The design of Ymt, volume 4, was in the capable hands of second year students, class of 2020–2023, of Visual communication in the Design department at KMD. Theirs is the honour of conceptualising and giving form to the magazine’s contents, and managing the complexity of collaborating on publication design.

The theme of Ymt 4 is Nomadic Type.

We went on ‘[ … ] a quest with them [the students] to find out more about current Nordic and Northern type design and the use of type in our region. And to ask them to think about refuge and refugees in terms of type and typography. We asked: Where do the typographic ideas we work with come from? And we asked them to think of publication as an intentional carrier of culture, and as an invitation to an exchange of ideas and to a discourse.’ (Ísleifsdóttir / Huus, Editorial: The Nomadic Type, Ymt 4, 2022).

Contents: 

‘The Nomadic Type’, editorial by Dóra Ísleifsdóttir & Åse Huus. Collage by Guðmundur Oddur Magnússon aka Goddur. 

‘How to give nature a voice?’ by Irene Alterskjær. 

‘Trine Rask on observing letters and humans’ by Thale J. Math Meisfjord & Elina Ulén. 

‘On being ill – a Corona diary’ by Ane Thon Knudsen. 

‘The new typography and type design in 1930s Scandinavia’ by Trond Klevgaard. 

‘Eva Abdulina about Austra and her love for Latvian heritage’ by Anna Stabel & Tina Ekerhovd. 

‘Blimey! It's like being in a Harry Potter film’ by Maziar Raein. 

‘Origin of Merz’ by Peter Jones. 

‘Alan Kitching on the irrelevance of letterpress’ by Ena Rathgreb & Hedda Halvorsen. 

‘Messages in a time of crisis’ by Victoria Squire. 

‘Collage gallery’ by the BA 2nd year designers-cohort.

About the Editorial design and Visual identity course

Ymt is designed and produced by second year bachelor students in their third semester of study. Ymt contains what has recently been questioned in our field in this academy and region, with contributions from alumni students from the year in MA Design, research projects by academic staff, and original content by second year BA students in the course Editorial design and visual identity. Ymt is not prescribed when a new student group starts to work on each volume. The student-designers are encouraged to explore all avenues of investigation into how the content (including their own contributions to the contents) may best be served through editorial design and publication means.

Ymt introduces and invites students to design journalism, editorship, and authorship, and to how the nuanced visual language of text and image may be employed in a field which requires multimodal articulation. The making of Ymt creates a situation for students, who’s forte is not to write (or even talk), where autonomy is stimulated and ideas and thoughts are voiced in the visual language and through design writing. The students are invited into a creative conversation—professional dialogue and discourse—within a flat democratic structure of hierarchy. The students can and do contribute written content to Ymt in addition to design and visual material, but their main mission is to read and internalise contributions by academics, practitioners, and MA students and alumni, and Research fellows and convey these authors’ meaning through the design.

Teachers in the Editorial design and visual identity course in which Ymt is made have been Dóra Ísleifsdóttir, Åse Huus, Magnus Nyquist, and Albert Cheng-Syun Tang 湯承勳. Gustav Kvaal, Hilde Kramer, Charles Michalsen, Ingrid Rundberg and Sunniva Storlykken Helland have been guest teachers in the course. MA students in Visual communication have also been guest teachers, and are Mats Kåre Hope, Kuan Cheng Yeh, and Endre Pernup. Jan Edgar Hartvedt from Bodoni printers in Bergen has been printing and paper consultant in the course.

About the publication series

Ymt is an experimental publication about Visual Communication as a field of knowledge. Ymt is available in a limited edition print and is open source online here. Ymt is in English. 

Ymt 4, in the printed version, was published in an edition of 500. 

Ymt 3, in the printed version, was published in an edition of 300. 

Ymt 2, in the printed version, was published in an edition of 200. 

Ymt 1, in the printed version, was published in an edition of 450.

It is available on Facebook as ymt magazine 

Instagram as ymtmag, #ymtmag

Ymt is archived online: Ymt 4 (2022), Ymt 3 (2021), Ymt 2 (2020), and Ymt 1 (2019) 

Ymt is filmed and on Vimeo: Ymt 3 (2021), Ymt 2 (2020), and Ymt 1 (2019)

Ymt is edited by Dóra Ísleifsdóttir and Åse Huus. 

Peter Jones and Victoria Squire, editors of Message—an international academic journal about Graphic communication design, are on Ymt’s Advisory board.

Ymt is created in an Editorial design and Visual identity course with second year BA students of Visual communication, who work with content from: Academic staff at KMD, BA students, MA students and alumni, PhD fellows, and contributors from the field in the Nordic and Baltic region and the makers’ wider network.

Ymt was a part of the Artistic Research project Crux of the Matter (ongoing from 2019 to 2020) and that is available (reflection in process) on Research Catalogue. Ymt is also represented as an Teaching-based Artistic Research project on Dóra Ísleifsdóttir’s and Åse Huus’s profiles on Research Catalogue. Research Catalogue is an International Database for Artistic Research provided by the Society for Artistic Research.

Ymt has received support from Grafill, Papyrus, Bodoni, Bergen Art Book Fair, Cirrus a Nordic-Baltic network of Art and Design higher education (from the Visual communication educators group), as well as internal funding from the University of Bergen and the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design.

ISSN 2535-6399 (print) ISSN 2535-6402 (online) Ymt, print and online, is archived and available through the National library of Norway and the KMD library.

Ymt is published by Visual communication, Design, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen © Ymt 1, 2019; Ymt 2, 2020; Ymt 3, 2021, Ymt 4 2022*

* Publisher’s disclaimer, and a statement about authors’ ownership:

Each contributing author has sole responsibility for the content of his or her article, including all text, images, and references. Each author is sole owner of their contribution as submitted. The designed and published contribution is owned by KMD Ymt’s publisher. Any errors that result from the editorial design of the magazine are due to it being designed as BA coursework assignment and KMD, including all staff, does not accept responsibility for any errors or consequences thereof. Contributors, text authors and makers of visual material, are aware of this risk when submitting to the magazine, and submission is a declaration of understanding, agreement and non-liability.