From the preface:

»Click on the info button. You’ll get through to the crystal method, the work manifesto, the dogma, the practice™. It will either clarify what kind of work you’re looking at or further mystify it. This publication is a collection of info-texts, manifestos and self-descriptions from the websites of graphic design studios from all over the world. Their texts are meant to explain their work and attitude, their way of dealing with issues of visual communication. While some of these texts haven’t necessarily been intended as manifestos, every one of them functions like one. They set a tone, express attitudes and ideologies, even promise outcomes. They often read like informal terms of service and build the either simple or complex theoretical framework of a studio’s practice. Although these texts almost always stand in direct connection to displayed works and should be read in that context, they also form an interesting and rich micro-genre. The lyrical and vocabulary quality of the selected texts varies a lot: the manifestos can be anything from purely informative to perfectly search-engine-friendly, from blatantly fancy-worded to sharply academic, even arrogantly so. It is a wide spectrum of promises on a market just as varied. What do they promise, what do they mean when they talk about ›iterative collaboration‹, ›a context-based approach‹ and ›constraints of extended hierarchical systems‹? Do they believably convey a process, an agenda? How should we read them?

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