Here, elsewhere

The reasons for this issue

In this issue of Progetto Grafico we aim to investigate the different ways in which the relationship between a here and an elsewhere — both starting points and destinations, sources and reworked versions, mother tongue and foreign language … — unfolds within visual communication, fostering transposition processes of form and content, codes, styles, media and contexts.

Text by Serena Brovelli, Claude Marzotto, Silvia Sfligiotti

This article (qui in italiano) has been featured on Progetto Grafico, an international graphic design magazine published by Aiap, the italian association for visual communication design. The issue #32, “Here, elsewhere”, has been edited by Serena Brovelli, Claude Marzotto and Silvia Sfligiotti. You can subscribe to the magazine here and buy the current issue here.

Here and elsewhere are correlative points that define one another to indicate orientation in space and time.
The expanse between them is a condition for all movement: without difference there is no thought or connection.
The relationship with otherness is at the heart of all the processes of transposing the forms and contents, codes, styles, media and contexts through which visual communication — intermedial and international by vocation — helps circulate knowledge and the imaginary.

The premise from which this issue of Progetto grafico started is the plurality of points of view. Every here — geographic, temporal or disciplinary — is the elsewhere of another person. To begin, we invited four designers and studios from different cities around the world to participate in a simple visual experiment. They were asked to create two images, one of their own city and the second of that of another participant. Scattered among the pages of the magazine, the postcard game sparks a relay of two-way connections. We use images to convey our experience to others, but also to make apparently distant visions and languages our own.

This continuous information exchange undertakes different routes and transformations. Translations, migrations, contaminations — the keywords chosen to set the scene — prompted only some of the possible trajectories. Investigating ways of popularizing science, clandestine communication, design semiotics and typography, the relationship between cinema and the book, the surface of the printed image, and the inner space of photography, the authors’ contributions in fact offer a far more heterogeneous sampling of movements. With its incidental, subjective and temporary nature, the diversity of approaches appears intrinsic to a collective reflection on the experience of moving.