Dialogue Through Design

Exhibiting a Moroccan-Danish partnership project

About the project

Title: Dialogue Through Design
Type of work: Exhibition and conference design
Date: 2012 - 2013

Under the auspieces of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, students from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art's School of Design have been collaborating with a network of Moroccan handicraft women, Réseau Femmes Artisanes, as a part of an empowerment design project. For a seminar taking place in Marrakech in late 2012, I — in collaboration with two textile design students as well as two anthropology students from University of Copenhagen — created a pop-up exhibition about this partnership project. In the beginning of 2013, the exhibition 'travelled on' to be exhibited at the library of Architecture, Design, Conservation and Performing Arts at Holmen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

To learn more about the empowerment design project, and the Danish-Moroccan products created, click here.

The Marrakech seminar

I was responsible for every aspect of the graphic design relating to the exhibitions and seminar ranging from creating the seminar's visual identity to designing invitations, name tags, posters etc., as well as visually presenting the partnership project to a bilingual audience (as participants were coming from Denmark, Morocco and Tunesia). The exhibition posters combined English and Arabic in a reflection of each other as a visual representation of the cultural collaboration project itself. The posters told the story of the Danish-Moroccan partnership through images and simple infographics; the collaboration, workshops and dialogue, and its outcome.

Seminar booklets

For the seminar, a simple booklet was created maintaining contact details for all the participants, the programme for the two days as well as a short description, and pages for notes.

Exhibition in Marrakech

The Marrakech version of the exhibition posters about the partnership project.

Seminar booklets

The pattern is a graphic simplification of an embroidery pattern that was created as part of the project by combining Moroccan handicrafts with Danish Design.

Seminar name-tags The gift for each participant

Each participant received a small gift; a purse with a small fold-out poster that explained about the purse's origin.

Seminar booklets Seminar booklets

The buttons that inspired the visual identity.

Seminar booklets

The main blocks of text were set up so that the Arabic type mirrors the Western type as a visual metaphor for the cultural experiences and learnings of the partnership project.

The Copenhagen exhibition

The seminar exhibition in Marrakech, and the exhibition in the library in Copenhagen are both slightly different visually to reflect the different settings. Even though it essentially is two different takes on the same thing, the atmosphere of the two places, and thus the exhibitions, felt very different.

Exhibition opening

The opening reception of the 'travelling pop-up exhibition' in Copenhagen.

Exhibition poster

The poster for the Copenhagen exhibition.

Exhibition atmosphere Exhibition posters The story of the purse

The story of the purse: How it came into being, what aspects and elements it highlights or embodies, mixed in with some anthropological insights.

Redesigned booklet

For the Copenhagen exhibition — seeing as there was no seminar folder — I also redesigned an old version of a simple booklet that explains about the partnership project.