Graphic design materials for VARES Valga Architecture Residency, mainly created by testing out handcraft and heritage design-making methods and tools, such as printmaking (linocut, etching, relief printing), woodcut, calligraphy and analogue photography. Shameless manual experimenting aligns with the ethos of the residency to create things and spaces by hand, out of materials at hand. Ongoing (2023–…).

The typeface of VARES is Pintorius by Aimur Takk/Tüpokompanii.

➀ “Kuidas taaskasutada hinge” (“How to Recycle One’s Soul”), essay in Müürileht (August 2023)

➁ “Hingeparandus” (“Soulhealing”), Figma mind map for exploring the grounds and possibilities for communal homesteading in the Estonian context

➂–➆ “Leibkonnaks saamine”, hand painted plant-dyed tablecloths for the open bread baking workshop, as part of the public programme of Siim Preiman’s exhibition Hold Me Tender at the Tallinn Art Hall, September 2023

“Sustainable developments in exhibition graphic design in Estonia”, research and lecture for graphic designers, exhibition designers, curators and museum workers to ideate more creative and environmentally conscious exhibition design solutions. The lecture provides inspiration from historical, pre-digital examples, brainstorms ideas of various complexity for exhibition graphic design, and provides points of recommendation for producing all kind of printed matter. As part of the workshop Making a Difference: Sustainability in the Artworld and Museums, in the framework of the exhibition Art in the Age of the Anthropocene at Kumu Art Museum (October 2023).

Please feel free to use and distribute the lecture materials: DOWNLOAD SLIDES and DOWNLOAD NOTES.

Graphic design and catalogue for the exhibition Art in the Age of the Anthropocene at the Kumu Art Museum.

The largest-ever exhibition to focus on the relationship between art and the environment in Estonia was very ambitious in its goals both to rethink Estonian art history from an eco-critical perspective in combination with contemporary art, as well as to model standards for more sustainable exhibition-making for all local museums.

Together with exhibition designers Roland Reemaa and Laura Linsi (LLRRLLRR), we conducted experiments with more ecological use of materials, such as using less and/or more natural paints. I used locally produced clay paint for the labels and wall texts, recycling existing paper stock for both, as well as the back sides of old PVC banners. The aim was to show that especially with the help of UV-printing, most waste materials can be used for exhibition graphic design relatively easily without the need for vinyl stickers or plastic boards.

As a reference to building sites and excavation, neon red marking ran through the entire exhibition in the form of handmade graffiti as well as flags that featured snippets about the making-of of the exhibition and how the museum could still improve.

Exhibition views: Joosep Kivimäe

Graphic design for the Estonian Health Museum’s outdoors exhibition Abstinent, moderate or bottoms up? on the history of Estonian alcohol policies and propaganda. Putting myself in the position of a 20th century analogue poster designer, I composed all panels by hand on millimeter paper using tracing paper, tape and ink, adding text and images digitally after scanning.

Researching for, curating and producing the exhibition A Book Designer’s Studio. Jüri Kaarma and Late Soviet Graphic Design at the Estonian Applied Art and Design Museum (17.09.2022–08.01.2023), together with Anna Kaarma (graphic design), Eve Kask (consultation & research) and Aadam Kaarma (exhibition design). The exhibition was chosen as the best temporary exhibition of 2022 at the Estonian Museum Awards, winning one of the two main prizes.

I have been researching the printing and graphic design history of Estonia since working on the exhibition Art is Design is Art at the Kumu Art Museum in 2020. At the same time, Eve Kask had proposed to donate the process archives of book designer Jüri Kaarma (1950–2011), her husband, to the design museum. In the beginning of 2021, we begun unpacking and documenting the archive at its location in Jüri’s former studio in Lasnamäe, Tallinn, where his daughter, artist and designer Anna Kaarma currently still lives. These organising sessions, as well as the accompanying research into late Soviet design and print technologies, turned into a small yet information-packed gallery exhibition at the design museum.

