About Ymt, a magazine about Visual Communication

‘The 25 students (BAV3 autumn 2018) working on this first volume of Ymt have contributed with their own initial artistic research through the creation of original content, both visual and verbal, according to their level of knowledge and their progress in the exploration of our field. The students were asked to begin the editorial design work by reading the University’s strategy, KMD’s strategy, and the Design department’s new set of three unifying values, and then respond and react through their design of the publication, and in their own design and authored content.

Our strategy promises humanistic and ethical communication as one of its key concerns. Is that relevant in the field of Visual communication, and is that what we actually practice?

The students responded with a resounding hint: Ymt. The name describes how they interpret our request for an agonistic reaction from them. They are not sure about anything, but they still know what they think, and how they feel. As do we all, until we are somehow forced to question ourselves, and what we think we know, which is why it is important to expose our thought process, and offer it up to contestation and conversation. In this the academic staff here leads the way, and offers insights and concerns. In that way answers, or, better still, more questions will unfold.’ (Ísleifsdóttir / Huus, 2019).

Ymt is an experimental publication about Visual Communication as a field of knowledge. Ymt is available in a limited edition print and is open source online here.

It is available on Facebook as ymt magazine, and on Instagram as ymtmag. Ymt is in English.

Ymt is edited by Dóra Ísleifsdóttir and Åse Huus. Peter Jones and Victoria Squire, editors of Message—an international academic journal about Graphic communication design—are on Ymt’s Advisory board.

Ymt is created in an Editorial design and visual identity course with second year BA students of Visual communication, who work with content from academic staff at KMD, MA alumni, and contributors from the field in the Nordic and Baltic region and the makers’ wider network.

Teachers in the Editorial design and visual identity course in which Ymt is made are Dóra Ísleifsdóttir, Åse Huus, Magnus Nyquist, and Albert Cheng-Syun Tang 湯承勳. Gustav Kvaal, Hilde Kramer, Charles Michalsen, Ingrid Rundberg and Sunniva Storlykken Helland have been visiting teachers. Jan Edgar Hartvedt from Bodoni printers has been printing consultant in the course.

Ymt is designed and produced by second year bachelor students in their third semester of study. Ymt contains what has recently been questioned in our field in this academy and region, with contributions from alumni students from the year in MA Design, research projects by academic staff, and original content by second year BA students in the course Editorial design and visual identity. Ymt is not prescribed when a new student group starts to work on each volume. The student-designers are encouraged to explore all avenues of investigation into how the content (including their own contributions to the contents) may best be served through editorial design and publication means.

Ymt introduces and invites students to design journalism, editorship, and authorship, and to how the nuanced visual language of text and image may be employed in a field which requires multimodal articulation. The making of Ymt creates a situation for students, who’s forte is not to write (or even talk), where autonomy is stimulated and ideas and thoughts are voiced in the visual language and through design writing. The students are invited into a creative conversation—professional dialogue and discourse—within a flat democratic structure of hierarchy. The students can contribute content to Ymt, but their main mission is to read and internalise contributions by academics, practitioners, and MA students and alumni, and Research fellows and convey these authors’ meaning through the design.

Ymt 1, in the printed version, was published in an edition of 450.
Contents of Ymt 1, published 2019:

●    ‘Editorial’, Dóra Ísleifsdóttir and Åse Huus.
●    ‘The PhD program in artistic research’, Bente Irminger.
●    ‘The Power of Influence’, Camilla S. Balulu.
●    ‘The Pictorial Human’, Cathrine Kooyman.
●    ‘Aren’t We Human?’, Albert Cheng-Syun Tang.
●    ‘You’re in My Head’, Saurabh Kumar.
●    ‘The Future of Data Visualisation’, Marte S. Teigen.
●    ‘I am the State’, Ingrid Rundberg.
●    ‘Tomorrow’s Packaging’, Sofie Svanes.
●    ‘Provoking Change through Advertisement’, Kine Mentzoni.
●    ‘Food Sees the Future’, I-Chih Lu.
●    ‘The Lazy Designer’s Guide to Saving the World’, Oda Engelsen Ødegård.
●    ‘What do I think about when I try to think about Global Warming?’, Ina S. Berger.
●    ‘A Plastic Whale – The Symbol of Crisis’, Kristin Skåland and Ina Therese Nordberg-Sculz.
●    ‘Design and Ethics’, (interview by) Kim André Fladen.
●    ‘Inclusive for Whom’, Espen Kvinge Tennebekk.
●    ‘People and Patterns’, Maren Rørvik.
●    ‘Breaking Away from Mass Production with a Sewing Machine’, Kine Mentzoni.
●    ‘Culture and Design – Why You Should Care’, Alma Hjort af Ornås.
●    ‘Creating Reflected and Compassionate Images of “The Other” in a Hyper-Visual Time’, 
Hilde Kramer.
●    ‘Pictograms are My Friend’, Ashley Booth.
●    ‘A Pictographic Theatre: When Words Exclude, Pictograms Include’, 
Ashley Booth and Linda Lien.
●    ‘To Read without Words’, Agnes Guttormsgaard.
●    ‘Witness and Documents Memory’, Charles Michalsen.
●    ‘Quiet Observations’, Åse Huus.
●    ‘My Voice has Never been this Strong’, Jannica Luoto.
●    ‘From Stem to Feast’, Zack Denfeld and Cathrine Kramer.

ISSN 2535-6399 (print) ISSN 2535-6402 (online)
Ymt, print and online, is archived and available through the Norwegian National Library.

Ymt has received support from Grafill, Papyrus, Bodoni, and from funds within the University of Bergen and KMD.

Ymt is published by Visual communication, Design, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen © Ymt 1, 2019 and Ymt 2, 2020