Beyond the Pale

The purpose of 100 Archive is to discuss contemporary visual communication from the Irish design community and to present it in all its varied forms: its ever-widening variety of outputs, its diverse client contexts and its origins all over Ireland and in studios all over the world. But in reality, even at the best of times we can be pretty Dublin-centric… With this in mind we bring you Beyond the Pale, a series of interviews with designers and studios based in a variety of locations around Ireland. 

Of course there is a significant number of studios and practitioners in the capital city, but design doesn’t just happen in Dublin and we’re keen to hear from those setting up shop in Ireland’s other villages, towns and cities. While we could never tell the story of Irish design without considering the work made in the capital, it is a real mark of a growing design culture in Ireland that designers can work from and in other places in the country, collaborate with local government, businesses and arts organisations and contribute to commercial and creative life in locations from Limerick to Belfast, the wild west to the sunny south east, the midlands and more.

We hope the series begins to get under the skin of design scenes around the country and reveal the creative individuals, studios and communities powering them. Sure, a design sector can thrive in a capital city: it’s when the local neighbourhood studio has a steady stream of work that you know clients and consumers understand the value of design. We often refer to the work of 100 Archive as ‘mapping the landscape’ of Irish design. When we see these further flung parts of the landscape appear in the snapshot, it makes for a pretty picture indeed.