Ratatöskr is a student magazine by nine female students at Folkwang University, born from a slight frustration with the way things were going. Between all of Folkwang’s design departments (communication design, industrial design and photography), communication design students noticeably had the smallest sense of community among them, studying side by side instead of with each other. This magazine was meant to connect us, showing that we have similar experiences with similar complaints, why not bond over that instead of dealing with them by ourselves?
The first edition is focused on the lack of prominent women in design, while the student body at many design faculties is mostly made up of female students. Folkwang is a term from Nordic mythology, meaning Götterpalast, "palace of gods“, not godesses (in German most terms must be explicitly gendered, it is not inherently genderneutral, but “generically masculine”). We used the magazine to highlight the successful women that came out of Folkwang, recently and many decades ago, taking a clear stance cristicising erasure of women in design, but with a focus on the positive.
We also wanted to showcase the possibilties available to students in the many workshops at Folkwang by producing all 250 copies ourselves in the university’s facilities: Screenprint, risography, photo studios, bookbinding.
I was part of the organization team, was heavily involved in the cocept (incl. choice of paper and typefaces), proof-read texts, wrote the editorial, designed the cover and some of the posters (pictured), screenprinted ca. 2000 pages together with Viktor Lentzen, and bound the magazines in a group of five other students. They were sold over two days to students and teachers in a decorated stand in the university's foyer during breaktime (I was there for that too). In total the conceptualization and production spanned over two semesters. This inspired my bachelor thesis about burnout among students ha ha hah.
Ratatöskr won Silver at the ACD Junior competition 2020.
