Curating Graphic Design and its History

'Curating Graphic Design and its History' surveys a selection of exhibitions by designers who are critically examining the ways in which graphic design is positioned historically. The essay includes a number of key examples - such as Bil'ak's 'Graphic Design in the White Cube', Brody's 'The Graphic Language of Neville Brody' and Friedman's 'Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History'- from outside Switzerland in order to offer insights applicable to the understanding of Swiss graphic design history. 'GraphicsRCA: Fifty Years'(2014,2015) forms the main exhibition case study with which the author, alongside Adrian Shaughnessy, Jeff Willis and Richard Doust, was co-curator and project lead. The exhibition presents one curatorial view of how through the archived work of RCA students and staff an institutional history emerges. The essay also shows the importantance of graphic design archives and how the role of the practitioner-historian has offered new insights to its broader professional and pedagogical history. This essay is an expanded version of original talks presented for “Mapping Graphic Design History in Switzerland” (27 February 2014, University of the Arts Bern, Switzerland) and a further iteration presented during “Graphic Design: Giving Form to History” held at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (26–27 November 2014).