The gallery space, designed by graphic & exhibition designer Aadam Kaarma (Jüri’s son), was inspired and used artefacts from Jüri Kaarma’s studio, giving a lively insight into the workshop of a predigital graphic designer. The display featured a selection of his book designs from the 1970s and 80s together with their process materials and physical print files. In addition, working tools and materials were included, which helped explain the technological and socioeconomic reality of the time. Four archival film clips about the printing industry were digitised, subtitled and shown for the first time. In addition to the historical content, I invited type designer Aimur Takk and publishing duo Knock Knock Books (Else Lagerspetz, Loore Viires) for interventions from a contemporary point of view.

The exhibition was accompanied by a two-part 64-page catalogue in Estonian and English, written by me and designed by Anna Kaarma & co-produced by me, Aadam and the Tallinn Book Printers. Aimur produced the typefaces for it using analogue photo-experimentation. The first part of the catalogue contained descriptions of the selected works while the second part gave an overview of the elaborate setup of publishing, designing and producing a book in the Soviet socialist context – history recent and overlooked enough that it hasn’t so far been uncovered almost at all.

For the public programme, we conducted a number of guided tours, the screening of the film Graphic Means and two discussions with graphic designers of the time – “Graphic design during the analogue era” with Andres Tali and Ivar Sakk, and “From Leipzig school to Dutch school: Western influences on Estonian graphic design education” with Enn Kärmas, Illimar Paul and Rein Mägar. We also conducted workshops for designing posters using collage, photography, scanning and printing, trying out technological approaches inspired by the era.

I wrote an essay about the artistic research involved in producing the exhibition to the online design magazine Leida, entitled Queer Dusting, or Contemplations from the Attic. The museum produced two informational videos: this one and this one.

Photos: Evert Palmets, Aadam Kaarma, Indrek Sirkel

Graphic design for the seminar Arts, Crafts, Affects. Documenting Herstories and Worldbuilding at the Estonian Academy of Arts (2022, organised by Margaret Tali & Ulrike Gerhart), together with Aimur Takk and Nele Kurvits.

The seminar, organised by the art history and visual culture faculty, aimed to discuss the potential roles and meanings of handicraft in contemporary art with a focus on the textile medium. For the event’s visual identity, I wanted to explore the same in contemporary graphic design. Type designer Aimur Takk deconstructed the CVI typeface of EKA, (Absolution by Niklas Ekholm/Helsinki Type Studio), and crafted the resulting modules as potato printing stamps. Textile artist Nele Kurvits mixed together some printing inks from natural substances. We designed and printed each necessary digital and printed format by hand on some bulky craft paper, using only the potato stamps and an Olivetti typewriter to create text. For the final result, the scanned compositions are edited only by turning up the contrast, thus revealing the shades and texture of the paper – the fabric of graphic design. The poster and conference handouts were then riso-printed on the same bulky paper.

Research, writing, design, production and co-managing of the travelling installation “Looduse nõud ja jõud. Inimene ja loodus algupärases Eesti kooliõpikus” (The Awe and Aid of Nature. Human and nature in 19th century Estonian schoolbooks) for the National Library of Estonia (2022, together with Rene Mäe).

Due to the long-term renovation of the main building of the National Library and most of its collections being physically unavailable during this time, the library’s advisor Rene Mäe invited me to co-create an installation that would activate its collection of digitised old rare books in an alternative way. We worked through a dozen 19th century schoolbooks that were the first to have been written in the Estonian language, and chose ~50 short outtakes that reflect the local peasantry’s holistic, intimate and careful relationship with nature and industry 150 years ago.

The installation takes the form of a tree-as-book (designed by Kaarel Kuusk & Päär-Joonap Keedus/Valge Kuup), which is built using scrap veneer. The texts on the leaves/pages were produced in collaboration with Nestor Ljutjuk at Labora, a letterpress print&paper workshop at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in the Tallinn Old Town. We made the papers by hand, which included recycling leftovers from the printing house, and also used recycled carton sponsored by the Räpina paper factory. I manually printed each text on a flexographic relief printing press in a small edition for the historical, yet urgent messages to be distributed as postcards by the visitors of the installation. In addition to the texts, we commissioned and printed three original illustrations from Mark Antonius Puhkan to make the display more lively.

