My graphic design office: primarily, that’s me – Johanna Neuburger, designer.
I’m motivated by being in creative proximity to curators, artists and authors; to the story that needs to be told; to the work that wants to be seen; and to the content that must be conveyed.
I place myself in as close a relation as possible to the project and the client sitting across from me. It is thrilling to enter into this relation, which allows for the kind of concentrated analysis of the project at hand that makes for great graphic design. I am a designer who looks, who reads, who examines.
But this “I” is often also a “we”. We consist of an ever-growing and indispensable network of professionals in the fields of photography, text editing, translation, and production that enables small and large projects to be executed with expertise and zeal. With most of them I have many years of working experience, with many of them close friendships, and with all of them I share a conviction that each of our work makes the other’s that much better.
In answer to the question of why I specialize in book design in the wide field of art and culture, I would say, “to make something beautiful”. It’s real love. Only in the medium of the book can my interest in materials, including a lovingly maintained fetish for paper, and my ambition to create virtuoso, technical implementations of information as printed matter be united. Books rustle and flutter, with a smell when they’re fresh from the press like nothing else. Even in this moment of huge advances in the digital and virtual realms, direct contact has not been replaced. On the contrary, the desire to feel a substantial something and, via design, to literally grasp the real is more intense than ever.
With text and image, I’m convinced anything is possible. And to make that anything better and better, I and we continuously work.