02  Methods

Deconstruction

I am referring here to Jacques Derrida as I want to describe this method as a transformative mode of thinking, reading, writing – and of course, visualising.

It is about the mindset of actively putting things, topics, existing visuals or designs apart and therefore ‘de-structuring’ them. It becomes a process of inspection, interpretation, but mostly questioning. It not only helps to clarify basics but also to get to the bottom line of a problem. On one hand, words can become images and on the other hand, images can be constructed by words. However, neither a word nor an image can be thought in isolation from the concept of the trace.

The method can consciously be used mainly for a process of translation. By formulating snippets, rearranging them in a way that they spin a network and make more and more connections, inside and outside the network they start to form and invent themselves. Through repetition and iteration forms of derivations can be created.

Project: Poster design
By: Stephanie Müller
Year: 2018

In a workshop on ‘Swiss poster design’ with Zürich based Leander Eisenmann, it was about to find new sources to come up with narrations in the form of a poster. I decided to work on a fictive poster design for Basel's ‘HeK museum’ and its past exhibition named ‘the unframed world’.

One exhibition photo was chosen and rearranged in a way that it emphasises on ‘the unframed’ by taking away its original framing. New spatial depths appeared and allowed to enter the poster from many angles.

The poster can be hung either way, it also works as a series of three.