The Things That Make Us Grow

A conversation with Anja Lutz , art book designer and founder of A—Z Presents  Space for Experimental Graphic Design in Berlin.

A—Z is a space for experimental graphic design. I’ve always been interested in graphic design that is not applied and instead overlaps with other disciplines, like music, art, performance, etc.. A—Z showcases individual designers who transcend the boundaries of their own practices and thus expand our understanding of what graphic design can be. Currently, we are showing Mirtha Dermisache, an artist from Argentina, who lived from 1940 to 2012. She was engaged in asemic writing, an artistic writing practice that doesn’t have any semantic content, that is “illegible.” I was totally amazed by her work since I first encountered it in 2012. She’s not really known outside Argentina, and I have been keen to introduce her work in Germany. She was an artist, not a graphic designer, but you can clearly see how she uses marks that resemble letters and how she uses this writing in complex layouts, referencing different publication formats. These can be browsed in the exhibition in original prints and facsimile presentations.

There are not many – it is a general problem that experimental design is not shown in art museums, as it is not strictly speaking “art,” but it is also not shown in design museums that tend to focus on applied design, showcasing the best posters or the most beautiful chairs. All these amazing designers that are pushing the boundaries of the field – they are not exhibited. Every country has a bit of a different approach, but in most places, graphic design is still considered a problem-solving tool for business. People often don’t know how broad, exciting, and transdisciplinary graphic design can be. There are hardly any spaces like A—Z. Several visitors have been asking: Why don’t we have something like this in our city? Some places luckily exist, some, however, just for a limited time. There is Parco Gallery in Milan or Fisk Projects in Portland, Oregon. In Berlin, there is Colorama, mostly devoted to Riso printing, and einBuch.haus in Pankow dedicated to showcasing artists’ books.

When I moved to the current location, I was thinking about a concept for the front room that has a large window facing Torstrasse. As an art book designer, the obvious choice would have been to display art books, but I felt more excited and energized by the idea of creating a space for the more unconventional graphic designers that I have always been inspired by: like The Rodina, who does performative graphic design, Na Kim, who works spatially, or Inkahoots, who are politically engaged. And there are a lot of questions to examine: How can we design? How to collaborate? How to open up to the public? Also, the space is really adaptable – you can squeeze in eighty people, but ten people can also be enough.

It was „Library of Shapes, Texts and Structures”¹ by Andrea Tinnes, a German type designer, typographer, and educator based in Berlin. We showcased her printed archive of shapes, letters, and other graphic ephemera, neatly categorized on more than 4000 pages. Alongside this, we exhibited her large abstract typographic prints, that she composed using the resources of her private archive.

I like to present the process whenever it’s possible. To name some examples besides Andrea Tinnes’ – we had a collaborative project „Time is Running” to make posters for the Extinction Rebellion movement – many designers took part and we collaboratively printed and overprinted their designs. We also had an exhibition about being self-sufficient as a designer – Dutch designer Mark van Wageningen² offered a series of free workshops accompanying the exhibition – a D.I.Y. experiment in designing recycled paper, producing handmade plant-based ink, printing, and soap making. I see this desire to build something physical, to use our hands, as a counter-balance to the digital world. Actually, digital comes from the word digitus – which in Latin means finger. I wonder how we can bring back this physical element to design. In June, I taught an asemic writing workshop – we created abstract letter shapes by hand and then uploaded them into the simple app Calligraphr to create a font. This act of combining the manual with digital formats is really interesting and important to me.

An artist friend had given me this very valuable tip: always get a professional photographer to document what you have done. Only if you have good documentation can you communicate and share what you do with people beyond the duration of the exhibition. I used to think that I could handle this on my own, but I learned that when running a space like this, I need to delegate some tasks to maintain the high quality I always aim for.

A—Z attracts mainly fellow designers. Our street, Torstrasse in Berlin Mitte, is quite busy – many people just walk by. (That’s actually how we found this place – MS) Therefore, we are mindful of making our exhibitions visible day and night. For the exhibition of Mirtha Dermisache, we have a small TV in the storefront that shows her artist books being slowly leafed through, so a part of the exhibition can be experienced even when the gallery is closed. The fact that our projects are often interdisciplinary enables us to target wider audiences. Some exhibitions involved music, like Niklaus Troxler’s Tape Works, or they offered community-building workshops, to name just a few, and these activities attract additional people from different backgrounds.

This is a tedious subject. We have written many applications, but never got any serious public support. A—Z is unique in its transdisciplinary design focus, but for the funding bodies, I feel that it is a disadvantage not to fit a very specific category. At the moment, we are just tired of applying any further and see what we can do by funding ourselves. But this is draining a lot of energy, and I do not know how much longer we can self-fund A—Z.

Once we were a bit exhausted with all the logistics of the exhibitions, and together with my partner, we revived the “Flipper” bar that we ran in 2001 in the same building. The bar setting was used for several months at A—Z to host the Counter Sessions – one-evening events, presentations, and talks, with the possibility to socially connect over a drink at the counter. The green bar counter is still at A—Z, whereas its original pixel-style curtain will now become part of the collection of Buchstabenmuseum in Berlin.