The installation is accompanied by a 32-page booklet that we wrote as historicist pastiche from the point of view of the tree-as-book itself. The publication, usable both independently and as an educational tool for group sessions, features interactive exercises, puzzles and snippets about the history of bookmaking, the making-of of the installation, as well as longer original stories from 19th century schoolbooks. The work is hosted in regional libraries across Estonia for the duration of 1–1,5 months each; by the end of 2023, it will have travelled to 10+ libraries all over the country. We conduct seminar sessions with the local library staff, who then organize workshops, library lessons, and invite different groups from their local community to engage with the work.

Exhibition photos: Maria Muuk, RaRa, Urmas Luik

In 2022, I was the season’s head gardener of the community and sculpture garden of the Estonian Museum for Contemporary Art (EKKM, Tallinn). The garden, established in 2019, includes a number of privately managed boxes as well as larger areas for collective growing. I initiated and coordinated collective activities, including building compost boxes, erecting a shed and an outdoor kitchen with a dining table, growing symbiotic food plants with permaculture principles in mind, and cooking and eating our harvest.

I also assisted French artist Gisèle Gonon in producing Against the Grain, the EKKM outdoor artwork of the season. We created a grain field and sowed a dozen different grains and legumes that Gisèle had gathered from Estonia, Lithuania and France, thereby bringing the global agriculture network into the urban context. We went for a research trip to Hiiu Jähu, a small local flour producer, and later held a public event with Annika Michelson, co-founder of the heritage species preservation association Maadjas. In the end of the season, we made a workshop for drying, deshelling and milling the crops into flour; there was enough for just one marvellously tasty soda bread. I also made sugar syrup out of sugar beets; a garden should remind us of local subsistence skills that have been almost forgotten within just a few generations.

Graphic design & production for Maria Kapajeva’s exhibition Loose Photos, Odds and Ends at the project space of Kumu Art Museum (Tallinn, 2022; installation design by Laura Linsi/LLRRLLRR).

As part of the permanent exhibition of older Estonian art at Kumu, Kapajeva’s installation functioned as an artistic research platform to reveal microhistories as well as draw attention to the inferior status of photography in art historic canons. The starting point of the work was a collection of around a hundred portrait photographs that the artist had bought from a seller in the USA who claimed them to be from Estonia. Kapajeva begun researching the faces and pinning down facts, potential connections and personal interpretations, presenting the results as a detective-work-in-progress to be opened up for the audience.

The numbered photographs could be looked at in glass panels, through which the information about them could be seen on the wall. Visitors were encouraged to add knowledge or references on yellow papers; this opportunity became hugely popular as all the walls of the space filled up with all kinds of content, proving the desire of the general public to leave a mark in the art museum. I designed and produced the informative layer in three languages, as well as executed the handwritten parts. Designs for public communication formats (posters, screens, social media) were also photographed straight off the glass.

Exhibition photos: Stanislav Stepaško, Maria Kapajeva

Research & graphic design for Aap Tepper’s exhibition and ongoing community project “Oru lossi vari” (The Shadow of the Oru Palace) in a makeshift exhibition space at Toila High School (2022).

In late 19th century, Russian entrepreneur Grigori Yelisseyev built a huge palazzo in the coastal Oru park of the small town of Toila in Eastern Estonia, later abandoning it after the bolshevik revolution. In the 1930s, it was renovated and became the presidential residence of the young Republic of Estonia for the country’s totalitarian leader Konstantin Päts. The whole complex was almost totally destroyed in WWII except for a building that became the local school. The palace has since become a glorified national symbol that contemporary populist politicians are promising to restore.

