History

Created in 2008 in the wake of the merger of Geneva’s École d'arts appliqués and École supérieure des Beaux-Arts, ISSUE was conceived as an editorial gateway to the wealth of projects taking place within the school, where design and art would now coexist. In around forty pages, the aim was to take stock of significant initiatives – research projects, workshops, specific events, etc. – as well as to keep track of them in an archive in the making. Conceived as a collection of concise issues published on the spot (four a year), the periodical's mission was to offer ‘a behind-the-scenes look at training courses and research projects, but also to serve as a visa for an institution in touch with the social realities of the contemporary world’.

ISSUE spent its first decade in paper format. In 2018, under the impetus of Jean-Pierre Greff and Charlotte Laubard, it moved to web format. ISSUE’s first website, designed by Charles Chalas and developed by Catherine Brand, Pierre Rossel, and Vincent Zaugg, was conceived from the outset to accommodate a diversity of article types (text, image, video, audio, etc.) brought together in 'Focus' or published in 'Flux'. In French and/or English, over 300 articles were published in five years. In 2025, a new website was designed by E+K – Élise Gay & Kévin Donnot and developed by peartopeel. To accompany the unveiling of this new visual identity, a project has been launched for an annual publication, containing a selection of articles published throughout the previous year. The first issue will come out in 2026.