Inner Underground
A workshop at International Design Week 2025, on the theme unCOMMON underGROUND, at the Institute of Design & Communication of FH JOANNEUM, Graz, 9–16 May 2025.
Designers usually work on commission, for a client’s needs, and have little time for their own ideas. The workshop starts from the opposite direction: understanding the world begins with understanding ourselves. Participants dug into their own memories, sensations and imagination, and turned them into visual stories. Eight designers took part: students of Information Design and of the Master’s programmes at FH JOANNEUM, and exchange students.
Three meetings. Inner Dialogue: metacognition, the first human-made images and the lost art of inner dialogue, with journaling exercises and a mood board on the theme. Hidden Narratives: the world as we perceive it, language as the encoding of thought, art as a way to say what words cannot; personal stories, case studies and data visualisation led to a storyboard. From Idea to Realization: imagination and mastery, information design, and the path from an intangible thought to a finished work, with critique sessions.
Each participant finished a work of their own — a picture book, an illustrated series, a collage — and presented it at the closing presentation of the Design Week on 16 May. Sandro took part through an Erasmus+ teaching mobility from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts.
