Ben Schwartz is the graphic design fellow at the Walker Art Center, and recent graduate from ArtCenter College of Design. A sample of his work can be found here.
Swiss graphic designer Julia Born sits down to discuss how she employed an intricate typographic and graphic system int he exhibition catalog Sophie Calle: Overshare.
From Homer to Joyce and even shards of wood, designer Ben Schwartz traces their influences and process of creating the catalogue for Jannis Kounellis in Six Acts.
In 2013, designer Manuel Raeder and artist Mariana Castillo Deball released the catalogue Marginália 1, which acted as a monograph for Rogério Duarte (1939–2016), a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist/designer who played a key role in ushering in the Tropicália movement through his work in design, writing, poetry, visual art, music, performance, and politics. Here, Raeder discusses the process of working with Duarte and how the Tropicália icon has influenced his own practice.
Volume is a new music publication that focuses each issue on only one artist. The first issue, in fact, consists of one essay and one photograph.
As part of our series on creative bootlegging, we interview BLESS, lead by partners Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag. Since 1995 BLESS has succeeded in consistently being inconsistent, seamlessly moving between areas of fashion, home goods, product design, performance, installation, and contemporary art… often thriving in the blurry boundaries of each.
How can design be a performative act? What insights can be gleaned from a production by approaching it from the perspective of its graphic identity? Ben Schwartz speaks with designer Andrew J.S., dancemaker Kate Wallich, and musician Mike Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius) on their collaboration The Sun Still Burns Here, a lush dance/live music performance coming to the Walker this winter.
How can an exhibition represent and give voice to a forgotten group of people? On The Inside, curated by Tatiana von Fürstenberg and designed by Eline Mul, puts on display the work of hundreds of LGBTQ+ artists currently serving time in the prison system. The submitted artwork, coupled with quotes from the artists, creates a powerful and humanizing message about injustice, but also about identity, love, and acceptance. Here, designer Ben Schwartz discusses the project with Mul.
Mind Walks documents the work of graphic designer/illustrator Karl Nawrot from 2004 to 2017. The dense publication showcases nearly 900 images of design, architecture, illustration, stamps, and stencils from Nawrot, who has up until now been reserved about revealing the depth of his practice. Here, he talks about Mind Walks, the process of sorting through one’s own archives, and the futility of closing your own chapters.
The printed and collaged garments of Elisa van Joolen represent a new form of “open bootlegging” where the companies involved are not only aware but included in the making of a piece. In her working process, conversation plays a an integral role in each step of production, causing participants to reconsider ideas about value, ownership, and labor. Continuing UNLICENSED, our series on design and bootlegging, Ben Schwartz speaks with van Joolen about her projects 11×17 and One-to-One, along with the implications of bootlegging in the name of kindness.
In 2017, Werkplaats Typografie curated a project space at the New York Art Book Fair around the idea of bootlegging, in which students sold objects of desire behind a curtain in the MoMA PS1 boiler room—accessible only if you knew the codeword: “cherry.” One of those students, Malin Gewinner, has continued to explore the concept of bootlegging and the flexibility of copyright in her own practice.
As a part of his design practice, Mark Owens often writes about the intersection of design, music, and material culture. While his writing touches on subjects from Brutalism to Times New Roman, his specific relationship to punk and hardcore subcultures has given him a unique perspective on the recent bootleg phenomenon. In the following interview, Ben Schwartz chats with Owens about fan recordings, imaginary collaborations, and the value of “plunderphonics.”
Shanzhai Lyric is a “poetic research and archival unit” that documents and transforms awkwardly translated slogans from Chinese bootleg T-shirts into an ongoing poem. Continuing our series UNLICENSED, Ben Schwartz speaks with members of the Shanzhai Lyric project team about bootlegging, global hierarchies, shininess, and the “detritus of consumerism.”
When it comes to bootlegging, Experimental Jetset prefers the term “cover versions.” The linguistic distinction is crucial when talking about the studio, as it bends the concept into homage, allowing for work to vibrate between the original and Jetset’s own interpretation. Launching UNLICENSED, a new series on bootlegging in graphic design, Ben Schwartz interviews the Amsterdam-based studio.
