The Brno International Biennial of Graphic Design
Text extracted from the Brno International Biennial of Graphic Design website

‘The Brno International Biennial of Graphic Design, established in 1963, is one of the oldest and most
important events in the field of visual communication worldwide. The birth of the Brno Biennial took
place against a backdrop of the cultural and political situation in the 1960’s, when events were driven
by efforts on the part of Czechoslovak artists and designers to develop their right to free artistic
expression, tempted by the possibility of comparing what they designed with international counterparts.
A large number of eminent figures in the field of graphic design have taken part in the Brno Biennial
over the years, as exhibiting artists, members of international juries, and lecturers at international
symposia. The Brno Biennial has played host to such graphic design luminaries as Saul Bass, Roman
Cieslewicz, Wim Crouwel, Alan Fletcher, Adrian Frutiger, Shigeo Fukuda, Milton Glaser, Ivan Chermayeff,
Seymour Chwast, Mitsuo Katsui, Herb Lubalin, Ladislav Sutnar, Josef Týfa, Tadanori Yokoo, Hermann Zapf
and many others.’

About the design work
* (Asterisk) is a newspaper supplement published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘B.O.O.K.
Basic Object of Knowledge. The Contemporary Book and its Model’ held at NTU CCA, Centre for Contemporary
Art Singapore. *(Asterisk) was designed as an insert for Singaporean newspapers The Straits Times and
Today. The design is based on the grid structures and sizes of the above-mentioned newspapers. The modus
operandi includes an effect of ‘unfolding the grid’ of the mentioned newspapers, or transforming their
column grids into pages.

Asteriskos were first introduced by Aristophanes of Byzantium to mark lines repeated several times
in Homeric texts. In Ojeda’s project, the current print appears as a contemporary palimpsest. The surface
where the initial writing has been somehow deleted is appropriated to be symbolically re-used. The result
is a sort of “double writing” which * (Asterisk) insert for the Singaporean newspapers appears to be when
adapting the newspaper function into the form of an exhibition catalogue. This reuse of the newspaper’s
“architecture” also signifies the text within a text as an endlessly game of mirrors of references.

Related links
28thInternational Biennial of Graphic Design Brno 2018
B.O.O.K