Draft:L.i.P Collective

The L.i.P collective, which stands for Liberation in Print is a group of 26 women and non binary designers . The 26 designers are Zenobia Ahmed, Yanchi Huang, Sophia Yuet See, Silva Baum, Phoebe Eustance, Pauline Piguet, Noemi Parisi, Nina Paim, Naïma Ben Ayed, Mujgan Abdulzade, Mio Kojima, Maya Ober, Mariachiara De Leo, Madeleine Morley, Loraine Furter, Klaudia Mazur, Floriane Misslin, Fanny Maurel, Eugénie Zuccarelli, Elham Namvar, Delphine Bedel, Corin Gisel, Clara Amante, Carolyn Kerchof, Barbora Demovičová, and Amy Gowen.

Overview

These designers formed together as a result of a workshop initiated by Le Signe, the National Centre of Graphic Design in Chaumont, France.This workshop occurred during the COVID – 19 pandemic and was created to research feminist publications throughout history. Every Wednesday, the team met remotely due to social distancing rules to share their findings and begin creating an archive of periodicals.

Futuress

The workshop was facilitated by Futuress a queer, intersectional feminist platform whose aim is to criticise the democratic design industry and amplify marginalized and oppressed voices. They have a website online that publishes articles and stories by their own team and also in collaboration with other design organizations. They view design as a social and political practice and want to find ways in making this practice as inclusive as possible. The organisation was created in 2019, where at first they wanted to be a library for design books that were missing or yet to be imagined. To teach design in a new, more modern way that targets current issues head-on. Over time, the organization's main focus became on individual voices that were missing from design history.

Publication

The research carried out during the workshop resulted in the feminist findings magazine, a collection of 20th century feminist periodicals. Each member that was working on the magazine, created their own articles built upon months of research on female publications. Each article covers a different type of publication, whether that be a journal, advertisement, leaflet or poster. It explores the contents of these publications, how they were created and the unique niche stories behind them such as how an underground salon in Paris disguised itself as a tea party to discuss radical political ideas. This story was published by Fanny Maurel and is titled 'Financing Feminism Through Beads and Brioche'. The magazine goes on to explore many other historical events such as the 1970s women's feminist movement and France's "veil affair". The collective aimed to resurface these unknown stories hidden in the depths of online archives and make them known by publishing them to a wider audience.

Format

The magazine was created using a RISO-printer, a spot colour based type of printing. This allows for a larger range of printing colours and a brighter look overall . This resulted in an extremely colourful magazine, with the images being printed in one solid colour. On its cover, features a collection of every logo of each of the publications written about in the articles. The zine contains 23 articles, each with a different author, and was printed to a limit of 120 copies. There are no new plans to create a second issue, however each of the articles are now available to read online through the Futuress website.

Exhibition

The exhibition that followed this, after COVID-19 social distancing rules were relaxed, took place in A-Z Presents in Berlin from the 30^th July – 24^th September 2020. The curated exhibition is composed of photographs, magazines, quotations, excerpts and many more, covering each of the stories featured in the articles. It was referred to as a 'footnote' to the magazine, providing extra context around the articles and explanations of the processes that went into the creation.