29 May 2016
Share
Dan Solbach (1987) is a graphic designer who lives and works in Basel and Berlin. In the last years, he has established a practice almost exclusively focusing on graphic design for artists and contemporary art institutions. Since 2014, he has designed the corporate identity for the Kunsthalle Zürich and since 2013, he is in charge of the visual identity of the Westfälischer Kunstverein. Besides corporate identities, Dan works as a book designer for various artists and institutions, such as Tobias Madison, Dena Yago, Kaspar Müller for Flash Art, White Cube in London, Eloise Hawser und Kathi Hofer for Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (mumok). His latest project with Rochelle Feinstein for Lenbachhaus München will be published soon.
For Dan, Utopia represents the stage at which design annihilated itself, which consequently means that design is not capable of changing society. This may sound dystopian but this is exactly what pushes him to come up with both innovative and critical graphic patterns.
How relevant is the notion of UTOPIA within your practice, approaches and strategies?
A few years ago, I started to think about an utopia where design has completely annihilated itself. In my point of view, graphic design deals mostly with translation by means of structure. If we apply a modernist – or better: neo-modernist – aim of a „perfect“ solution, then the latter will lead to graphic design becoming obsolete. What for many might be dystopic is a delightful thought to me, as within my practice I’m more interested in a non-formal approach and I try to keep a critical stance on my profession.
Utopia is defined as the imagination of an ideal system or pattern of a civil organisation. How do you see the role of creative practice within this concept? Or otherwise, can design change society – referring to a common utopian aspiration to create a new society through design?
I don’t think design can change society. If I wanted to change the world, I’d have become a politician or scientist. Or an oligarch.
Are there any other manifestos, publications or thinkers that have influenced your work or mindset?
I don’t really care about other’s principles. I’m personally really interested in anti-design movements in proto-post-modern tendencies in Italian design of the 1960s and ’70s, and the work of Bern Porter remains a cornerstone since years.
More about Dan Solbach here.
