D'argent, à la traverse dentée de sable

A pen-plotting coat of arms on textile workshop for the occasion of the yearly festival Feral by Cifas, this year on the theme of middle-age.

"D'argent, à la traverse dentée de sable", is a practical workshop on creating and making coats of arms on fabric. Using a database of medieval coats of arms from Belgian municipalities, we will remix or redesign these heraldic symbols to give them new meanings. These coats of arms will be drawn on fabric using a pen plotter (a mechanical drawing tool that uses “traditional” pens) and will be turned into badges, vests, T-shirts, patches, etc.

OSP (BE) is a collective of graphic designers based in Brussels. Their materials are typography, websites, web-to-print tools, and plotters. They question the influence and possibilities of digital tools through the practice of graphic design (on commission), education, and applied research. They use exclusively free and open source software (F/LOSS). Through their projects, they question software as cultural objects and the modes of collaboration between graphic designers, artists, cultural institutions, and schools.

The workshop takes place over two afternoons, from 2:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. each day, with a different audience.

Ressources

On heraldry

• heraldry wiki
• Liste des meubles sur wikipedia
• Liste des pièces sur wikipedia
• Les Rebattement sur wikipedia
• Apprendre a lire les blasons
• Gros index du vocabulaire héraldique
• Image synthèse de l'héraldique via Larousse

Agenda

Two times the same

• Welcome [10n]
  • practical infos (toilets, breaks, computer, internet, etc.) "Please let us know now or whenever if you have some specific needs, if something is not clear, if you want to add something. Again the idea is to have collective moment less top bottom as possible"
  • tour of presentation (everyone says name, pronouns and favorite or most used emoji!)
• OSP & plotters [5min] - who are we, what is a plotter.
• Introduction to coat of arms [15min]
  • A symbol of "belonging" and feudalism
  • Declarative design and the language of heraldry
  • Library of open-sources vectorial drawings
  • Today: techno-feudalism, new commons and emojis?
• To what do we belong today - tour of everyone then we group ourselves in 3 groups depending on the main thematique evoked by the participants [20min]
• break [10min]
• Co-designing coat of arms around those themes and plotting them on textile [1h30]

Documentation

For a more in details documention, and full presentation of the coat of arms themes, you can read our text under the library section!

Pictures of the workshop, happening in the library space of Mona - a building handled by Toestand. The following group of picture is under © by Asma Laajimi.

A few scan of collectively made coat of arms

The process included drafting the composition together out of emoji and upcycled vector drawing from wikipedia. In order to co-design, groups where given simple sheet of paper and where invited to draw to explain their idea and negociate them together. here's some scanned sketches.