Any time the word anti is used in a title of an event, it is bound to prompt ferocious criticism. The word is instantaneously wrapped as anarchistic, counter-culture and looked with suspicion as disorderly by mainstream media.

However, anti is presently a rare word as much as it’s a trendy cliché: an indication that tactics that once worked in the past seem to be effortlessly digested and ignored today. In here lies perhaps the most evident mistake of the first iteration of the Anti-Design Festival (ADF), which took place in London between 18-26 September 2010.

Visual culture and communication design are fields that have been given little attention at the London Design Festival since it began in 2003. And it was here where ADF pertinently claimed space for alternative practices and different points of view. Naturally, this should be as important as the more glossy corporate design that has been showcased during London’s biggest celebration of design.

Even though the trendy alternative feel surrounding the event’s main location in Redchurch St. was almost suffocating, it would be unfair to look at ADF’s main site as representative of the whole range of events, which spread throughout East London. Still, it deserves some reflection.

The exhibition was divided into three main sections.

Inside the first space, an installation with old computers, messy desks and archives of old and now recycled projects were displayed in a chaotic way, suggesting that an ongoing work was taking place. Printers, fax machines, old phones, rusty cabinets and folders were piled into a simulation of intense activity. The look of it was very familiar, and could be described as a rushed, poor version of an installation by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn.

Underneath flyers of the interesting “subvertisement” Reverse the Wave (2010), I could find some unidentified prints. As loose pages flooded desks, it was more than often unclear what they were doing there or if one should look at it as just a simulacrum. Consequently, one had the disappointingly confusing experience of looking at some sheets by someone who was responding to something. This anonymity was almost consistent throughout, and while it was under the umbrella of a non-elitist approach, it did make it hard(er) to understand what were the intentions of the work and to consider and evaluate its pertinence.

As an aside, it may have been a mistake to try to judge the work through normal canons, because the event’s main curator, Neville Brody, was extremely interested in failure. By inverting and antagonizing basic established methods of defining quality, Brody attempted to disinform, rebelling against the status quo. Yet, wandering through the exhibition spaces, it seemed to be more of an easy refuge than a planned risk. To emphasize this idea, doing things fast appeared to be the dominant way through which disinformation was sought. From speed generation of objects to cheap under-developed “quick” manifestos, there was in this room a call for “action instead of blah blah blah”, as one poster boldly displayed.

The second room hosted the workshop space, manifesto wall, bar and some exhibited work.

To fail, or to make mistakes and experiment was the ultimate goal of the festival. On this quest, much of the hope was put on the act of chance. The problem is that quick exercises and ill-informed manifestos will most probably generate revivalist and inconsequent chance. Reliance and hope on chance alone is not enough. Planned chance and accident however, can be surprisingly and positively disruptive.

Unlike LDF’s guest blogger Puff & Flock, I was not “intoxicated by the plethora of refreshing work”. In fact, I found myself in an environment that it is possible to be seen in many student work in progress or even final shows in London. Moreover, anyone who has been to a few of this kind of events, knows that the process of finding something relevant and informed is as hard on these installation/ unfinished “exhibitions” as it is on the swanky framed ones. The third and last room, with its walls completely covered from top to bottom with prints, collages and paintings was the one that best demonstrated this idea.

Looking back, it is fundamental that space for failure exists, for unfinished and non-commercially viable ideas. What is even more fundamental is that this is sought through the continuity of this festival and by promoting discussions with people outside the troops that normally rally behind this kind of events regardless of its quality.

Even though the necessity and urgency of an alternative platform for design events is unquestionable, the biggest challenge and danger ADF will face is its potential forgetfulness, with its mistakes falling into oblivion and being undocumented.

