Why Not Associates – Exhibition at the Head Post Office opens with private viewing – Friday 24 November 2017
Why Not Associates is a British multi-disciplinary design studio with a world-wide reputation, who believe that compelling communication demands an element of surprise, whether it’s for postage stamps or public art, TV idents or cultural institutions. WNA has been at the vanguard of British graphic design for the past three decades. Inventive and irreverent, progressive and provocative, their output is prodigious and eclectic, spanning everything from monumental public art pieces to minuscule postage stamps. WNA will be celebrating these 30 years with a retrospective show held at Sheffield Institute of the Arts, opening with a private viewing on Friday 24 November 2017 hosted by the Graphic Design & Illustration Department at Sheffield Hallam University.
Why Not Associates exhibition
Sheffield Institute of Arts
Post Hall, Head Post Office
Sheffield S1 2BA
Friday 24 November – Friday 22 December 2017
10AM 5PM Monday to Friday, 10AM – 4PM Saturday, closed Sunday
Private viewing Friday 24 November, 5.30PM – 9PM (tickets via Eventbrite here)
This is the most comprehensive exhibition of WNA’s work to date, charting their development from recent graduates of the Royal College of Art in 1987, to figureheads of UK design in 2017. The show perfectly demonstrates their restless creativity, from the expressive graphic mark-making of the early days, to the more refined experimentation of today.
One of the first UK studios to embrace the Apple Macintosh and multi-media, WNA have consistently pushed the possibilities of print and moving-image, digital and three-dimensional design. They’ve worked across the board for clients cultural and commercial, bringing the same edge, wit, and deftness of touch to books and posters, TV commercials and wayfinding systems.
Stylistically expansive and ever-unpredictable, WNA’s work is an ongoing exploration, a love letter to graphic design that shows no sign of abating. Or as they put it (with apologies to Spike Milligan) “We never had a plan, so nothing could go wrong”.
Follow WNA on twitter @whynotassoc.