Presented by National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Art Book Fair in conjunction with the RMIT Design Futures Lab, the International Symposium on the Future of Design for Publishing features leading international and local speakers discussing new genres in publishing.
The Symposium is convened by Associate Professor Brad Haylock, Program Manager, Master of Communication Design, RMIT University. Speakers include Na Kim, designer (Korea); Freek Lomme, publisher and curator, Onomatopee (The Netherlands); David Blamey, publisher, Open Editions (United Kingdom); Sophy Williams, Senior Rights Executive, Black Inc.; James Langdon, designer/researcher, Eastside Projects (United Kingdom) and Fayen d’Evie, publisher, 3-ply (Melbourne).
Symposium ticket includes VIP entry to the Melbourne Art Book Fair Preview event.
The International Symposium on the Future of Design for Publishing is presented by the RMIT Design Futures Lab and generously supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
Speakers
Brad Haylock is a designer, publisher and academic. He is an Associate Professor of Design in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, where he is program manager of the Master of Communication Design and co-director of the Design Futures Lab research group. His research interests span book typography, independent publishing and sociologies of critique. He is founding editor of Surpllus, a publisher of books focusing on critical and speculative practices across art, design and theory.
Na Kim is a graphic designer based in Seoul. After studying product design at KAIST and graphic design at Hong-ik University in Korea, she attended Werkplaats Typografie in the Netherlands. She had a design studio in Amsterdam and currently works in Seoul, where she is a member of Table Union and remains involved in the artist-run space Common Center. The focus in her own work and commissioned cultural projects has been on visual language. In addition to numerous other projects, she initiated the publishing effort umool umool and was responsible for the concept and design of GRAPHIC magazine from 2009 to 2012.
David Blamey is a London-based artist and proprietor of the independent publishing imprint Open Editions. His work encompasses several activities, including teaching, publishing and exhibiting, which overlap to form a multidimensional practice that defies easy categorisation. To this end, his work is positioned consciously within a range of public situations, both inside and beyond the art gallery. He recently released an edited book Specialism (2016) and a record Rural (2015) and The Wire described his O.K. sound project for My Dance the Skull’s Voice Studies series as ‘something quite strange, creepy and good’.
James Langdon is an independent graphic designer. He is one of six directors of the artist-run gallery Eastside Projects in Birmingham, UK; and founder of the itinerant School for Design Fiction. In 2012, he received the Inform International Award for Conceptual Design, presented by Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany.
Fayen d’Evie is an artist and writer based in rural Victoria, and the founder of 3-ply, which focuses on publication, writing, editing and translation as an extension of art practice. In exhibition settings, 3-ply operates as a shifting collaborative, investigating artist-led publishing as an experimental site for the development and discursive framing of texts. Current themes include: archival narratives, performative publication, decentering authorship, and mobilizing conversation to leverage the co-creation, mutation and dispersal of texts. Fayen is a studio resident at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, and a PhD candidate in Curatorial Practice at Monash University.
Freek Lomme is a freelance curator, poet, lecturer, moderator and writer as well as founding director and chief curator of publishing house and project space Onomatopee. He studied arts and science at the university Maastricht, holds an MA in art policy and cultural identity, but learned in practice. Freek is particularly interested in visual culture within the experience economy and modes of collaboration and organisation. At large, he practices a sort of poetic and experimental conceptualisation of wonder.
With over fifteen years experience in publishing, Sophy Williams has recently moved into the role of Senior Rights Executive at Black Inc. She acquires books from English-language markets to publish in Australia and licenses Black Inc. books overseas, in translation, audio formats, and film and television adaptation. Sophy has spoken in Australia and abroad on the business of publishing, including at the Dublin Writers’ Festival and the London Book Fair. In 2015, she co-edited The Bakehouse Projectwith Helen Marcou and Quincy McLean.
