The idea for the project In a Nutshell, a touring exhibition of contemporary Croatian design, was born in mid-2009. Conceived as a relatively small exhibition, practical and flexible in format, it was faced with the oxymoronic task of using a very restricted set-up to show off works in three exceptionally different design areas: product, fashion and graphic design.
     Indeed, because of the various historical givens—the social, economic and political issues—the differences among these design categories are sometimes far greater than the similarities.
     Unlike the ever-bedevilled development of fashion and product design, the production of graphic design in Croatia has always been rich and its achievements have been long visible on an international scale.  We might mention the Grand Prix of Ljubo Babić at the Paris 1925 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, Ivan Picelj’s pivotal role in the New Tendencies[1], Boris Bućan on the cover of the V&A’s Power of the Poster[2]catalogue, and the numerous international prizes of Boris Ljubičić, Bruketa & Žinić, Laboratorium, Nedjeljko Špoljar and many others.
     The striking differences in production quality among the areas of design have, during their ten years of exhibition activity, been copiously illustrated by the Croatian Design Reviews. At these biennial exhibitions of the Croatian Designers’ Association, various design categories [3] have been shown in parallel and hence necessarily compared—always to the detriment of product design. Furthermore, after The Review 040506 (held in 2006), where the selection of professional product design was so derisory that it was not even put in the exhibition, it was entirely reasonable to ask whether product design in Croatia had, after a long and grave illness, at last passed away.
     Fortunately, the 040506 exhibition worked like a galvanic shock. Local product designers have in recent times been amazingly sprightly. Today, then, it is truly possible to pick out the most exciting phenomena within the given areas. It is possible to find the focal points, the pulsing centres of domestic design that, in spite of incontrovertible differences, do share some key aspirations and values. The name of the exhibition refers, therefore, not only to the concision of its format but also to the similar kernel that every nutshell of design conceals.
     The story called In a Nutshell is a sketch for a portrait of contemporary Croatian design through a specific part of domestic design practice. As the name says, In a Nutshell is a short and concise tale: with the depiction of a small number of consummate designer works, we have tried, pars pro toto, to indicate the currently most interesting phenomena on the designer scene in the country.
     The works chosen share no formal similarity; indeed, works have been chosen that illustrate the contemporarily pluralism of the approach to design. There are  works with a marked expressive and/or aesthetic component (the Cuculić poster Kvetch, the Hoffbauer’s Mogwai poster) and brilliant single-stroke sketches (Kauboji poster of Bruketa and Žinić, the Klupko light of Erika Šimić) but also highly conceptual works (such as the magazine Frakcija directed by Cavarpayer and then the Laboratorium studios) and complex projects that take issue with design and/or productive process (the Symbioisis/Mitosis project of Ljiljana Tutnjević, the poster (No)Work  by Silvio Vujičić and Ruta).
     What do the works on show then have in common? They share key contemporary design preoccupations such as local determination, the research angle, social commitment. Although the themes that occupy contemporary Croatian designers – globalisation, modern colonialism, consumerism, human rights, production ethics – are internationally relevant, in the works on show they are often seasoned with home-grown flavourings.