The exhibition, opened on the same day as the popular local community event to celebrate Estonian re-indepence day on August 20, displays photographic representations of the Oru park area from various historic and contemporary points of view. In addition to the well-known image of (a lack of) a presidential palace, stories of Toila locals and especially students were being told, thus diversifying the nationalist narrative and deconstructing the meaning of nostalgia and of monuments. The three-story display was accompanied by a self-made, self-published booklet with an essay written by Aap, proving highly popular among the local audience. The poster for the exhibition was digitally printed and then silkscreened. Me and Aap had been in dialogue about the themes and community engagement of the project already since 2019.

Exhibition photos: Aap Tepper, Maria Muuk

Graphic design for Jonna Kina’s exhibition Four Sculptures in Fifteen Parts at the project space of Kumu Art Museum (Tallinn, 2022; curated by Tiiu Saadoja).

The exhibition and video work focus on the remnants of sculptures by famous Estonian artists Amandus Adamson and August Weizenberg, held hidden in the collections of the art museum since they were destroyed in the Russian bombings on Tallinn in 1944. As part of the permanent exhibition of older Estonian art, the work draws attention to the role of the museum as a preserver and manager, not just displayer of cultural heritage. The exhibition was opened soon after the Russian invasion to Ukraine, building a painfully urgent bridge between the two contexts as Ukrainian art was simultaneously being destroyed, looted and evacuated. My contribution to this complex and delicate theme involved typesetting the exhibition graphics in Bannikova, a nostalgic Soviet Russian typeface with colonialist undertones, and using archival cards as a reference to the ones carrying the information about the sculpture fragments to the future.

Exhibition photos: Stanislav Stepaško, Jonna Kina, Tiiu Saadoja

A self-made zine to promote DIY plant milk making skills. Download it here: in Estonian, in English or in Russian.

I am not vegan largely because the lifestyle is generally very dependent on plastic packaging, monoculture grains and suspicious ingredients in the prefabricated imitation products. However, plant-based foods need to take up a larger part of the contemporary diet; I believe inspiring creative cooking can make this more accessible. I experimented with making DIY plant milk products for a few months in 2021 and gathered the results in a self-published, self-and-peer-distributed zine.

Cover design & layouting for the Estonian translation of Bruno Latour’s book “Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime” (2018/2021, Estonian Academy of Arts Press), following the new template for text-based publications of EKA Press by Stuudio Stuudio. A hypercontrasting, eye catching, dizzying cover that fits the urgency and complexity of the subject.

Articulations/essays in Estonian written in 2021.

“Disainieetilisi peegeldusi” (“Design-ethical reflections”, Värske Rõhk, december 2021) offers a view on the role and work of a designer and commissioning design to an audience of cultural workers not familiar with the design world.

“Kolonialismikeskustelu jätkuks” (“Continuing the discussion on colonialism”, ERR kultuur, 08.12.2021) concludes and reflects upon the polemic around Kumu Art Museum’s temporary exhibition “Rendering Race”, attempting to take steps to bridge the gap between the decolonialist discourse of the West and Estonia as a mostly white post-Soviet-socialist nation state.

Web publication concept, development and graphic design for artist Sten Eltermaa’s solo exhibition Glass Struggle on the problematic political ambiguity of the material omnipresent in our daily lives.

Instead of a paper brochure, I proposed creating an online publication to accompany the physical exhibition at EKA Gallery (28.09.–09.10.2021). This evolved into an atmospheric collaborative hybrid work on the themes of the exhibition together with the poet Maria Lee. The online satellite – struggle.glass –, made available in Estonian, English and Russian, remains visitable for a year. The website became part of one of the artworks, “A Satellite Deviated from the Orbit”.

In line with its content, the website design pointed to themes such as the architecturality of screens, angst and apathy, opaqueness, glassmorphism and blurry vision. Consequently, I produced transparent smartphone-shaped signage with blurred type. Typefaces used: Panama (Typefaces of the Temporary State) and InaiMathi (a default system font which I developed further and cyrillicized).

