Form Follows Inquiry –
A Manifesto
Design is often taught as a discipline of solutions. My work begins somewhere else.
Inquiry comes first.
I approach graphic design not as a service of clarity, but as a medium capable of questioning the structures that produce clarity in the first place. Manuals, histories, and systems that present themselves as neutral are rarely neutral. They are instruments that codify authority, organize knowledge, and stabilize meaning.
Form does not solve this. Form investigates it.
Through interventions in books, design manuals, and historical documents, my work treats printed matter as a site of inquiry. Pages are interrupted, annotated, reframed, or obstructed. Typography becomes a tool for friction rather than communication. Graphic form exposes how meaning becomes fixed, who maintains it, and what assumptions sustain it.
These works do not aim to restore original meaning. They examine how meaning becomes codified and how it might be unsettled. In this practice, design is not decoration, style, or branding. It is a critical instrument.
A page can function as a test site. A book can become a contested space. Typography can operate as a form of dissent.
Inquiry generates form. And when the questions are sharp enough, the form will follow.