Manifestos aim to inspire a movement—and we set these manifestos in motion! No Dadaist spectacle back then orimportant design studio today could exist without a manifesto. Short and loud or long and literary, the manifesto was—and still is—the ideal text format for publishing sharp questions and assertions. Manifestos always have their finger on the pulse in terms of content: they aim to shake things up, get people involved, draw them in. But it is surprisingly rare that they break free from the conventions of linear, readable texts.
This is an opportunity to give manifestos the aesthetic radicalism they deserve. It is often in the context of manifestos that provocative designs emerge—as visual codes of ideas. Selected manifestos such as those of Metahaven, Experimental Jetset, Ken Garland, or Marinetti provide important inspiration in terms of content and design—as, of course, do recent experiments with kinetic typography and moving posters. By combining design, theory, and lab-based practical work, we create our own kinetic manifestos.