Critical Daily    Critical practice in graphic design

The Rodina is graphic design studio founded in 2011 by Tereza and Vit Ruller.

Vit nor Tereza studied graphic design as prime subject, therefore they considered themselves as amateurs in the beginning. That didn´t stop their ego or path of course. Their claim is: “Inability as a method” and philosophy: “Fun and joyful above all else.”

“It´s nice that” writes about The Rodina: …lending their work a uniquely inspiring influence as well as a hint of insanity.” Their self-learning graphic design approach is in my opinion absolutely important in understanding the freshness of their designs. In some way, the work they do benefited and accomplished to continue at postmodernism principles with creation of the new ones.

Bringing closer the way of their thinking about concept, let me to quote, for instance, part of premise developed in Terezas´s thesis: „Action to surface. We, designers, are used to presenting graphic design as a surface‑centric practice, the way of surface production. In addition to this, Tereza tries to step out of separated media constrains and tend to establish a new field of potential through identifying performative components in graphic design processes and results.“ Basically I could tell, they consider graphic design as strictly flat surface, both conceptually and formally. Thus, logical way how to disrupt this common stereotype and make tension between the medium and the viewer, is to bring performative element and 3d conceptions to the surface. Actually, thanks to their studies, they had all they needed. We can see this disrupting approach in almost every piece of their work as a part of their design programme. It is interesting to see how this kind of statement become the main resource of their generative concepts and forms. On the other hand, there is a question pending in my head, is this approach sustainable? I can not deny neither it´s originality nor visual strength or distinctiveness. They also accomplished something that many designers try to reach for a long, long time – to use a visual language which is contemporary. But again, to make a communication, you should have a sender and a receiver. How is this language received? How is it publicly understood, is it establishing a ground for a dialogue? Pretty difficult to answer, because they probably didn´t even choose this task to do. The strength of their approach lies in messing up all our rules and paradigm stereotypes in graphic design. That means, thanks to The Rodina we have to reconsider all our stereotypes without blind defence rather critical and systematic attitude.

In the end, this edgy aesthetics and let´s say, hardcore self-promotion with the substance of pop-culture in graphic design paved their way to become professional studio working for cultural institutions. That makes them great addition to our professional diversity bringing a huge reaction to our ways of communication.