Printing Proofs: Goda Budvytytė

For the very first chapter of our Printing Proofs project, entitled Prehistory? Stories from the Anthropocene, the Museum of Civilizations invited designer Goda Budvytytė (b. 1985, Kaunas, Lithuania) to re-imagine the graphic devices for the rearrangement of the Prehistoric Collections.

The new typeface, We, the Living Things designed in collaboration with Fabian Harb (Dinamo GmbH) as part of proposed the visual system, concludes the visitor path with an “imaginative” human evolution that mirrors the “scientific” one, conceived in collaboration with Laura Tripaldi (b. 1993, Milan), PhD in Materials Science and Nanotechnology and an independent researcher who deals with the speculative and philosophical aspects of science and technology from a post-humanist and feminist perspective. As a whole, the project interdependently communicates the specificity of the museum section, uniting ongoing scientific research with in-depth paradigms that facilitate multiple and alternative, mutually coexisting interpretations.

Printing Proofs is a project conceived in collaboration with our editorial partner NERO, aimed at questioning the concept of verticality in the design of an institutional visual identity and thereby opening to new forms of knowledge. Through exchange between graphic designers from different countries and the museum’s scientific staff, a visual communication in the making is proposed, which rethinks and reconfigures itself according to its own concretization, in a continuous and imaginative methodological “proof.“

In view of this path, the graphic communication system is designed as “ground zero” of the Museum of Civilizations’ identity. Each element of the system is a surface ready to accommodate the signs of an articulated network of knowledge in formation, open to external stimuli and elements according to an organic principle of “hospitality.” The Museum’s spaces feature captions, posters, and infographics made from commonly used, low-cost and sustainable materials, which themselves become part of the visual communication system and contribute to its character. With Printing Proofs, “collaboration” is practiced as a research tool, inviting a variety of guests to speak on the apparatus of specific Museum collections. Over the years various voices will go on to compose a network of interpretations, content and forms that, in their intertwining, will give rise to a collective defining path that explores the concepts of reflection, dialogue and collaboration in the field of institutional design.