The 100th issue of the seminal architecture journal OASE is dedicated to Karel Martens’s work on the journal. The issue provides a tremendous amount of insight from the editors, former students, and Martens himself. In this interview I chat with guest editor Marius Schwarz about his experience researching, co-editing, and co-designing OASE 100.
How do you bootleg contemporary art? In designing the catalogue for Allen Ruppersberg: Intellectual Property 1968–2018, Ben Schwartz started with the exhibition’s title, which taps into the theme of copyright that spans the artist’s 50-year oeuvre. Referencing pop cultural traces in the work—borrowed, copied, stolen, and subverted, he set out to create “a giant cultural bootleg filtered through a Ruppersbergian lens.”
In the third installment of Uncovered, a regular series on The Gradient focused on the process and influences behind recent album artwork, we talk with Ecuador-born, New York–based artist Mr. iozo about his photographs for the recent campaign around A$AP Rocky’s Testing.
In the second installment of “Uncovered,” a regular series on The Gradient focused on the process and influences behind recent album artwork, we hear straight from the designers behind new releases from Fever Ray, the label Country Music, and Mouse on Mars.
Artist Tauba Auerbach founded Diagonal Press in 2013 with the intention of creating “publications in open editions,” where “nothing [is] signed or numbered.” Since Diagonal Press’s inception, the publishing imprint has released a steady stream of books and multiples ranging from pins and rolling papers to type specimens and manipulatives. In the following interview, Auerbach discusses the advantages of the book space, her interest in typography, and the exploration of dimensional multiplicity.
In 2013, designer Manuel Raeder and artist Mariana Castillo Deball released the catalogue Marginália 1, which acted as a monograph for Rogério Duarte (1939–2016), a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist/designer who played a key role in ushering in the Tropicália movement through his work in design, writing, poetry, visual art, music, performance, and politics. Here, Raeder discusses the process of working with Duarte and how the Tropicália icon has influenced his own practice.
In the first installment of “Uncovered,” a regular series on The Gradient focused on the process and influences behind recent album artwork, we hear straight from the designers behind new releases from Young Fathers, Against All Logic, and Total Control.
On stage and on record, LA punk band No Age consists of guitarist Randy Randall and drummer Dean Spunt. But through a decade-long collaboration with designer Brian Roettinger, they form a unique version of the power trio. Here, Roettinger and No Age discuss a truly DIY creative process that has found them doing everything from hand assembling an entire run of LPs to recording music in a motel parking lot.
In this new interview, Folder Studio’s Takumi Akin, Wesley Chou, and Jon Gacnik talk with graphic designer Ben Schwartz about four of their archive-based projects, covering topics from used books and post-punk to riots and a project preserving the legacy of Tupac Shakur.
In an in-depth conversation, New York–based graphic designer Geoff Han discusses his experimental print and web work, the consequences of running an independent design practice, and the necessity of collaboration.
PLAYLAB, INC. is an NYC–based design/idea studio consisting of Archie Lee Coates IV, Jeff Franklin, Ryan J. Simons, Luiza Dale, Anya Shcherbakova and Davis Scherer. Together the collective works on everything from websites to publications, performances to public swimming pools. In advance of Coates’s Insights 2018 design lecture, we invited him to discuss five projects that begin to define PLAYLAB’s ever-expanding practice.
Introducing Found/Seen, a series in which members of the Walker’s Design Department share their findings—be they noteworthy for their content, unusual in format, or simply beautiful in form—from the Walker’s Library and Archives.
At the 2016 Brno Biennial, Wayne Daly and Adrien Vasquez exhibited A Shelf for Lothar, showcasing Lothar Reher’s stark covers for the Spektrum series. This year, the pair worked together to produce the accompanying publication, Dressed In Black, which documents the shelf at Brno, with 1:1 reproductions of each book cover.
For some time now, Belgian designer Ines Cox has been actively exploring how the nuances of on-screen interfaces can be translated into elements of her practice. Here, Ines shows us examples of her design research; how a framework becomes an idea moving seamlessly from one piece of design to the next.
Volume is a new music publication that focuses each issue on only one artist. The first issue, in fact, consists of one essay and one photograph.
In this conversation, I speak with artist/designer/teacher Simon Johnston about his new publishing imprint Verb Editions, several of the works in the catalogue, and the importance of maintaining a personal practice.
