Graphic #47: Current Issue

This issue of ‘Graphic’ brings together several projects by designers, design researchers, and artists who are concerned with contemporary social issues. In response to the 2016 Paris Agreement, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion (XR) was launched in 2018. In 2017, the Me Too movement erupted on social media with the hashtag #MeToo. The year 2019 witnessed the death of George Floyd and Hong Kong’s democracy movement. Since early 2020, the whole world has been affected by the coronavirus.

We invited 10 teams that approach such contemporary issues from various angles and provided them with 16 pages so that they could convey their research areas. As a result, their works of various unexpected styles have been put together in one issue under the title “Current Issue”. Some teams present their work in the form of a report, chronology, or journal. Some of them opt for talks, interviews, coloring books, PowerPoint, or declarations as a means to reinforce their arguments, thereby illustrating why their work is indeed part of “Current Issue”. It is worth noting that despite the varying topics and research methods, the teams all share the same kind of critical mind, and search for appropriate modes of expression.