The National Grid 2.0: Rebooting an In-Print Publishing Platform for Critical Writing about Graphic Design in Aotearoa New Zealand

Luke Wood Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design, Ilam School of Fine Arts (UC)

The National Grid was a graphic design journal from Aotearoa New Zealand that was published in eight issues between 2006 and 2012. This paper will reflect upon the journal’s life-span in that period, while also articulating the collective decision of a group of designer-writers to re-animate this publishing project over ten years later in 2024.

As one of the original founding editors of The National Grid, I am interested in how the independent publishing landscape has changed over the last decade, both locally and globally. What went wrong for this publication before, and what might go right for it now?

This paper will address working relationships between in-print publishing, print-on-demand, online publishing, and the rise of podcasting. But more importantly this paper will discuss significant social, political, and cultural shifts of the last decade — changes that have generally only been superficially accounted for in local design discourses.

This paper will focus on what kinds of design publishing currently exist in Aotearoa, the lack of critical and/or speculative voices in this area, and the effect this has on the discipline in general and on professional practice more specifically.