Book_Travelogue Vol. 2: Greek everyday solutions to common problems

ΠεριγραφήThe first volume of Travelogue: Greek everyday solutions to common problems came with a great surprise: what we initially thought was a personal design project turned out to have a wider reach, an ethnographic and cultural angle that made it relatable to a non-design oriented audience. It has been a great pleasure to observe people’s reactions, to receive messages and images from our peers, but also from complete strangers who obtained a copy. (…) Furthermore, our publishers kept sharing stories of the reactions from clients of their bookshop in Athens, and we followed the book travelling to a number of bookshops from the US to Korea. With all this positive feedback, it was only natural for us to move forward with this follow-up volume, presenting even more images of ingenious solutions found across Greece.(…) In a world that is becoming more controlled by algorithms and less by personal human curiosity, the objects in Travelogue Vol. 2: Greek everyday solutions to common problems occupy the liminal space between uniformity and uniqueness, timelessness and trend, planet and production, access and availability, need and materials. In the end, these objects may hold the key to understanding what luxury, craftsmanship, knowledge and ingenuity can mean at the dawning of a new world.Papairlines are a team of designers with an applied interest in how ideas are born. They began photographing objects by unknown creators before 2012, mainly to satisfy their own curiosity as to how non-designers act creatively, composing solutions to problems and needs while filling in design omissions uncatered for by the existing infrastructure and equipment. As the team’s thoughts on “DIY: Who’s the designer?” matured and their personal photographic collection grew, conversations around every newfound photo provoked the desire to involve more contributors in the project. To the question “What ingenious objects might exist in Greece that have been created by DIY designers?”, the team responded with an open call to professional and amateur photographers asking for images from all over the country. The responses brought invaluable fresh information and interesting objects from distant and remote locations.The photographs found in the book are contributions from different parts of Greece, by photographers who are not necessarily the object creators, but successfully capture the essence of these artefacts.Papairlines are the first no-budget airlines founded in 2011 by Vasso Asfi, Costas Bissas and Loukas Angelou between Athens and London. Operating “design flights”, papairlines use travel as a metaphor to draw connections between aesthetics and usability, process and result, stereotype and evolution, behaviour and emotion.