Wolff Olins' Jack Grafton Workshop

Jack Grafton has lived in London and New York and has worked in studios such as Spin, Pentagram, DesignStudio and independently for clients such as Adidas, Céline, Google, Lloyd’s of London, Nike – most recently completing the identity for an experimental pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.

One of his particular interests is technology and for this workshop we were asked to look at a shop that was close to the university and re brand it in some way that meant it could be technologically advanced.  My group chose to rebrand Blackwell which was useful for me as it meant I could have more insight into the book industry and how technology might be involved with it in the future. We decided to make a video that portrayed a shop in which books could be interactive experiences rather than just having to read them.

The outcome was fun to make and interesting to hypothesise but again it bypasses the fact we should be using our skills as readers more, rather than relying on instant visual stimulus. I won't be developing something like this for the book cafe but it was interesting to explore briefly as an aspect of how books could develop in the future.