Graphic Design and Illustration

In recent years, I have read a number of books on cartography which is the study of how maps are made and I cannot help but associate this practice with how our students have worked on their degree projects.

There is a naive notion that the task of a map is to depict the real world as accurately as possible. However, the role of the cartographer is not to neutrally reproduce a terrain, but to consciously make choices that serve a purpose. The proportions of the world map are distorted to give us the correct compass directions, while the metro map shows the stations in an overview, as round dots along colour-coded lines.

In the same way, this year’s degree projects show us the world, not through faithful reproductions, but through works designed to visualise something specific, from the city of Krakow as a typographic archive to the dark secrets of a forest area.

In the exhibition, there are investigations of materiality and text, of the movements of plants and the practice of printmaking, collections filled with meaning and the pure joy of pattern making.

There are also degree projects that interrogate beauty standards, those that expose sexism and racism, that are grounded in personal experiences, emotions and memories, and that demonstrate the power of shared spaces for creativity. The forms of expression include animation, print making, interactivity, welding as well as many more.

This year’s degree projects are maps of inner and outer places. They are works that not only depict the world, but make it bigger.

Jöns Mellgren
Lecturer and Programme Coordinator in Graphic Design and Illustration