Red Dot Communication Design Award goes to Utopia Toolbox, by Nick Tobier & Juliane Stiegele

Stamps Professor Nick Tobier’s Utopia Toolbox, published by the University of Michigan Press, was selected by an international grand jury for a 2017 Red Dot Communication Design Award. The book’s designer, Juliane Stiegele, accepted the award at a ceremony in Berlin on October 27, 2017.

The publication contains an anthology of texts, quotations, interviews, documentation of art and design projects and do-it-yourself actions and performances. This US edition includes the work of a number of Stamps faculty including Osman Khan, Irina Aristakhova, Sadashi Inuzuka, Janie Paul, Rebekah Modrak, and Stephanie Rowden, and alums including Charlie Michaels, Mia Cinelli and Mary Ayling.

Utopia Toolbox is a publication that incorporates action. This is an art & design manual less about the design of a chair or a table, and more about the social space between those sitting at the table. Think of a hybrid between something like a how-to — whether a cookbook or home repair and a theoretical framework that asks artists, designers, planners, architects and cultural producers to consider their actions in context.

Red Dot Award: Communication Design | UTOPIA TOOLBOX – For Working on the Future