About

14-30 May, Toolbox Coworking

Thanks to the unique collaboration with Graphic Matters – the festival of Breda -, and the Embassy and Consulate of The Netherlands in Italy, Graphic Days® is presenting for the first time the exhibition dedicated to the Palace of Typographic Masonry at Toolbox Coworking, the Graphic Days® festival venue. The Palace is an imaginary museum of Graphic Design focusing on the value and diversity of the craft. It is designed by the Dutch graphic designer Richard Niessen, who will be present during the event. This utopian palace brings together Niessen’s graphic design experiments and his research that together create an interdisciplinary cultural history and new theory of typography.

In the last five years, the project collected more than 750 visual artefacts and described these on index cards. The exhibition itinerary will consist in a tour of an imaginary institution through 195 exhibits, organized as a progression through nine stages: the departments of Sign, Symbol, Ornament, Construction, Poetics, Game, Order, Craft and Practice.

An installation of 26 pop-up drawers shines its light on all kinds of aspects of the creative profession. The issues they explore range from the diversity of writing systems to the ways of constructing narratives, and from the involving aspect of play in design to the endless possibilities of an ornamental system.

Graphic Matters is partnering with Graphic Days® in producing the poster exhibition by Daan Rietbergen and presenting ‘The Palace of Typographic Masonry” by Richard Niessen.

Besides this project, the organizers will present a series of indoor and outdoor exhibitions with a selection of artworks by Dutch artists and designers that already take part in the festival’s network, such as Studio Dumbar, Trapped in Suburbia, Studio Thonik, High on Type e Daan Rietbergen.

Eyes On the Netherlands has a digital events programme with interviews and contributions from the international guests who are involved in the initiative.

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Graphic Days® is a cultural project dedicated to international visual design. From famous icons of history to contemporary innovative professionals, it describes all the aspects of visual communication, including its contaminations with other disciplines. Every year, Graphic Days® involves the most relevant artists, professionals and agencies of the international scene in a widespread festival. 

This project aims at supporting the cultural value of visual communication, presenting new inspiring tools and promoting exchange with the audience through debates, exhibitions and installations.

Since its first edition in 2016, Graphic Days® has cooperated with an international network and has become an observatory on visual design, thanks to its research on possible connections between this discipline and today’s global issues.

It combines social commitment and environmental sustainability. Its main focus is the responsibility of the visual designer in the narration of the relation between different systems and their implications.

Among the topics of the projects, symbolism and tradition are two crucial themes, especially for their relationship with the universal language of graphic design. This connection combines also form and content, meaning and significance, culture and nature. New tools can go along with traditional techniques, giving rise to new creative ideas.

Graphic Days® is promoted by Print Club Torino, a cultural and multi-project based center that combines social innovation design and visual culture with a wide programme of activities, events, collaborations and projects that deal with social inclusion and accessibility.