Exhibition photos: Sten Eltermaa. Website developed together with Patrick Zavadskis.

Graphic design for the exhibition Art is Design is Art at Kumu Art Museum (curators Eda Tuulberg & Karin Vicente, interior design Katrin Koov), which focused on the pop-influenced design-art of the Soviet Estonian 1970s-80s. Inspired by the iconic photoscenographic poster designs featured in the exhibition, I begun researching the graphic design methods and offset printing specificities of the era, which included making analogue color separations at TYPA Print Museum with chosen key visuals of the show.

The final conceptual-retro identity was based on three primary printing colors and combined Soviet print preparation techniques with contemporary digital ones, resulting in rasters, spot color overprint simulations, paper choices etc. The star of the identity is the contemporary modular typeface KalliGro by type designer Aimur Takk, which combines geometric and calligraphic letter shapes. The dynamic and interactive nature of the font was highlighted in large typographic interventions in the exhibition space as well as in the activity programme. Visitors could use laser-cut KalliGro modules on a lighttable in the exhibition space to design their own letters, and also take them home as a stencil-cut activity sheet.

For the opening event of the exhibition, I was invited to give a short talk and participate on a panel discussion together with the exhibition team. I spoke about my research findings, as well as the necessity of ‘art thinking’ as opposed to design thinking.

Exhibition photos: Stanislav Stepaško

Two-in-one poster and booklet design for the Reconfiguring Territories programme, loosely based on an existing fluid visual identity. Some of the 4-spot offset printed sheets were used as posters, and some were turned into 32-page promotional booklets giving more detailed insight into the four-year-programme (kudos to Tallinn Book Printers).

Color separations for photos were done with the help of color/shift.

Graphic design for the solo exhibition and artist film Skin Hunger by Sille Kima. Posters and brochures risograph printed in gold.

Food-themed workshop named “Obschenie” as part of the Reconfiguring Territories programme at Narva Art Residency (May/June 2021). Together with Kreenholm Plants (Sandra Kosorotova, Sille Kima) and five workshop participants, we touched upon communal, intercultural, historic, nostalgic and economic aspects of food in the specific context of our landing in the post-Soviet city of Narva for a week.

Design for the Estonian translation of Walter Benn Michaels’ book “The Beauty of a Social Problem” published by Estonian Academy of Arts Press (2020).

Inspired by Phil Chang’s meta-photography pieces analysed in the book, I hand-painted “photos” on the covers of the whole edition with photosensitive emulsion. This cover photo changes its color depending on the amount of daylight it is exposed to.

Other choices in material, layout and typeface – inside-out cardboard cover with glossy lamination, subtly strange book format, my own typeface, Mingi, with its parasitic tendencies towards Asian typefaces – also reflect an ambiguous, self-referential, metaphysical approach towards form, similarly to what Michaels appreciates in sociocritical art.

Catalogue for the Studio Museum of the sculpture artist Amandus Adamson in Paldiski, Estonia (2021). Alongside the official narrative of the great artist’s life story, I suggested using the original unpublished memoirs of Adamson’s children, which offer detailed and heartwarming insights about his life. The traditional artist biography is printed on high-quality glossy paper, while the more intimate reflections run alongside on bulky book paper.

The typeface used for the book’s three languages is Niina by Patrick Zavadskis, an elegant yet quirky fusion between cyrillic and latin – a marvellous fit for the cosmopolite Adamson, who actively travelled between St. Petersburg, Estonia and Italy. The pattern on the cover as well as the colors are inspired by the decor of his ateliler in Paldiski.

Some of the teaching I’m engaged with at the design faculty of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

➀ Research and writing course with its base in affect theory (specifically Kathleen Stewart and Lauren Berlant) for the 3rd year BA graphic design students (2019–...).

➁ “Listening, Inclusive, Aware: On Feminism and Complexity in the Design Context”, a talk for the general lecture series “Design Issues” for BA design students (2020).

