BOOK Talk: Thursday 14th May @ 19:00
Design Against Design, Kevin Yuen Kit Lo in conversation with Clara Balaguer
Published by Set Margins
Design Against Design argues for the urgent necessity of critical engagement and political resistance through graphic practice. It draws on insights from the practice of LOKI @lokimon , a small graphic design studio committed to working with social movements towards radical political change. With conversational interviews, personal and critical essays, and a wide-ranging selection of graphic works, this book unravels the real-world relationships, motivations and contradictions involved in a socially engaged design practice.
Both a passionate indictment of the discipline of graphic design, and a utopian love letter to its radical potential, Kevin Yuen Kit Lo’s collection of almost confessional, candid essays challenge the status quo of design writing. Design Against Design demands that we think more intimately about the politics of visual culture under contemporary capitalism and, importantly, how we can act against it.
Featuring interviews with Philippe and Nancy Vermes, Sandy Kaltenborn, Kaie Kellough, Chadi Marouf and Sabine Friesinger, Sarah Auches, and Jenn Clamen and an introduction by Ian Lynam.
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Kevin Yuen Kit Lo is Assistant Professor of Communication Design and Visual Culture in the Department of Design and Computation Arts. He works at the intersections of graphic design, cultural production, and social change with a research focus on publication practices and social movements. His research is invested in exploring the tensions between material and relational studies of design as a means of fostering greater social and political autonomy.
Kevin founded the graphic design studio LOKI in 2014, working alongside community organizations, non-profits, cultural and educational institutions, unions, artists, researchers and activist groups, as part of broader movements for social change. The studio has worked on campaigns to stop racial profiling, designed protest graphics for anti-racist and anti-colonial social justice movements, created online platforms for critical journalism and supported the cultural production of marginalized writers and artists through the design of publications, exhibitions, and collaborative works.
Kevin holds an MA in Typographic Design from the London College of Printing (UAL). Prior to founding LOKI, he worked in interactive design, advertising and fashion. He is a member of the Memefest network and the Justseeds artist co-operative. Kevin is the author of Design Against Design: Cause and consequence of a dissident graphic practice (2024) with Set Margins’ Press.
Clara Balaguer (Makati City, Pisces Metal Monkey) a.k.a. The OCD, Hardworking Goodlooking, To Be Determined, and Galley Copy Shoppe is a cultural worker, curriculum builder, and grey literature circulator nested at XPUB (MFA Experimental Publishing), Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and Design Department, Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam.
