Practise is a Providence-based graphic design practice that works across a variety of media in collaboration with a diverse range of individuals, organisations, and companies. Founded in London by James Goggin and Shan James in 1999, the studio’s work includes the design, art direction, and occasional editing of publications, magazines, identity systems, posters, campaigns, websites, videos, typefaces, exhibitions, patterns, signs, and symbols for advertising, architectural, civic, cultural, fashion, and publishing clients across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australasia.
In British spelling, “Practise” is a verb, but sounds like a noun. Our studio name thus represents an important duality: the intention for a graphic design office to operate equally as a useful service (noun: a professional practice) and as a space for research, speculation, contemplation, and experimentation (verb: repeatedly performing activities and learning from them, e.g. “practise makes perfect”).
Shan James is a New Zealand and/or Hong Kong Chinese fashion, textile, and graphic designer from London via Hong Kong, Auckland, Arnhem, and Chicago. She studied architecture and painting in Auckland and ran a womenswear label (with JG) called Shan James from 1998—2002. Shan has exhibited in the UK, US, and Japan, and her eponymous womenswear label was stocked by respected retailers all over the world, including Harrods in London, Barneys in New York, and Journal Standard in Tokyo. Her work has been featured in publications including British Vogue, Elle, the Evening Standard, and the Sunday Telegraph. Shan plays a design and management role in Practise alongside her own work in illustration and textile design.
James Goggin is a British and/or Australian graphic designer from London via Sydney, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Auckland, Arnhem, and Chicago. He received a masters in Graphic Design from the Royal College of Art in London and currently teaches on the Graphic Design BFA and MFA programmes at Rhode Island School of Design. He previously taught at Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, The Netherlands, and at ECAL (Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne) in Switzerland. Alongside Practise, James has worked as a consultant to Tate Modern and Tate Britain, art director of British avant-garde music magazine The Wire, and Director of Design and Publishing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. He designs type for various projects and clients, with a number of fonts available from Swiss foundry Lineto.James has exhibited at museums and institutions worldwide and run workshops, lectured, and served as critic at architecture, art, and design schools in Europe, the US, and Asia. He contributes writing to a range of international publications, serves on the editorial board of Chicago-based architecture magazine Flat Out, and was inducted as a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale in 2010. Works by Practise are included in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Chicago Design Archive.
Some Clients
Arts Club of Chicago
Barbican Art Gallery
British Council
Camden Arts Centre
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
City of Chicago
David Kohn Architects
David Zwirner
Design Museum (London)
Flat Out magazine
Harvard Committee on the Arts
Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, Chicago
Institute of Contemporary Art Miami
Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia
Kate MacGarry
Krannert Art Museum
Letterform Archive, San Francisco
London Development Agency
MIT Press
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Phaidon, London/New York
The Renaissance Society, Chicago
Rizzoli
Studio Gang Architects
Tate Britain
Tate Modern
Tate St Ives
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago/Paris
Transport for London
University of Chicago
Verso
Victoria & Albert Museum
The Wire magazine
White Cube
Some Teaching, Lecturing
AIGA, Chicago
ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, Arnhem
Barbican Art Gallery, London
Beursschouwburg, Brussels
CalArts (California Institute of the Arts), Valencia
Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht
Central Saint Martins, London
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills
ÉCAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne)
Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland
Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn
Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam
Golden Age, Chicago
Harvard University, Cambridge
Hochschule Darmstadt
Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel
IASPIS, Stockholm
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
ISIA (Istituto Superiore Industrie Artistiche), Urbino
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
Norsk design- og Arkitektursenter DogA, Oslo
Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles
Pratt Institute, New York
Royal College of Art, London
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
School of Visual Arts, New York
Split Fountain, Auckland
STGU, Warsaw
Typography Summer School, New York
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem
Yale University School of Art, New Haven
Some Exhibitions
2019
Her Noise Archive, South London Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2018
