Estonian Academy of Arts, MA Graphic Design (EKA GD MA)
The program takes an expanded view of graphic design, whose role can be understood as a way of ‘making things public.’ This idea is supported by providing opportunities for students to work through not only traditional models of graphic design—designing books, websites, posters, typefaces, videos—but also to write and publish texts, organize exhibitions, host lectures, teach workshops, and to create new possible models for exchange and circulation during their studies.
Since opening in August 2020, the program has so far published 28 student and staff initiated publications in a variety of sizes, formats, and print-runs. These publications have been produced in editions between 3 and 500 copies.
Sharing the table is a selection of publications from a temporary bookstore run by Björn Giesecke (MA '22), focusing on books that are considered rare in one or more instances, e.g., small print run, books without ISBNs, artists’ books and self-published titles that are difficult to distribute and disseminate through a regular bookstore.
Eight publications written, edited, designed and self-published by the 2023 graduating students of the Master of Arts in Graphic Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn.
"In the spirit of" by Oliver Long
"Glory Holes" by Carlo Canún
"A Place, A Place, A Place: Potentials" by Mark Foss
"The Word for World is a Grain of Sand" by Gréta Þorkelsdóttir
"As if I had fingers at the tip of my words" by Rita Davis
"Kuponi" by Alexandra Margetic
"Mutant on Mutant" by Michael Fowler
"Re-" by Patrick Zavadskis
The texts from these publications describe a range of phenomena from the diverse histories of graphic design and are published as the conclusion to student’s research into these phenomena and how they relate to their own practices, as well as to the broader field of graphic design. These include production methods, fandoms and self-organization, phantom limbs and cultural absences, unpacking political movements, queered alternate histories and realities, apparitions and ghostliness, permeability and access.
Two friends have similar frog tattoos. The only difference is that one of the frogs is in mid-jump, whereas the other is standing still. When the two friends stand next to each other, and depending on where their hands are, it appears as if the frog is about to jump or about to land – from standing still to mid-jump, or from mid-jump to standing still. The thoughts explored within this publication are in the mid-jump – they are still but trying to go somewhere.
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Group Work surveys works and research outcomes undertaken by eight students in the Graphic Design MA program at the Estonian Academy of the Arts between 2021–23. The release of the catalogue coincided with an exhibition within the graduate exhibition ‘Display Garden Display’ in the courtyard of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Tallinn where a set of vitrines displayed the work of student graphic output over the two years.
While the term “graduation project” suggests a climactic representation of individual achievement, this catalogue instead gives a broader view of the research process. Digressions, dead ends and openings are permitted. The aim of the publication is to archive the situations and dialogues pertaining to the work that might otherwise remain unrecorded. It surveys key moments of interaction between students, teachers and visiting lecturers. Group Work attempts to offer a response to a difficult question: How to export a discursive context?
Fabulations of Exiluity is an exquisite delight of the journeys led by memory and distance, by remembering and misremembering, and by the power that one has to control realities.
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„I chose this word headlining the following texts as I thought about the form of an insert, an errata, an injection point—interjection sounds familiarly close. A word picked up while browsing the library of the master’s program in Graphic Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn. In the midst of improvised structures is a publication in small dimensions turned on its head, I’m pulling out to read …“
Interjection is a gathering of situations, works, people, anecdotes, knowledge, and ephemera that accompany or support work or result in something new. Essentially, a collection of impressions and quotes, to actively following threads of interest and make these learning trails public.
Written, designed and printed in Tallinn, 2022