The A—Z Collective was a one-year project – a chapter of its own. Rather than being the main person responsible and collaborating with interns and freelancers, I wanted to explore the potential of collective working. I was also interested in applying my experiences from a community-building residency at Life itself  in France. In 2022, together with Emily Smith and Jocelyn Ames, we started with three free kick-off workshops to build the collective. The workshops shared tools to generate ideas together, the structures to implement them, and ways to translate them into a program for A—Z. The exhibition program of this year focused on collectivity and co-creation. Together with Sarah Boris, we co-curated the exhibition „Exquisite Curiosities” that displayed special design pieces brought by the visitors. We also turned A—Z into a shop for two months: The Super Collective Market no.1 Yellow, where members of the collective and beyond could offer yellow items for sale. It also allowed people with other ideas and skills to contribute: we also had a yellow wine tasting session, a butter-making workshop, and a presentation of The International Banana Museum . Finally, the A—Z Collective created the crowd-sourced, modular publication, „Recipes for Connecting”, that creates a patchwork of insights into “connecting” on individual, interpersonal, human, non-human, and collective levels.gg

These “recipes” illustrate many different methods of connecting – offering practical social tools, humorous prompts, gentle reminders, alternative structures of communication, and scrumptious meals. Each visitor was invited to assemble chosen pages as they pleased, self-bind on-site, and create a personalized compendium. The design of recipes was made by the individual contributors, some of them were not designers and initially I had some doubts about the quality of some of those designs. After all, we are not a community center, but a design space. However, the different designs represented the inclusive nature of the project and the carefully curated display with the different colored papers turned this into a very attractive project that we also brought to the Index Art Book Fair in Mexico City. Sometimes it is enough to design the right container formally and conceptually.

It was a speculative research on women graphic designers from Southwest Asia and North Africa and their diaspora. The project used the exhibition platform as an editorial space to collect, reveal, retell, and record the work and untold stories of the women graphic designers, calligraphers, typographers, and illustrators who play key roles in shaping and rethinking the visual and material culture of the region. This project was important to me as it widened the scope of graphic design beyond the Western context, by showcasing and reflecting other cultures and scripts, such as Arabic and Persian. The result of the research will shortly be published in a book by Khatt Foundation .

In some of the exhibitions, we had prints of other design objects for sale, but for some reason, this hasn’t met with much interest. It seems that there is little culture to collect graphic design. To find out, I decided to ask my designer colleagues if they collect graphic design. What kind? And why – or why not? It turned out that very few graphic designers collect graphic design. I was surprised, because how can we expect other people to take the artistic value of graphic design seriously if we ourselves don’t invest in it? The questionnaire, however, revealed the interesting fact that many graphic designers have other kinds of collections: kitchen sponges, fake documents, toilet paper, Russian cigarette packages, green objects… This was the beginning of what later became the exhibition Graphic.Designers.Collectors that showcased 32 different personal collections by graphic designers³.

I find that many of the young students are too focused on a cool final visual rather than on the process and creative explorations. I encourage them to experiment and to look for inspiration beyond the field of graphic design. As part of any project, I usually ask them to go out for one hour and find inspiration in their surroundings, in a crack in the floor, a discarded object, the shape of a cloud, a sound… I want them to be more open-minded and to connect different fields and experiences and to challenge their perception. I don’t believe in teaching someone to become a specialist. I rather want the students to think and look beyond their discipline. This is the core of creativity for me and a skill that we will need to grow to face the challenges of today. When I teach, I mostly do projects that I have never done before and connect them to subjects and questions that interest me at that moment. It makes the teaching more fresh and exciting for me and also for the students, as we try to find answers and ideas together.

I have learned the tools and frameworks for this workshop at the community-building residency that I had mentioned. I applied them to a workshop where the subject, content, form, and organization were entirely developed by the participants. I was merely the facilitator, using these exciting and creative tools, such as Sociocracy, Liberating Structures, Microsolidarity, and many more. They allow people to be seen and heard and engage in a collaborative process. They define certain parameters and boundaries, but at the same time, they are open and offer space for all kinds of play, experimentation, and expression. Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy and her many podcasts are wonderful inspirations, and her quote “Move at the speed of trust” is key to all community building. The year of the A—Z Collective was an amazing experience. However, I am not a community builder, but a graphic designer and now, I want to sharpen the focus around graphic design again. I do not like things that are set in stone, I do not like rules that imply right or wrong. Graphic design for me is about interaction, communication, and connecting with the world around us. So, I’m still experimenting and use A—Z to explore new questions, formats, and collaborations. Our work needs to be inspired by new things that make us grow.

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Anja Lutz is a Berlin-based book designer specializing in contemporary art publications. She was the initiator and designer of the experimental publication platform shift! that has won numerous awards and was present at various festivals and exhibitions. Anja is also co-founder and art director of The Green Box, a publisher of artist books, where she is developing and designing books in close collaboration with the respective artists. In 2019, she founded A—Z Space for Experimental Graphic Design. Lutz has studied at LCP / University of the Arts in London and the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. She has been a visiting professor at American University of Beirut, Hyperwerk in Basel, and Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle.

anjalutz.com 

A—Z presents Berlin, Torstrasse 94 a-z-presents.com  / instagram.com/a.to.z.presents 

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The interview was conducted on July 9, 2024 in the A—Z Presents space by Maja Starakiewicz, Paweł Krzywdziak, and Katarzyna Janota.

1. From the Artist’s website: The ‘Library of Shapes, Texts and Structures’ is an ongoing visual research project and a personal archive of graphic elements. The title is programmatically chosen because the “library” encompasses the ongoing collecting, noting, documenting, processing, ordering, cataloging, and archiving of very different visual and text-based materials. https://typecuts.com/lostas_exhibit_print 
2. From designer’s bio: Mark van Wageningen is the founder of Novo Typo, a typographic design studio and font foundry based in Amsterdam. The design output of Novo Typo is a mix of commissions and self-initiated projects, and it has attracted the interest of a variety of international design magazines, blogs, and publications. As a self-proclaimed ambassador of digital and analogue multicolored typography, van Wageningen presents the work of Novo Typo in several international design conferences and festivals. He is the author of design awarded books, such as “Typewood”, “Novo Typo Color Book”, and “Type and Color”).
3. You can check Anjas Guided Tour through the exhibition here .