Le Signe Design (LSD) is a periodical platform for the production, distribution, creative support, dialogue, and mediation between the artistic field of graphic design and the public. It is produced by Le Signe Documents, the publishing arm of Le Signe, France’s National Center of Graphic Design,

This third issue is about DIY ("Do-it-yourself") practices and is based on the work of Gilles de Brock, graphic designer who became a ceramic tile manufacturer.

Do It Yourself practices are not, as is commonly assumed, limited to home improvement, nor just a way of subverting—hacking—a given social and political organization. They are also a way of looking both forward and backward, at our future and our heritage. They involve our heritage insofar as they allow constituted groups to revive past knowledge and skills threatened with extinction. They look forward in that they make it possible to create tools that do not yet exist but could.

Produced in parallel with a solo exhibition retracing de Brock's career, whose production is deeply infused with the DIY spirit, this volume includes texts about Futuress, an article about the micro-politics of the design studio (by Tereza Bettinardi and Nina Paim), and an overview of the improvised economics of Web3 by Anthony Masure and Guillaume Helleu.

De Brock's practice can't be reduced to the things he has actually made. It is part of the kind of knowledge-sharing economy proclaimed in Stewart Brand's counter-culture manifesto The Whole Earth Catalog, able to go even further today thanks to the participatory and interactive Web 2.0. This volume embodies this knowledge-sharing impulse, and invites readers to participate in a dialogue about the future of graphic design.

Edited by Jean-Michel Géridan

Designed by officeabc, assisted by Thomas Bouville

Published by Le Signe Documents, 2023
Bilingual, in French and English

Softcover, 198 pages, full color and b&w images, 5.25 × 7.75 inches

ISBN: 978-2-95-720445-8