Interview mit Benedetta Crippa: »Visual sustainability references sustainability achieved through the visual layer of things—their aesthetic«

Benedetta Crippa: ornamental painting For You, My Love (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, June 2024).

Die gebürtige Italienerin sieht sich als Generalistin. Sie gestaltet im gesamten Spektrum des Grafikdesigns, vor allem Visual Identities, aber auch ornamentale Aufträge und alles, was dazwischen liegt. Benedetta Crippa will Projekte realisieren, die gleichzeitig schön und gut umgesetzt sind, das Leben derer, die sie sehen, bereichern und einen Beitrag zum sozialen Fortschritt leisten. »Es gibt immer einen Aspekt von Macht oder sozialer Gerechtigkeit, auf den mein Design reagiert,« sagt sie. »Für mich ist es wichtig, dies nicht nur durch den Prozess oder die Geschichte, die das Design erzählt, zu tun, sondern vor allem durch die visuellen Entscheidungen, die Art und Weise, wie das Werk visuell wirkt. Ich möchte mit meinen Designs eine bezaubernde, lebenswerte Welt schaffen.« Benedetta Crippas Arbeiten wird nachgesagt, dass sie eine neue visuelle Sprache einführen, die frei von strengen Kategorisierungen ist. 

Die wichtigsten kreativen Einflüsse der Designerin kommen aus Mode und Folk Art. Mode, weil sie sich immer wieder erneuert, indem sie die visuelle Freiheit in den Mittelpunkt stellt. Folk Art bringt – frei von Prestige – Schönheit in den Alltag. Benedetta Crippa betrachtet Design als angewandte Kunst, eine kreative Intervention, die einem bestimmten Bedürfnis dient und nahe am Leben der Menschen ist. Neben ihrer gestalterischen Tätigkeit unterrichtet sie und führt praxisbezogene Forschung zu dem durch, was sie »Visuelle Nachhaltigkeit« nennt. Wir fragten Benedetta Crippa was es mit diesem Begriff auf sich hat, was sie ihren Studierenden vermitteln will und wie sie von Italien nach Stockholm gekommen ist.

Das ist Visual Sustainability

»Ich möchte mit meinen Designs eine bezaubernde, lebenswerte Welt schaffen.«

Benedetta Crippa, Designerin, Dozentin und Researcher, Stockholm

Foto: Sofia Runarsdotter

You shaped the term visual sustainability, could you explain what exactly you mean by it?

The expression ‘visual sustainability’ references sustainability achieved through the visual layer of things—their aesthetic. I use this term to bring the focus back the visual features of a design, and the values they put forward: something that the sustainability discourse in the creative field has largely downplayed, if not ignored for decades, while mostly focusing on reduction related to production.

The primary task in which designers are trained — the harmonious construction of human experience through form — has not been given any role within sustainability so far. This has created an impasse for many students and professionals, who become unsure of their role and their choices.

What can be done about it?

I propose that the mindful configuration of form should be at the center of our efforts and can, indeed, transform the world. It is about designers being aware of, and intentional about the power of our visual choices and of the proposition those bring to the world. My research makes clear how visual culture connects to the larger inequalities present in society, which are responsible for the challenges we, and the environment face. It specifically connects structures like patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism to visual culture to demonstrate how visuality can, and should challenge such structures in order to contribute to a world in balance.

Benedetta Crippa: ornamental poster Praised Be Our Rage (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, 2020).

My research proposes 3 layers at which designers are operating at all times towards (or against) sustainable outcomes. The first two are the most established and already known: the symbolic (what the work is about, what it references), and the material (the resources used throughout its life cycle). I propose a third, the holistic, which includes the way the work performs visually, as well as through other sensory clues that are those first experienced by, and most visible to the user. The proposition is that the holistic layer can and should never be ignored, and in fact it should be the focus of any designer’s aspiration to sustainability.

Benedetta Crippa: the model for visual sustainability Layers of action (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, August 2022).

Can you explain this in a little bit more detail in one of your works?

I am careful however to not point at a certain aesthetic, or set of visual choices as inherently sustainable. There is no such thing. Whether something is sustainable or not depends on the specific constraints, and challenges of the context in which it is created.

I keep this approach front and center in all my design work and there is not one single image that is more representative than others. I can make the example of our recent work for the Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna, where in dialogue with Indigenous artists Inga-Wiktoria Påve and Fredrik Prost, my colleague Johanna Lewengard and I constructed an identity founded on a visual vocabulary historically erased throughout Swedish colonial history. The identity builds a new ornamental language at the same time, pointing at the importance of visual traditions situated in time and place.