➂ The main book designing course for the 2nd year BA graphic design students (2021). Giving an overview of historical and contemporary bookmaking procedures, doing tutorials in Adobe Indesign and walking the students through the designing, layouting and producing of a physical text-based book, based on the essay “The Art of Loving” by Erich Fromm.

proloogkool is a multidisciplinary informal educational platform initiated and run by Maarin Ektermann. In fall 2020, proloogkool launched the first edition of its yearly self-organised school programme for practicing artists and art workers. In addition to elements of visual identity, I co-created and produced the workbooks that participants can use to structure their individual work process.

For the summer vacation period of 2020, Estonian feminist organisation Feministeerium composed and published the infotainment crossword puzzle book Feministik. I designed the full-color 20-page booklet, including contributions with background patterns and illustrations (mostly made using Glyphdrawingclub) and editing.

Renewal of the visual identity of ITS Estonia, an organisation that unites public, non-governmental and private sectors in the field of intelligent transportation systems.

A few inventions and contributions I made while working as an organising confectioner and recipe developer at NOP Cafe&Shop:

➀ A fusion of the south of Europe and the south of Estonia: Basque cheesecake with caraway seeds and curd cheese (in the style of Estonian sõir), covered with cranberry coulis and caramelised black bread crumbs.

➁ Barley scones (a fusion of the English soda pastry and Estonian karask) with blackcurrants, and gluten free red cabbage kimchi&feta pies.

➂ Vegan grapefruit&orange cream of wheat with almond custard – a reinvention of the classic grandmother’s semolina dessert for Women’s Day. Courtesy of the gluten free organic red velvet cake recipe belongs to my co-baker Rebecca Moosus.

➃ Paskha Easter cake: a pasteurised take-away solution for the COVID lockdown period instead of the traditional Russian-orthodox raw curd cheese dish.

➄ Classic Runeberg cakes that were warmly welcomed by our Finnish frequenters in February.

➅ NOP’s 2020 semla buns with spelt&oat bread, almond cherry jam and farm whipped cream.

Design, photoediting & layouting for artist Sten Eltermaa’s photo book “Transparency Register” (2020), a project drawing parallels between the architecture used in modern and postmodern institutions of power and governance, and the rhetoric that liberals in politics have used or currently use.

The covers of the books are cut from semi-opaque mirror film, which is often used on the windows of aforementioned facades as well as in the accompanying exhibition of Eltermaa’s photo series at Draakoni Gallery.

Design & layouting for the Estonian translation of Mark Fisher’s book “Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?” (2008/2019, Estonian Academy of Arts Press). The form of the book is conceptually rooted in Fisher’s figure of capitalism as the “gray curtain of reaction which marks the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism”, into which even “the tiniest event can tear a hole [and] have a disproportionately great effect.”

Published by Estonian Academy of Arts Press (2019). The design uses typefaces by Andree Paat, Margot Léveque and Bold Decisions. Chosen as one of the 25 Estonian Most Beautiful Book Designs 2019 and shortlisted in the Best Book Designs from all over the World 2020 competition.

In August 2019, I was in charge of preparing food for and with 32 participants of ??? Summer School, a seven-day bio-typography design workshop in rural Estonia. The aim was to use the dining table to share personal stories and gut feelings and bring the group together. Accordingly, each dish that I had prepared for the week’s menu had a personal backstory of my own, which I shared with the participants.

Layouting of the Estonian translation of John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” (1972) following the original design by Richard Hollis. Published by Estonian Academy of Arts Press (2019).

“The Dining Table”, my MA graduation work, was a two-day conceptual catering event at the Sandberg Institute Critical Studies End of Year Show (June 2019), for which I produced a long blanket-wrapped table with chairs, printed textiles and bowls, and a menu on the themes of cultural transformation, adaptation, staining and fermentation.