NATIONAL OR LOCAL
In contemporary society of international production, collaboration and influence, an exhibition that attempts to define itself in national terms will find itself on slippery ground. What is Croatian design (as against, let’s say, design determined regionally)? Do Croatian designers who work abroad belong to Croatian design?[4] And what about foreigner designers who work in Croatia? Design is no bastion that needs (if it is at all possible) to be defended by insistence on some mythical indigenous language, whatever that might be. An unambiguous, national determination of contemporary design - to the extent to which such a distinction was propagated by the Milan Triennials in the fifties and sixties and the large touring exhibitions of the leading design countries (natural Finnish, elegant Italian and inclusive Swedish design and so on)—is today beside the point.
     Instead of questing for some illusory unifying characteristic to define Croatian design, it seems more interesting to explore the exciting conglomerate of local and regional features that shape it.
     As a result of unification of the global market, local diversification has become extremely desirable—today, polas [5]are tastier than French fries. Here of course we are not talking only of local production, raw materials or ethnographic influences. There are also the other essential shapers of our localness: a whole melange of geographical, historical and cultural impacts, controversies and particular features of the former state and its political system, the problems of the transition, the vivid vernacular culture.
     The echoes of the local are loud and clear in the high quality solid oak and walnut furniture Basic (designed by Grupa) and Element (Numen), in the traditional lace making of the ceiling lamp Svjetle niti (Fabrio, Čirjak), the hand-knitted collection of Igor Galašand in Đurek’s project for digitalising Glagolitic script [6]. One needs to dive a little deeper for links of Numen and Laboratorium with the domestic Modernist tradition, quotes of Julije Knifer’s meanders and Vjenceslav Richter’s abstracts in Roban’s jewellery, or the Op Art of the New Tendencies in Ljubičić’s 3D poster.
     In the design of visual communications, the appropriation of meanings is a common post-modernist procedure. In a many-layered reading of the exhibited works, we will note an abundant use of local iconography, the reinterpretation of the traditional, references to the local cultural and social scene, as well as occasional dialogue with the country’s own designer tradition.
     Unfortunately, cases of the reinterpretation of the domestic design heritage are still relatively rare, partially because such a discourse requires a good grounding in domestic design history, which, like its principals, is still to a great extent without any proper evaluation.  The more valuable, then, are the rare existing examples, like the reinterpretation of Bućan’s poster from the 70s on the cover of Review of Croatian Design 040506, the new edition of the cult  Startas sneakers, the logotype alphabet of the Lexicon of YU Mythology, and Đurek’s digitalisation and supplementation of the font Rikard—Arsovski.[7]
     The art of typography in Croatia, until a short time ago a neglected area, is writing a new chapter in the localisation of the country’s design.  The popular boom in the study of fonts can be attributed primarily to the arrival of Nikola Đurek, not only a typographer par excellence, but also a teacher of the subject at two Croatian design faculties. His typefaces are already locally determined by his very treatment of the specifically Croatian elements of the font (the diacritics and diagraphs).  Particularly valuable are his projects for a reinterpretation of domestic design/art heritage: along with the already mentioned typefaces (Glagolitic, Rikard-Arsovski) there is also the meandric Knifer typeface. Numerous less exotic Đurek typefaces have come into standard use; the use of his fonts has become almost a question of honour, and gives Croatian design production a particularly local taste.
     Although at first glance the packaging section is a divergence from the, put provisionally, non-commercial framework of the works shown, this often trivialised section of design practice needs reconsideration. Knowing that the most recognisable world brands today are those of food and beverage (Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonalds), we can with a fair degree of certainty claim that the most powerful cultural colonisation is being carried out through our stomachs. The local determination of exhibited products, the manner of production (family farms) and the manner of consumption (the slow food concept) make a total opposition to the ideology advocated by the corporations listed. The battle for the survival of local identities has moved to the culinary theatre, and subsequently, to packaging design which supports indigenous, high quality products.

CONTEMPORARY CONSIDERATIONS
In Croatia, the fondness for formal and conceptual research has been more distinct in the areas of visual communications and fashion design than in product design.  As medium of communication, graphic design has long since intrigued domestic conceptual artists and designers[8]. Moreover, its ability to provoke has attracted the clients who have built up their own alternativeness through an alternative aesthetic. Indeed, advanced [9] graphic design has traditionally been created thanks to particular clients. Traditionally, Croatian graphic design can put its high level of development down primarily to clients in the domain of culture. Ever since the first excursions of domestic Art Nouveau painters into poster art, the cultural institutions - theatres, concert halls or museums—have featured as patrons of quality graphic design.
     Today, equally important generator of advanced design is the (subsidised) independent scene. With the conservative social and political U-turn of the nineties, cultural institutions ceased to be the chief and only movers of progressive research in design, and the emphasis was shifted to newly-founded independent media, curatorial collectives and non-governmental organisations.