Benedetta Crippa and Johanna Lewengard: poster design, part of the visual identity for Kin Museum of Contemporary Art (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, February 2024).

Benedetta Crippa and Johanna Lewengard: exhibition design, part of the visual identity for Kin Museum of Contemporary Art (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, February 2024).

Another project I am proud of is our work for the Spring Exhibition 2022 at Konstfack University; here the design opens up for a unique and generous language while achieving a high degree of sustainability in the production at the same time. These projects are a direct counter-proposal to the idea that sustainability should be about designing less, leave color or printing behind, or that design is in itself harmful.

Benedetta Crippa: signage for Konstfack Degree Show 2022 (Photo credit: Elina Birkehag, Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, May 2022).

Benedetta Crippa: web design for Konstfack Degree Show 2022 (Photo credit: Elina Birkehag, Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, May 2022).

What happens in your course at Konstfack?

I have been running a course on Visual Sustainability at the largest arts university in Sweden, Konstfack, since 2019. My main goal is to let the students know that they absolutely do not need to stop designing to contribute to a more sustainable world, and that on the contrary they have the power to shape the world they wish to see. In the course we break down harmful myths on sustainability, and unpack the relations between visual culture and global inequality. We look at sustainability through a multiplicity of perspectives — environmental, but also social, emotional, cultural.

In short, the course covers all the 3 layers my model proposes, to ultimately empower students to believe, and take charge of the immense power of their craft. The course is conceived as a series of seminars spread over the academic year in support to other courses, rather than as a one-time thing, to stress that sustainability should be a underlying approach to practice, not a ‘topic’ one works with only for a defined period of time.

What might be the specific theme of such a seminar?

One of the workshops, led by designer Johanna Lewengard, is focused for example on how to work sustainably throughout one’s career (mental and physical health), another with illustrator Andrea Pippins concerns how to build a sustainable professional field based on solidarity and exchange of knowledge; in previous years, the printing companies Seacourt and Pure Print, both based in the UK, have joined us to share their latest findings in sustainable printing at the highest level.

What is the most important thing you want to pass on to your students?

That their craft gives them all they need to shape the world they want to see, and they should enter the professional field head-high, holding this knowledge close. That aesthetics, which are the defining interface of our experience of life, can build a world that performs and inspires care. That everything humans make is by design, and a world in balance can, and should start with us.

How can you explain to your clients what visual sustainability means? Is there perhaps an example or comparison you could use?

I always encourage clients to think holistically and being aware of what we could call ‘the butterfly effect’—what happens here when I pull there, so to speak. Many clients, like us all, are victims of sometimes partial, or outright misleading ideas of what makes something sustainable. Designers need counterarguments. We work with clients to find the best solution for the context at hand, applying an intersectional approach—an awareness of how different structures affect situations in intersecting ways.

With my students I use the example of a client to whom we presented two possible designs of a business card, one with red background, one with white background; and even though the client said they preferred the red background, they suggested to print the white one under the false assumption that ‘white is more sustainable’. I ask my students what do they think would happen if not one, but an entire generation of designers drops color in favor of white. In that instance, we talked it through with the client and ended up identifying a new printing supplier utilising the highest degree of sustainability in the process, for which the background color of the card would have not changed the environmental impact of the production. And we printed the card with the red background, with a much more sustainable production than if we just said yes to what the client wanted from the start.

Benedetta Crippa and Johanna Lewengard, Wasim Harwill (implementation): poster designs for Tensta konsthall (Photo credit: Jean Baptiste Béranger courtesy of Tensta konsthall, Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, March 2023).

Benedetta Crippa and Johanna Lewengard: paper selection for Tensta konsthall (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, March 2023).

You have also worked at the Stockholm Environment Institute. What did you do there?

SEI is a respected research institute on climate and policy, and I worked there as the first graphic designer in the history of the organisation for about three years after graduating from my MFA, while I was starting my own studio in Stockholm. I was involved in a number of projects, firstly Trase, which highlights the environmental and social impact of certain commodities consumed by rich economies. I was also involved in several data visualisation projects. My challenges started when I realised that the scientific field is not yet ready to treat good communication as an equal and essential partner to convey the urgency of climate change to civil society. But things are changing fast, and I expect that every major scientific institute will have an in-house graphic department within the next decade. Because the mindset is evolving, I still occasionally collaborate with SEI, most recently on a visual campaign on the Sustainable Development Goals presented at the UN SDG Summit 2023. In this instance they approached us with the specific request of helping them think differently about climate communication.

