You work as a designer at 360 degrees, your practice involves graphic communication, poster design, editorial content, advertisement, and comics. You stated that one of the keys to success is to be unique but at the same time understandable, to be original but accessible. On the contrary, contemporary art sometimes is far from being comprehensible at first sight. In either case, we speak about images but the treatment is different – so what’s your relationship to visual arts at large? How does design interrelate with art more in general?

Graphic design has a message that has to connect with the viewer. Whether executed with type or image, the concept comes first. The elements of design and “art” have merged to the point where you can’t tell one from the other. Conceptual poetry and writing exist with typography in painting, on canvas, or on paper.

Your work dealt often with war stories, depicting them in comic books and posters. Do you find the negative part to be more interesting than representing its positive counterpart? What is it that interests you about the dark side of humankind?

I’m not interested in the dark side of mankind. My feeling about war has found a place in my work. It happens that the symbols of war are more interesting than those of peace.

For Temporary Atlas we printed Coitus Topographicus, it is the cartography of intercourse. Where did this idea to map with topographic parameters come from?

I saw a diagram of the sexual organs in a book in an antique shop. I made it into a map because it looked like one.

With Push Pin Studio you tried to embody a new spirit of freedom, perhaps it was not a case that it was founded only a few years before Eduard Hoffmann invented Helvetica. With your work, you theorized creative freedom from the constraint of certain beauty canons integrating the unexpected and imperfect with a hint of irony and grotesque. What are the sources of inspiration for the visual style of your design?

At Push Pin we revolted against tradition and cliche. We were called post-modernists avoiding Helvetica, etc. Our tools were all styles and conventions while I am strict about the rules of typography design.

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Otobong Nkanga