As a result of carrying the word anti as prefix, events like the ADF will always suffer from the pressure of quickly delivering a cure to the plague they are trying to fight – especially when they announced they are a response to “25 years of cultural deep freeze“. While revolutions have proved in the past to be the ultimate social leap, it’s obvious that this “cure” cannot be achieved in two weeks – at least, not like this. However, through the creation of conditions of sustained criticality, different modes of production and thinking, and a continued existence with strong curatorial leadership unlike this first attempt, this may happen or at least contribute substantially towards a more global realization that designers are not on the artifact business, but in the consequence business.

The ADF seemed an important – yet frustratingly predictable – start of what anti-events (or alternative events) such as this could be in the future: a critical space for alternative practices, to foster informed making and especially to see experimentation as a means, and not just an end.

Communications Agency Digital Kitchen, produced in 2007 a video spoof of this reality, titled Designer Slash Model. During this short film, it is possible to read: Designer/ Animator/ Compositor/ Editor/ 3d Artist/ Producer/ Director/ Model. By raising a trend to ridiculousness, this film offers a funny perspective of this tendency applied to advertising agencies, while allowing us to constantly make extrapolations and observe the ironic suitable presence of slashes and 50º angled motion graphics.

The word slash is also undeniably connected to former Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Saul Hudson, who was nicknamed as such while still a young boy by a family friend because he was always in a hurry, zipping around from one thing to another.

Marvel Comics, too, houses a superhero called Slash (also know as Sister Agony). Slash wields razor-sharp metal claws, but because her mental age is that of a child, she is often easily defeated.

Razor-sharp is exactly the (cool) effect that the slash produces when applied on the background of a poster or when slicing a logo or an image. The intentions are varied. The most obvious are to illustrate the word and or to simulate a cut or division. Others follow, such as connecting two blocks of information, decoratively filling an empty area or most commonly just because, well, it looks nice.

Some institutions, such as DesignMiami/ Basel use the slash for obvious reasons, although its application reflects more of a trendy positioning of a modish brand than that of complicity between the two cities. Others, such as Breda’s Graphic Design Festival use it for purely decorative purposes (I call it graphicky). Regarding logos, it is possible to point Slice’s logo designed by Manual Creative, using the slash for a perceivable reason. The recent Harvard Art Museum logo designed by 2×4 has an even more evident voguish approach, even though they defend that the slash is a typographic device that signifies the connection between the core and the component.
The strokes (or slashes), normally have a 50-70º angle, generating the idea of exquisiteness, refinement and cutting-edge. They are a fierce, cool, and sexy option. And options are what the slash offers, by presenting multiple possibilities.

On this note, on issue 340 of Idea Magazine, it is possible to read the following text, which focuses on emerging design studios:

While widely varied due to cultural context and social/ environmental differences, all have a kinship in unique approaches to developing formal options for clients. The use of the word “option” as applied here is perhaps the most relevant key point for the latest wave of graphic design from abroad – perhaps the “solution” as an end result of graphic design as a process is a dead methodology. What are instead offered are graphic “options” in lieu of “solutions” – inquiries answered with inquiries, questions answered with questions. The work featured offers playful, tentative answers instead of cold, hard end results.

While at first it may seem forced the comparison between the slash as formal out-of-context cliché with pseudo neo-renaissance design as slash, it is simply a metaphor for stylistic inconsequence. On the rush to add another definition to one’s practice, following a swanky option (not solution) seems to be inevitable, as Andrew Blauvelt pointed out on Emigre 64 (2003): The fundamental principal of pluralism asks not in what style we should design, but rather that we design stylishly.

On the web, graphic design blogs appear to naturally replicate the selection of a certain slashy style. More than ever, they play a pivotal role on a designer’s education, its influences and references. They have a subtle – yet strong – power, not only over eager young design students but also over designers who, like little Saul Hudson “Slash”, are always zipping around from one thing to another. When time is scarce, instead of putting periods, it’s always easier, safer and let’s face it, cooler, to leave slashes/ options.

Digital Kitchen’s t-shirt slogan has been offering the most popular choice: hotness is always the tiebreaker/


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1  Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 1996. pp. 286