twenty-six.design is an independent design, editorial, and research studio led by Jarrett Fuller. Our work takes shape across a variety of media, from books and websites to podcasts and installations and we work with clients large and small, around the world.
In addition to client work, we also produce experimental work, research projects, and original content, including Scratching the Surface, a weekly design criticism podcast; readings.design, an online archive of canonical graphic design texts; and other books and speculative projects.
Jarrett Fuller writes new profile of Andrew Blauvelt for AIGA
“Graphic design must be seen as a discipline capable of generating meaning on its own terms without undue reliance on commissions, prescriptive social functions, or specific media or styles,” wrote designer, curator, and writer Andrew Satake Blauvelt in 2003.
His influential essay “Towards Critical Autonomy or Can Graphic Design Save Itself?” was published in Emigre magazine alongside a body of other writing on the notion of “design authorship.” It was an idea that gained prominence in the 1990s when Blauvelt, along with a small but engaged group of other designer-writers, became interested in approaching graphic design not simply as a container for content — but as a way to create cultural meaning on its own terms, elevating graphic design beyond notions of “problem solving” and the constraints of commercial practice. Blauvelt, however, was not satisfied with simply writing about these ideas. His nearly thirty-year career has become an embodiment of them…