Eva van der Hoek, NL

Graphic Designer

About︎︎︎

A growing part of the graphic design discourse has dematerialized and has shifted into an attitude that engages with its outside world. Thereby graphic design has achieved a certain status, enabling a contribution to more social responsibility and innovativeness. Within my research, I investigate the importance of this shift, but most of all, the way it is done. When we engage towards social change through design, we hold an ethical responsibility that we should be aware of.

The research starts with art education, where young designers are trained to become critical thinkers. But why do we engage with social issues as graphic designers and in what way? Does the academy provide us with enough tools to be ethical and innovative in a project? Or does the curriculum need to be refined? The graphic design discourse is constantly evolving, but the focus to discuss it publicly has been increasingly lost. By creating opportunities for discussion, we can use these examples to contribute to our future efforts.

With the goal of being broadly distributed throughout the academy, it aims to engage graphic design students, beginners, teachers, and professionals in actively reflecting on our role and working methods. To ensure accessibility, the newspaper is distributed free of charge.

Divided into six chapters, it features three interviews and multiple highlighted projects. The interviews were conducted with teachers, students, and artists.

We had the honor of designing the ‘23 graduation catalogue for HKU Media. In our design, we focused on our time during studies at HKU, which included a break due to Covid. This inspired the inclusion of a ‘break’ in the design, visually separating images from text. The theme of resilience symbolizes our return from this setback.