Although the word itself doesn’t appear in the title of this publication, the idea of work is implied. On MA Graphic Communication Design at Central Saint Martins, work isn’t just a notional concept of output, but an ongoing material reality. In this publication, work is a verb that points to the perpetual labour of knowledge production through studio practice. In other words, all work is ‘in progress.’

In this publication, you’ll find graphic design drafted into an interrogation of the subject itself as well as the conditions that frame its practice. In each project you’ll find a question being worked out iteratively, progressing linearly at times before circling back on itself, drawn out through writing and then abstracted through forms of notation (or vice versa). You’ll find students sketching out and scratching at and striking through their own presumptions, reconstructing their practices as sites of critical enquiry.

In this publication and in our community of designers, collective dialogue provides a form of paratext for the wide range of individual research projects in continual development. Here the conditions for critical practice in graphic design are worked out collaboratively, a library of references is amassed and annotated, and the definitions of our disciplines are written, rewritten, overwritten. Through work in progress.

Authors: Alfonso Cruz, Lila Meyer, Andreas Panayi, Sandy Christ, Kadence Fok, Camille de Lafforest, Alex Fernandez Arias, Lucas Lai, Sundeep Upadhyaya, Greece Liao, Cherry Wan, Yu Qiu, Yushan Chen, Conor Maguire, Yujie Zhou, Yihan Xuan, Dustin Zhang, Otomi Larcher, Ollie Jameson, Tiger Yang, Alejandro De la Peza Diaz, Jingyi (Maggie) Wang, Flora Dorian, Ruixing (Rosalyn) Yang, Daisy Pearson, Linran Jiang, Matt Urpani, Yulian Liu, Caio Caldas, Andrea Iannantuoni, Danhua Xiong, Marta Zabik, Youn Song Lee
Tutors: Andrew Brash, Jayoon Choi, Matthew Chrislip, Max Colson, Houman Momtazian, Rebecca Ross, Abbie Vickress
Editors: Lila Meyer, Andreas Panayi
Designers: Camille de Lafforest, Otomi Larcher