Great Ideas of Humanity: Out of the Container, Chicago Design Museum, United States
2017
Color Studies, Curated by Alison Fisher, Art Institute of Chicago, United States
2015
50 Years of British Road Signs, Design Museum, London, United Kingdom
Bold Italic Flag Show, Ghent Art Book Fair, 019, Ghent, Belgium
2014
24 Posters, Curated by Toni Schönbuchner, Leipzig Poster Biennale, Leipzig, Germany
Taking a Line for a Walk: An Exhibition about Assignments in Design Education, Curated by Nina Paim, 26th International Biennial of Graphic Design, Brno, Czech Republic
CHGO DSGN: Recent Object and Graphic Design, Curated by Rick Valicenti, Chicago Cultural Center, United States
All Possible Futures, Curated by Jon Sueda, SOMArts, San Francisco, United States
Concealed Carry, Experimental Station, Chicago, United States
2013
STA Archive 13, Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago, United States
Designing Art (group show featuring work by MCA Chicago Design Studio with Commercial Artisan, Dafi Kühne, MoMA Design Studio, Project Projects, and Walker Art Center Design Studio), Northeastern Illinois University Art Gallery, Chicago, United States
2012
STA Archive 12, Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago, United States
Moving Picture Show (with Jürg Lehni), 23rd International Graphic Design and Poster Festival, Chaumont, France
White Noise: Quand le graphisme fait du bruit, 23rd International Graphic Design and Poster Festival, Chaumont, France
Rethinking Typologies: Architecture and Design from the Permanent Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, United States
2011
Graphic Design: Now in Production, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, United States
Monozukuri: Formes d’Impression, 22nd International Graphic Design and Poster Festival, Chaumont, France
The Way Beyond Art: Wide White Space, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, United States
2009
Significant Colour, Aram Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2008
How Very Tokyo: British Graphic Designers Interpret Tokyo in Posters, Claska, Tokyo, Japan
V&A 150th Anniversary, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom
2007
Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design, Architectural Association, London, United Kingdom
Terms of Use, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
2006
Work From Mars, 22nd International Biennale of Graphic Design, Moravian Gallery, Brno, Czech Republic
Graphic Design in the White Cube, 22nd International Biennale of Graphic Design, Moravian Gallery, Brno, Czech Republic
2005
The Free Library, M+R Gallery, London, United Kingdom
TricoDesignLove!, Aram Gallery, London, United Kingdom
A Billion Pixels per Second, Lovebytes Digital Art Gallery, Sheffield, United Kingdom
You Are Here: The Design of Information, Design Museum, London, United Kingdom
Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties, Barbican Art Gallery, London, United Kingdom
The Free Library, Riviera, Brooklyn, United States
The Book Corner, British Council (touring exhibition: Milan, Italy)
Some Writing
‘Slightly Complicated: Towards a New Fuzzy Logic,’ Feeeels (Issue 1: ‘Fuzzy,’ Fall 2019)
‘Let’s Do Something Impossible: Urban-Scale Typesetting in Chicago,’ All Possible Futures: Unrealized Archive (#3: ‘Large Format,’ 2019)
‘2018: The Year According to James Goggin,’ The Gradient (Walker Art Center, Dec 21, 2018)
‘Word Worlds,’ Typojanchi 2017: Mohm (Seoul: Ahn Graphics, 2017) for the Typojanchi 5th International Typography Biennale, Seoul, South Korea
2016
‘Brand New Institutionalism,’ What Ever Happened to New Institutionalism? (Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University/Sternberg Press)
‘A Means to an End of Print,’ 23rd International Poster and Graphic Design Festival of Chaumont catalogue (Pyramyd Éditions, Paris)
‘Practice from Everyday Life’ (Revised), Graphic Design: Now In Production (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)
2010
‘Identity: David Kohn Architects,’ Graphic #13: ‘Visual Identity’ (Propaganda Publishing, Seoul)
‘The Matta-Clark Complex,’ The Form of the Book Book (Occasional Papers, London)
‘Pop Culture Colour Theory,’ Frank Koolen: United Colors of (Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam)
‘Practice from Everyday Life,’ The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2008 (Swiss Federal Office for Culture, Bern)
‘On Relational & Social Design’ (a conversation with Europa), Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice: The Reader (IASPIS, Stockholm/Sternberg Press, Berlin)
Ten texts about ten selected designers (Laurenz Brunner, Dexter Sinister, Jonathan Hares, Kazunari Hattori, Will Holder, Urs Lehni and Alex Trüb, Mark Owens, Manuel Raeder, Frauke Stegmann, and Sulki and Min) and a short critical essay on one ‘design classic’ [Enzo Mari’s Formosa perpetual calendar, Danese, 1963], Area 2: 100 Graphic Designers, 10 Curators, 10 Design Classics (Phaidon, New York/London)
‘Ground Zero Zero,’ Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design (Architectural Association, London)
‘Now in Full Colour,’ Dot Dot Dot 6, Winter/Spring 2002–03
ColophonThis website and the works shown here are copyright © 1999–2020 Practise. Designed by Practise, running on WordPress with Lay Theme. Typeset in Recollection Text (Vincent Chan, Matter of Sorts).