Visitors were served food on plates carrying short texts written by me and invited collaborators, who also contributed to the table programme (Patrycja Rozwora, Nemo Koning and Harriet Foyster). Three loaves of black&white marbled sourdough bread, a recipe which symbolises cultural integration and symbiotic growth, were feeding and fermenting on the table throughout the day and baked in the Rietveld Academy’s student-run bread oven.

“Digging Dirt, Licking Soil” is the thesis of Lucie Fortuin (MA Critical Studies, Sandberg Institute), a poetic journey of thinking through intuition and weather (2019).

“Your Attention, Please” (April 2019) is a collection of texts by students of the Critical Studies department of the Sandberg Institute, including my essay “The Investment of Stretching. An Interrelated Becoming on Belonging and Love”. I was also responsible for the book design, layouting and post-production together with course mates Nick Reilly and Ben Tupper.

From Precarity (April 2019), the second issue – focused on the theme of contemporary (artistic) labour – of the PUB/Sandberg Institute journal coinitiated by me (as the main editor) and fellow students connected to the student-run publishing initiative PUB. The launch event of the issue, which was hosted by the spatial design collective Fabulous Future, featured readings and screenings by contributors as well as an open discussion on work and leisure habits and forms of living collectively.

“Collective lunch for and with fellow lactobacteria, yeast and students” (March 2019, Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam) to contemplate micro/macrocultural contamination, change and adaptation. A healthy reminder that every cultural change and adaptation takes trial, error and time, all in its own time, as long as we keep reaching out, offering bait and finding compatibilities.

While living in Amsterdam (2018–2019), I took up baking Estonian style black sourdough rye bread, which led to further fascination with fermentation and food cultures. Bread-related activities at the time included:

➀ Selling my black bread in the Rietveld Academy community from February to July 2019. The label is designed with Heikki Lotvonen’s typeface Basic Pie (made with his Glyphdrawingclub).

➁ A small zine with a poem as an ode to making black sourdough bread.

➂ Sourdough bread making workshop with the Critical Studies course: slapping, folding and smashing the dough (and capitalist patriarchy) while Luca Soudant provided furious gabber beats (April 2019).

“Foundations” is a booklet consisting of the collected visual and textual works and exercises of Harriet Foyster (MA Critical Studies, Sandberg Institute) related to the topic of housing and homemaking (2018).

“Elegy on a Semantic Trauma”, a musical performance-lecture on the changing meaning of the semantically unreliable phrase “I love you” throughout my life. Sandberg Institute’s Critical Studies End of Year Program at Butchers Tears, Amsterdam (15.06.2018).

The text was later published in the Dutch cultural journal Simulacrum, the theme of the issue being “love” (June 2019; designed by Alice Dhinaut and Sophie Rentien Lando).

Ongoing renewal of the visual identity materials of the Estonian Academy of Sciences featuring a custom-made typeface (2016–…).

“For Porosity” (June 2018), the first issue of the PUB/Sandberg Instituut journal, was coinitiated by me (as the main editor) and fellow students connected to the student-run publishing initiative PUB. Via an unthemed open call, the first issue closely weaved together and showcased a selection of works-in-progress by currently studying MA students.

Edited together with Ada Reinthal, Maike Statz, Holly Childs. Designed by Miquel Hervaz Gomez, Dario Dezfuli, Sheona Turnbull.

Have a closer look here.

Homeless Texts (2017–…) is an independently initiated and published series of booklets that functions as a platform for publishing interviews, essays, translations and other writings that we regard as not having a good existing outlet but nevertheless important to make public. With Maarin Ektermann (proloogkool) and Ott Kagovere.

“On Hyperstition and Branding”, an essay published in “Can This Be Something Else”, a collection of texts by students of the Critical Studies department of the Sandberg Institute (2018, design by Zuzana Kostelanská).

I presented the text as a slideshow-accompanied lecture at the book launch event in Fanfare, Amsterdam (17.02.2018). It was later published as part of Vaulte magazine, a project on late capitalist consumption by Composite Co (2019).

A 3-day public programme & pop-up exhibition on the topic of artistic labour at the Tallinn Photo Art Fair 2017, where GD project space was invited to participate. Using the services of sellers on Fiverr, we ordered a logo design and copywriting to use on our promotional brochure while also asking them to write about their work life, and printed merchandise to sell based on the answers. Contributors included Francois Girard-Meunier (installation-performance “Flexible Bodies”), Maarin Ektermann and Airi Triisberg. Together with Ott Kagovere.

Visual identity and book design (music score for Current 93’s album “Soft Black Stars”) for Terentyev Music Publishing Company, a transcription initiative collaborating with various ambient piano/guitar artists (2017).

Book section at the exhibition Signals from the Periphery at the Tallinn Art Hall that gives an international overview of designer-initiated publishing practices throughout the past 10–20 years. Together with Ott Kagovere, we decided on the selection of books, constructed the shelves, composed, translated, edited and designed an accompanying booklet with information about every featured publisher and book, and added a numeration tag system. With Elisabeth Klement, Laura Pappa and Ott Metusala.

Labelling system & graphic design for the exhibition “Misfits: Pages from a loose-leaf modernity” at Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt in Berlin (2017). Within NODE, in collaboration with Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik.

GD project space (2016–2017) was a self-initated semi-regular programme of reading groups, discussions, guest lectures and movie nights dealing with loosely design-related issues in a small studio room outside the city centre of Tallinn. Lecturers included Tommi Vasko, Kadi Estland & Rebeka Põldsam, GRMMXI, Rab-Rab Journal, Florian Marcus, etc. Together with Ott Kagovere.

Campaign, visual identity and materials for the open day of the Estonian Academy of Arts 2016. Every letter of the alphabet was connected to an often absurd real-life story of a currently studying art student, which we collected, edited and published during the month of March as an online warm-up campaign to the open day event. With Juuso Siltanen & video and live feed contributor Henno Luts.

Completed as one of my BA graduation works. Won silver prize at the Estonian Design Awards 2016 in the Seasonal Identity category.

“Six printed discussions and a selection of referential material”, one of my graduation works at the department of graphic design of the Estonian Academy of Arts (exhibition GD16SHOW at the EAA Gallery): a newspaper consisting of transcribed conversations with fellow students, tutors and practitioners on the role of design education and graphic designers on a local and global scale, accompanied by a selection of books and texts mentioned in the discussions.

The process was preceded by a series of self-initiated reading groups to compensate for the felt lack of design theory classes in our program. Together with Ott Kagovere (2016).

Specimen for Laplace Mono, a monospace typeface by Anton Koovit (Fatype) that combines historical Didone style with early computer aesthetics. The specimen refers conceptually and materially to desktop printing in the 1980s-90s: each 6-page brochure is accompanied by a unique dot matrix printed sample glyph. Within AKU (2016).

Sugu: N is an irregularly published feminist journal that grew out of a theatre play about the experiences of a group of Estonian actresses. Based on the design of the first issue by Uku-Kristjan Küttis, I designed the second issue. Within AKU (2016).

Collaborations with the photography artist Alissa Nirgi (Kiinvald), who deals with topics of alienation, migration and adjusting.

➀ A photo book documenting the billboard exhibition Kaspar is Sitting about the alienating effect our digital devices have on our intimate relationships (2016). Each book cover was cut out of the same PVC banners that had been on view on billboards around Tallinn.

➁ Posters and brochures for the exhibition A New Land Outside My Window about the relocation of Alissa's Ukrainian grandmother (2015).

➂ Posters and exhibition design for Two by Two (Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn), a photographic study of pairs of mormons on their religious missions in Estonia (2017).

“A Selection of Photos from Tallinn’s Real Estate Market” is a collection of somehow peculiar photos of apartments for rent or sale in Tallinn during February and March 2014, giving insight into lower-middle class people’s homes and the tastes and values they represent. A sympathetic observation of a certain era’s vernacular real estate marketplace habits.

Chosen to the top 10 of the Self Publish Riga dummy book contest.