Emerging Markets: Design and Publishing with Hardworking Goodlooking

In management terminology, “emerging markets” refers to those markets that, by virtue of being less defined, offer more opportunity for long-term profit. By the same token, since precedents for operating in these areas are difficult to identify, these markets are more subject to risk factors. For graphic designers, economic and technological changes have fundamentally altered industries we traditionally work for (such as publishing, advertising, and broadcast), and have opened up avenues to new ways of working. These new methods of practice involve not only design, but also research and strategy, technology integration, independent publishing, and even nation-building. Designers are required not only to respond to RFPs, but also to create frameworks that enable them to make the work they want to make.

Teaming to examine how emergent forms of design practice respond to the opportunities and risks our contemporary world presents, AIGA/NY and the Museum of Arts and Design partner to present the four-talk series Emerging Markets and Graphic Design. Over the course of these evenings a variety of practices involved in design (ranging from small and loose collectives to corporate studios) come together to look at how designers are using the tools and craft of design to navigate previously uncharted territories.

Talk 3: Design and Publishing
Newly accessible and alternative methods of printing have allowed designers to break free from the authority of offset printing, publish independently, and build their own audiences. How do designers become publishers, and how do publishers transition from being producers of objects to platforms for ideas? AIGA/NY and MAD partner to present an evening exploring new emergent possibilities for publishing as object, approach and framework.

SPEAKERS
Hardworking Goodlooking (HWGL) presents pills of information gathered, lessons learned, insights formed, headway made and failures sustained over four years of social practice and radical book making in a developing world context. As a publishing house and design studio, HWGL arises out of the conviction to push critical content in the Philippines, promote a decolonized local aesthetic and engage with vernacular forms of artistry. Their books are original vessels of research content—mostly self-generated through the efforts of The Office of Culture and Design (OCD), the platform for social practice projects that gave birth to HWGL. Their printed matter is made in unkempt corners of Metro Manila, favouring cottage industry print shops as suppliers, despite (and because of) the fact that they are unaccustomed to servicing author-based content. These tiny presses generally have less than 10 employees. They use antiquated machinery. They are the embodiment of DIY. Subsequently, HWGL-OCD books reflect the precarious conditions that the developing world author, artist or academic faces for publishing critically-inclined content outside of the hegemony. These publications are psychogeographical fragments that reveal the environment in which they are created. Smudges, smells, errors, cracks, wrinkles and rough edges.

MODERATOR
Michael Greenblatt is a graphic designer and an Art Director at 2×4. He also maintains a design partnership, Greenblatt-Wexler, that focuses on print and screen-based projects for a variety of cultural and commercial clients. His work has been exhibited at White Columns and MoMA and is in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at the Butler Library at Columbia University and the AIGA Graphic Design Archives. Michael holds a BA from Haverford College and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. He has taught as an adjunct faculty member at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute.