurostandard / Pierrick Brégeon + Ali-Eddine Abdelkhalek (CH), Zach Lieberman (US), Samuel Weidmann (CH), Erik van Blokland (NL), Studio Dumbar / Sander Sturing and Stan Haanappel (NL), Émilie Pillet (CH) and Dia Studio / Mitch Paone (US).
Editorial and research team: Demian Conrad, Rob van Leijsen, David Héritier, Aviva Cashmira, Nicolas Nova, Anthony Masure, Daniel Sciboz
Specs
608 pgs, 21 × 15.5 cm, Softcover
ISBN 978-90-832706-9-2
27 EURO
Expected mid February
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Set Margins' #18
The Failed Painter
Or: Unchained by Material Anxiety
The Failed Painter is a personal book about material anxiety in Graphic design's creative work. It speaks of fascination for singular and multiple production processes, perfectibility, and imperfectability in times of virtual surface and hunger for authenticity.
Writing out of the persona ‘The Failed Painter’, this book is a collection of essays on design and art spanning culture, race, nation, and sheer vandalism from the author of The Impossibility of Silence: Writing for Designers, Artists
& Photographers. Within this highly curated, yet varied assortment of approachable writing on aesthetics: space exploration, mercenaries, puberty, instant nostalgia, precarious labor, and of course, zombies.
Ian Lynam works at the intersection of graphic design, design education and design research. He is faculty at Temple University Japan and Vermont College of Fine Arts in the MFA in Graphic Design Program. He operates the Tokyo design studio Ian Lynam Design, working across identity, typography and interior design, as well as running the Wordshape publishing imprint. Ian writes for IDEA (JP), Slanted (DE) and Modes of Criticism (PT) and has published a number of books about design.
Specs
softcover, 8 page cover, 105 mm x 175 mm / 4.1 x 6.9 inches
ISBN
18 EURO
Expected end February