Author: demetrios@europeandesign.org

Barbara Junod is an art historian, a museologist and the longstanding curator of the graphics collection at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. The focal points of the collection include commercial graphics, editorial design and typography, which are also core areas of her research, exhibition, publication and jury activities.

Research that Barbara conducted with funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation on the graphics of the chemical company Geigy (today Novartis) and the typography of Wolfgang Weingart led to publications and exhibitions in Europe and China. Other graphics exhibitions curated by her, some featuring catalogs, included “Les Suisses de Paris” (2016), “3D Lettering on Buildings” (2018), “Haettenschweiler A–Z” (2022) and “Helmut Schmid Typography” (2024). Barbara recently co-curated the museum’s permanent exhibition and is now mounting a motion graphics exhibition.

Since her collection is affiliated with the Zurich University of the Arts, Barbara collaborates with its design department, but also works with other design institutions and independent studios.

Mathieu Cieters is a Belgium-based graphic designer, web developer, researcher, educator and curator working at the intersection of visual communication, digital culture, and contemporary typography. He trained in graphic design at KASK in Ghent and continued his typographic education at the Plantin Institute of Typography, grounding his practice in both critical reading and meticulous making.

Since 2014 he has run Studio Studio in Ghent, a small graphic and web bureau whose work spans art direction, identity systems, editorial design, type design and custom web development, moving between print and web with a conceptual, research-led approach.

Alongside commissioned work, Cieters curates Another Graphic, an online archive dedicated to typographically minded graphic design, treating the archive as a tool for looking closely at how design is edited, selected, and circulated. He teaches at LUCA School of Arts, where he shares methods that connect research, form, and code, and approaches design as a public language shaped as much by editing as by authorship.

Manon Bruet is a Paris-based art director, author, editor, and design educator whose work focuses on the critical, editorial, and cultural dimensions of graphic design. Trained at ESAAB (Nevers) and ENSAB (Lyon), she has been active within the French and European design discourse through writing, teaching, and curatorial collaboration.

Alongside her involvement in cultural and institutional projects, Manon’s practice is strongly oriented toward authorship, mediation, and the transmission of design knowledge. Since 2017, she has been teaching in art and design schools, contributing to the education of emerging designers and fostering critical reflection on graphic design as a cultural practice. Since 2020 she maintains her own design studio.

She regularly writes for books and journals dedicated to design and visual culture, including Revue Faire, Back Office, and Color Library (Maximage), where her work engages with questions of representation, editorial form, and the role of design in contemporary cultural production.

Filip Blažek (born 1974) is a Czech typographer, educator and the founder of Designiq studio.

Having studied cultural studies at Charles University in Prague, he has been shaping Czech typography since the 1990s. His work spans editorial and book design, corporate identity and public education.

Filip lectures at UMPRUM and ARCHIP and is the author of Typokniha (Typographic Book) and Typomřížky (Typographic Grids), two bestselling books that are essential reading for designers. He was also a member of the editorial office of TYPO magazine. He is a co-creator of Identita – The Story of Czech Graphic Design, a project consisting of a TV series, exhibition, book and film celebrating 120 years of history in the field. Filip and his team were honoured as Graphic Designers of the Year at the 2024 Czech Grand Design awards.

Jacek Mrowczyk is a graphic designer, editor, curator, researcher and educator. He graduated from the Department of Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland.

He co-founded and edited the design quarterly 2+3D, which was published in Poland from 2001–2016 and has authored many articles and books on graphic design.

Recipient of numerous awards and distinctions. Member of design competition juries in Poland and abroad. He was a Fulbright scholar at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York (2001–2002) and a Kościuszko Foundation Fellow at Rhode Island School of Design (2006–2007).
Since 2008, visiting lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, USA. Associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Katowice, Poland. Teaches and conducts workshops at numerous universities in Poland and abroad.