Benedetta Crippa and Johanna Lewengard: graphic for visual campaign Time To Lead (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, August 2023).

Why did you leave?

When I left the organisation in 2021 I felt that I would be exponentially more impactful from within the artistic field, rather than the scientific one. At SEI I was surrounded by an international, highly competent community of colleagues where I first understood that a more holistic conversation on sustainability was needed, and that the arts can provide it.

Benedetta Crippa and Johanna Lewengard: outdoor signage for Tensta konsthall (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, March 2023).

Benedetta Crippa and Johanna Lewengard, Iyo Bisseck (development): web design for Tensta konsthall (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, March 2023).

How did you get from Italy to Stockholm?

I never planned to move to Scandinavia, or Sweden, or Stockholm for that matter. It was first love, and then I decided to study and stay. I did not know that Sweden would provide exactly what I needed—the opportunity as a woman to live with a high degree of freedom and confidence, as well as an impressive professional community where we can find many of the designers that are currently pushing the field forward. The free-of-charge MFA I graduated from in Stockholm (higher education in Sweden is free for European citizens), at Konstfack, was one of the first graphic design programs in the world focused on questions of power—and Konstfack itself is one of the best, most generous art schools in the world. Today some of the most interesting graphic designers in Europe are working within half an hour from my own office—and the South and North of Sweden are building their own voices as well, mainly thanks to a strong community of women designers, curators, journalists and visual workers spread across the country. Sweden was, and remains by far the most progressive and open country in Scandinavia, so I am grateful I landed here. It is suffering today from the far-right surge that is sweeping throughout Europe, its welfare system is eroding, it has rampant inequality, but I am grateful it has been part of my life journey and it has impacted my career for the better, without a doubt.

Benedetta Crippa: ornamental sculpture The Heart (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, Spring 2017).

You mention traditional folk art as a source of inspiration. Why and how does this inspire you and is it the folk art of certain countries or in general?

I am interested in folk art as a craft form, no matter its location. Folk art to me represents what is fundamental to a visual culture that builds a sustainable world. It is the expression of the human drive to bring care to our surroundings, pointing at art not as form of prestige but as a form of care. It is situated in time and space—folk art looks completely different depending in which community it is made—thus contributing to the diversity of our world; it is humble, stemming from local traditions and tacit knowledge; it is representative of the social continuum we are all situated in. It speaks of past, present and future at once. For all these reasons it is rarely considered as ‘fine’ art and mostly kept at bay in ethnographic museums, as a cultural expression, rather than as an artistic one. But I find folk art more interesting than any average work of ‘fine’ art today, by far.

I try and find a good work of folk art from local artisans wherever I go. One of the designers I love the most, Alexander Girard, was a collector of folk art and looking at his work I came to many of the realisations that guide my own practice today. We can compare folk art to dialects—those forms of language that are not formalised, perfect or universal, but are absolutely fundamental to understand the fabric of society and appreciate the uniqueness that all communities in the world, big or small, bring through the very locality of their existence.

Is it fair to say that your final project »World of Desire« is a plea for pluralism in graphic design? Was »World of Desire« perhaps the basis for the development of visual sustainability?

It absolutely was, even though I was not entirely aware of it at the time. It took me a few years to connect my own struggles as a woman, feminism, design, visual culture and sustainability, but the connection became very obvious very soon. I made World of Desire to revisit all that I was told was ‘wrong’ in my previous design training and give it a new dignity, and by doing so, give dignity to myself. The main goal was to deconstruct the idea that there is one ideal form we would all arrive to ‘if only we were good enough’. I wanted to establish, first and foremost to myself, that I could use my own voice without shame. I believe it is the challenge of every graphic designer to overcome the sense of shame that is imprinted in most of us by nearly all design programs today, and learn to use our own voice.

Benedetta Crippa: preparatory sketches for artist’s book World of Desire (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, 2017).

If you were to write your thesis today, would it look the same or what would be different?

To quote Birgitte Nyborg, the fictional first female prime minister of Denmark in the series Borgen, I don’t answer hypothetical questions! I would love to do World of Desire all over again, it was the single most powerful experience of my life. But I think its true power was to bring me to a place where my voice has become a defining part of all my work, and the book does not need to be made again. Not by chance, what became the center page of the book says “Look here, and never look back”.

Benedetta Crippa: spread from artist’s book World of Desire (Copyright © Studio Benedetta Crippa, May 2017).