2024 for me is under the sign of signs. I have been in the subject since 1992, when I translated the biblical creation story into contemporary hieroglyphics. Since then, computers and the internet have brought with them a flood of icons, and our analog life is teeming with them as well.
Every now and then design studios treat themselves to my talk on »signs of life« as a »learning lunch«. In it, I speak for about three quarters of an hour about the related phenomena – so it’s lunch and food for thoughts at the same time. Let me know if you are interested in it, too.
Icon spell – a global visual language
An idea that is thousands of years old has been on my mind for a long time: all early cultures (Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan signs, Scandinavian runes, etc.) knew how to communicate by lining up pictorial symbols. Recently, it has reappeared worldwide (emojis, Bliss Symbolics, LoCos etc). People of different cultures, ages and sociotopes could – so I believe – realise a functioning visual world language together. Here you will find out more about my project and its first steps into the world.
On September 19 and 20 I will talk about my vision at The Symbol Group’s next online conference. This two-day conference will be about »Icons for Society: Past, Present and Future – An Exploration of 40 years of Symbol Culture« and it will be funded by The British Academy. You can get your tickets here. Immediately afterwards, I will be giving several Icon spell workshops at the Goethe Institute in San Francisco. One of them will be at the first edition of the Europe in the Park festival by the European Union Delegation on September 21st, at Peacock Meadow in the Golden Gate Park.
In October, I will be giving another Icon spell Workshop at the Media University of Applied Sciences in Berlin.
In November, I will be giving my lecture in German at the Typographische Gesellschaft München. In December, I am invited to give this lecture in Japan. The Dōshisha joshi daigaku, an art college in Kyoto, is organising a conference on climate change and communication. As part of this, I will be giving an Icon spell workshop. My works on, with and using icons will also be exhibited.
What else?
At the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd in November, I will be giving a workshop on »toilet paper – design for the arse«. At the Munich Typographical Society, I will be giving my »Talking about Design« workshop on 22 and 23 November.
Also, I have just set up a new Instagram account on which I will now occasionally post my mother’s work, Sö Gudehus.