User:Emily2612/sandbox

Overview

The L.i.P collective, which stands for liberation in print is a group of 26 women and non binary designers who formed together as a result of a workshop initiated by le signe, the National Centre of Graphic Design in Chaumont, France.

This workshop occurred during the COVID – 19 pandemic and was created to research into feminist publications throughout history. Evey Wednesday, the team met remotely due to social distancing rules to share their findings and begin creating an archive of periodicals.  

Futuress

The workshop was faciliated by futuress a queer, intersectional feminist platform whose aim is to critizse the democratic design industry and amplify marginalised and oppressed voices. They have a website online that publishes articles and stories by their own team and also in collaboration with other design organisations. They view design as a social and political practice and want to find ways in making this practice as inclusive as possible. The organisation was created in 2019, where at first they wanted to be a library for design books that were missing or yet to be imagined. To teach design in a new, more modern way that targets current issues head on. Over time, the organisation’s main focus became on individual voices that were missing in design’s history.

Publication

Feminist Findings

The research carried out during the workshop resulted in the feminist findings magazine, a collection of 20th century feminist periodicals. The zine acts as a voice for hundreds of female designers who have been lost over time. Every member that was working on the magazine, created their own articles built upon months of research on female publications. Each article covers a different type of publication, whether that be a journal, advertisement, leaflet or poster. It explores the contents of these publications, how they were created and the unique niche stories behind them such as how an underground salon in Paris disguised itself as a tea party to discuss radical political ideas. This story was published by Fanny Maurel and is titled ‘Financing feminism through beads and brioche’. The magazine goes on to explore many other historical events such as the 1970s women’s feminist movement and France’s “veil affair”.

Format

The magazine was created using a riso-printer, a spot colour based type of printing. This allows for a larger range of printing colours and a brighter look overall. This resulted in an extremely colourful magazine, with even the images being printed in one solid colour.  The zine contains 23 articles, each with a different author and was printed to a limit of 120 copies. There are no new plans to create a second issue, although the content is gradually shared online on the futuress website.

Exhibition

The exhibition that followed this, after Covid 19 social distancing rules were relaxed, took place in A-Z Presents in Berlin. The curated exhibition is composed of photographs, magazines, quotations, excerpts and many more, covering each of the stories featured in the articles. The exhibition also included an audio installation based on the correspondence between sovet women and their pen pals in the west. It was referred to as a ‘footnote’ to the magazine, providing extra context around the articles and an explanation of the process that went into the creation.