Editorial

Created on the initiative of Jean-Pierre Greff in 2008 alongside the new HEAD, ISSUE was developed as an editorial path to the richness of the projects conducted at the school, where design and art were now to cohabitate. In around forty pages, the aim was both to assess and keep track of significant actions: research projects, workshops, special events, etc. Conceived as a collection of concise impromptu publications (4 per year), ISSUE’s mission was to offer “an insight into how training courses and research projects are run, also serving as a visa for an institution in touch with the contemporary world’s social realities.”

While ISSUE’s first decade of existence was in print format, it shifted to the web format on March 1st 2019, establishing the online incarnation of the HEAD’s key theoretical and practical activities. Intended for students, alumni, professors, researchers, cultural players and art and design lovers, ISSUE is at the same time a research platform, a site for the diffusion of the school’s most remarkable content, a scientific journal, a resource and an archive.

The new platform thus reflects the diversity and the ambition of the HEAD training courses in Visual arts; Cinema; Interior design and space design; Visual communication/Media design and interaction design; and Fashion design, jewellery and accessories. Through transversal navigation, the platform now makes it possible to build bridges between fields previously considered to be very far apart both in their concerns and mission. New collaborations, if not new ways to think about pedagogy and research, will doubtlessly arise from the links that are about to be forged. ISSUE therefore simultaneously constitutes the HEAD’s main editorial relay and operates as a generator of ideas and projects to come.

A multidisciplinary and multimedia periodical set up in imitation of the school, ISSUE intends for the singularity of its approaches to be recognized, linking critical reflection and experimental creation while strengthening the role of the HEAD as a place for knowledge production and transmission.