“Visual Communication Design in the Balkans” Co-edited by Associate Professor Jilly Traganou

by Ana Miljak

Jilly Traganou, Associate Professor in Spatial Design, recently co-edited a special issue of The Design Journal: An International Journal for All Aspects of Design entitled “Visual Communication Design in the Balkans.” The edition, which was released on April 6th, explores the role of visual communication in numerous aspects of life in the Balkans, from economic conditions to countercultural music scenes to historical textbooks. “Visual Communication Design in the Balkans” emerged from the Balkan Locus Focus symposium at the Izmir University of Economics in Turkey in June 2012, which was co-organized by Traganou and Marina Emmanouil. The symposium sought to illuminate the previously undocumented history of communication design in the Balkan peninsula. Both the conference and the issue were funded by ADHT.

Articles featured in the special edition include MA Design Studies alumna and current ADHT part-time faculty member Dora Sapunar’s review of the book Dizajn i nezavisna kultura (Design and Independent Culture), the visual essay “Every state needs its own Balkan” by Marija Juza & Nikola Djurek, and “Introduction to Visual Communication in the Balkans: A Socio-political Perspective,” written by Traganou and co-editor Artemis Yagou. Sapunar and fellow MA DS alumna Rachel Smith also provided editorial work for the issue.

For more information about this special edition, go here.