On the other hand, Croatian fashion design has been traditionally based on small fashion studios, the resort of designers inclined to research and experiment [10]. This modus operandi that kept the domestic fashion scene alive even during communism era [11] enabled a certain pluralism of approach, methods and thinking.
     Such a type of micro-production [12] has recently been copied by the domestic product design scene. Ultimately, it makes sense: both branches have always had troubles with large-scale industry that has had no interest in design. The paucity of conceptual research in domestic product design is largely related to production and economic constraints, i.e. the dependence of local production on industrial, mass production. However, the shortage of conceptual research in product design is also related to a strong modernist design tradition that did not encourage excessively expressive and polysemous appearances. But at a moment when domestic product design has split off from the existing large industry and moved in the direction of independent, small-batch actions [13], it has also become experimental in its expression. Reaktor—a newly founded platform for the affirmation of product design - played a major role in this movement for the rehabilitation of product design. Through its first workshop, Reaktor generated the development of a dozen new products.  With the topic of direct design—immediate, hands-on design reactions to a situation or a problem through locally accessible technologies and materials—Reaktor gave the invited authors a very broad framework in which to act.[14]
     Contemporary design research—whatever design area it might be about—is focused on a comprehension of the process of creation and use (action and reaction), whether the methods of the research are formal or whether they involve a critical overview of the social role of design. Every shakeup of the firmly enthroned assumptions about the (one and only correct) method, meaning or material conquers space for new interpretations. Thus, some of the authors have radically impinged on the archetypical format of the book (R. Dražič: Book for Two), the journal (Cavarpayer: Frakcija), the poster (Boris Ljubičić: Voli kvadrat i krug /Love square and circle), or garment (Josipa Štefanec); they have brought in typological hybrids (Bačun, Bratović: One is Many) or have indeed explored the very method of production (Ruta, Vujičić: Plakat (Ne)rad) and subsequent use (Numen: KY table).
     Planned product obsolescence, the depleting of natural resources and the dehumanisation of the environment were long ago identified as self-destructive elements of western civilisation. Not only are they present in the Croatian quotidian, but they are much more disastrous for a young society with no evolved self-defence mechanisms. If we add to this the profound social crisis that transcends the economic, there is a still more direct motivation for Croatian designers to investigate new and alternative possibilities for effective action within their own profession.
     In the area of social and political work of designers, the local independent scene has played a key role, supporting engaged, investigative and innovative projects. To mention a few, there are the acute comments of the Zarez covers, the B.a.b.e. calendar, the Lexicon of YU Mythology or the edition of sermons by the NSK philosopher Peter Mlakar.
     Divorced from the industry to which it was until recently connected by an umbilical cord, product design too has discovered its social and political potential. In a super-consumerist society, in which having is the key value, product design is an ideal medium for the communication of ideas. Design is political, and here we are not thinking only of the already mentioned the independent scene or the designing of the state (a topic all by itself). Self-initiated projects like the Play Away Violence dolls (Bačun, Bratović) or the pictographic dissection of society (the poster of Nenad Jaleševac) are markedly political works. The packaging of indigenous domestic products is certainly political.  Not to mention the final act in which designers have given up on big domestic industry turning to the self-production—taking responsibility and the means of production into one’s own hands.
     The existence of alternative—an indigenous, a committed—design is conditional upon a deal of ethical appreciation in the social surroundings: this kind of design does require a critical mass of an aware public receptive of subversion. It is not surprising that the greatest number of visitors to the promotion of Reaktor’s products were coming back from the Right to the City demo against the destruction of a pedestrian zone by yet another mall in the centre of Zagreb. This is the audience for alternative design—a public critical of an absolutist aestheticised society of mass production based on submissive, statistically identical consumers.
     In order to fulfil its function, design must have a user.  Alternative design requires a certain cultural and democratic maturity that Croatian society still has to attain. At this moment, the direction of movement seems encouraging—a critical comprehension of social phenomena and a readiness for an intelligent deviation from immaculate mass production tell of the democratisation of a society. While it still does not accept the diversity with an all out enthusiasm, the Croatian public seems to open up to that possibility more readily than ever.  

Koraljka Vlajo 

[1] The New Tendencies – an international movement of neo-Constructivist and kinetic art was embodied in five exhibitions held in what was then the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb from 1961 to 1973. In parallel with the exhibitions, symposia were organised, and the journal Bit International was published.  In this event, along with numerous world artists, over the years some of the most significant world art and information theorists took part.

[2] Margaret Timmers (ed.): Power of the Poster, V&A Publications, 1998, London. The front cover reproduced Boris Bućan's poster for the Croatian National Theater in Split (Firebird, Petrushka) of 1984.

[3] Above all this concerns product and graphic design; fashion design has been featured at the exhibitions of the Croatian Designers' Association only since 2008.

[4] From this point of view I should point out that the In a Nutshell exhibition focused on works created in Croatia primarily because these projects provide an additional insight into the impact of local/regional circumstances on design work. The works shown are necessarily determined by local specificities: by clients and public expectation or production in/capacities.

[5] Pola is a way of baking potato in Croatian regions of Lika and Gorski Kotar.

[6] Glagolitic is an Old Slavonic script created in the 9th century and subsisting in Croatia until the 19th.

[7] The typography was partially devised by designer Mihajlo Arsovski in 1972 for the Rikard Boutique.

[8] Right until the foundation of Zagreb’s Design School in 1989 and the establishment of professional training in design, design staff tended to be derived from art practice.

[9] The expression advanced design was introduced by Maroje Mrduljaš  in the book Dizajn i nezavisna kultura / Design and Independent Culture (Savez udruga Klubtura i dr., Zagreb, 2010).

[10] Large scale Yugoslav fashion and textile industries were quite averse to excess or experimentation.

[11] This period was explored in detail in the exhibition Drugarica a la mode devised by Tonči Vladislavić in 2006 [drugarica is “female comrade” in the socialist sense].

[12] Tonči Vladislavić  brought in the expressions micro and macro trends while talking of the way in which the fashion industry worked in Croatia after WWII. 

[13] The trend was started by Numen, working with the local distributor Intera, launching a set of furniture called Element.

[14] The exhibition includes five works from the Reaktor workshop: the standing lamp Model (Grupa); the KY  table (Numen); the ceiling lights Klupko (Erika Šimić) and Kumulus (Ksenija Jurinec); and the shelf Iz-rez of Neven Kovačić.