About

Since our foundation in 2012, the 100 Archive has worked to capture, present and contextualise contemporary design in Ireland and the individuals, studios, clients and collaborators who make it happen. Our annual open call has created a selection of 100 archive-worthy communication design projects each year from 2010 onwards. Each year’s archive selection features communication design spanning a host of media, outputs and contexts, from posters for club nights to international corporate rebrands and from identities for small businesses to campaigns for major social movements.

Map Irish Design aims to plot the journey that Irish communication design has traveled since the foundation of the 100 Archive. With the help of the Creative Ireland Programme, we have examined the submitted projects and the information associated with them to build a picture of design in Ireland: who makes it, where, with whom and why. We begin to see how Irish design has influenced commerce, culture and society both here and internationally. By using design as a lens, we learn how business in Ireland continues to change, which social movements we care about and how we express ourselves creatively and culturally.

In January 2019 we assembled a team to work on Map Irish Design, bringing together a range of skills and expertise. That team was researcher Elaine McDevitt, designer Keelin Coyle of WorkGroup, developer James Delaney and animators Joe Coveney and John O’Connell of Studio 9. On behalf of the 100 Archive, the project was led by Aideen McCole with support from Stephen Ledwidge. Aside from the core team, we have consulted and collaborated with a host of other people. We have picked brains, gleaned insight, pulled in other skill sets, had help with trawling through data and much more from a large number of designers, researchers, videographers and cultural producers. Ireland has a rich creative community and we believe both the process and outcome of this project reflects that.

Through this project we hope to demonstrate design’s far-reaching impact on life, culture, business and society. We also want to begin a conversation about the future of our industry, both within the industry itself and far beyond it — only by knowing where we have been can we start to imagine where we might go.