Post-Identity Design
This exhibition showcases work from the 2016 MFA Graphic Design Topic Studio Debranding and Post-Identity Design. Students investigated the changing landscape where visual identity operates as developments in technology blur distinctions between private and public entities and drive complex shifts in notions of agency and power. The course aimed to pose alternatives, within and beyond graphic design, to the capital-oriented purposes of branding and the absolutist logic of design itself.
The exhibition takes into account the inherent limitations of designing a show before it happens and works to enable post-production as a means for reflection and reconfiguration — creating scenarios that favor photographic representation over “real-life” experience. Throughout the run of the show the class will use the space as a workshop area and develop strategies to enable the editing of documentation through digital mediums.
Projects
Subversive Guidelines focuses on contemporary identities for cultural institutions. The project highlights the limitations of identity design even within progressive approaches.
New Territories focuses on the relationship between digital and physical spaces. Using identity design as a means of investigation, students reconsidered traditional ideas of borders and governance.
Post-Truth Machines focuses on the fabrication and manipulation of reality through visual language. Each symbol on display was created and distributed through automated means in order to validate fictions and challenge misinformation.
Works By: Beizi Zhang, Chuofan Zheng, Emily Scheffler-Jones, Erin Reagan, Lai Xu, Louisa Savage, Sarah Weitzman, Tianfu Liu, Wenbin Li, Wenqiao Deng, and Yanhongrui Zhuang
