Glossary of Undisciplined Design

D for Dysfunctional Workspaces, M for Messy History, S for Style Defense, U for Unstable Signs - The Glossary of Undisciplined Design (GUD) is a loose collection of disobedient strategies, empowering role models and critical tools in graphic design compiled by Anja Kaiser and Rebecca Stephany. It looks at undisciplinarity as a feminist strategy to break down entrenched rules, discriminatory structures and biased role models.

Starting from the first outline of the GUD (2019), HfG students developed their own project works in the seminar by appropriating the glossary entries, applying them or formulating supplementary glossary terms. The symposium of the same name was developed collectively at the same time and took place at the Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig at the end of February 2020. In early 2021, the GUD was finally published in book form by Spector Books. It includes the glossary terms of the editors Rebecca Stephany and Anja Kaiser, the symposium speakers and the students. It also documents lectures and workshops at the symposium.

The GUD celebrates heroes of non-conformity, tolerance and critical faculties in graphic design. The glossary dismantles the Eurocentric and male-dominated historiography of design and complements it with perspectives from contemporary designers. The form of the glossary serves as a supposedly didactic tool with intentional gaps and breaks and is designed for multiple definitions, additions and contradictions. In doing so, the GUD combines a variety of theories and narratives with recalcitrant tools and strategies to empower alternative design practices.

Projects developed by students during the seminar range from social media experimentation, glossary performance, failing plant colour prints, algae food bar, amateur design and distracting installations, to unpredictable grid lines and collective swirl baking.

The three-day symposium at the GfZK brought together international designers from different generations and traditions, whose socio-critical and emancipatory practices in the field of contemporary graphic design were discussed in workshops and lectures. It served as a testing ground and production site for the polyphonic extensions of the glossary.

The resulting GUD Handbook brings together a fragmentary variety of theories and narratives of varying density and collective authorship: from visual essay, practical experiment, interview or advertorial to poem, speculative narrative or academic text. With around 55 contributions from 20 international designers, activists, educators and theorists, the Glossary of Undisciplined Design explores models, tools and contradictions.