The online symposium at FHNW Academy of Art and Design is intended for students
and researchers from the areas of design history and practice, alumni, and other
interested parties. It uses Hofmann’s graphic and pedagogical work as a starting point
for a series of online lectures on tendencies in graphic design and typography
during Hofmann’s period of influence. The lectures serve to embed his contribution in
a historical and international context and focus on current approaches in design history
that do not view actors, practices, teaching philosophies, ideas, and formal
principles of design in isolation, but as part of transnational networks.
In this sense, the symposium brings together design historians and designers with
different research foci, whose lectures open the “field of vision” beyond Swiss graphic
design. Topics include professional collaborations, exchange, and migration in
practice and teaching, and parallels to Hofmann’s work with regard to formal principles or ideas.