SET v.27: Misreading Shapes, 2026
Commision: Miss Read, The Berlin Art Book Fair & Festival
Collaborator: Michalis Pichler (director), Andrei Belibou (project manager), Julia Gwendolyn Schneider (program manager), Maira Fragoso Peña (design support), Winifred Wong (production manager), studio.maus (tote bag production)
Period: 2026.06.26—2026.06.28
The Miss Read 2026 identity is the 27th's version of SET, beginning with an experiment in extracting letters as forms. M, I, S, R, E, A, D. The structural characteristics of each letter are transformed into abstract geometry, where a single form can be read as multiple letters. This identity turns the letters themselves into an archive of forms, creating a cyclical structure in which those forms are misread back into letters. For example, the vertically arranged "BOOKS" column, part of the 'ideabooks' identity in the SET archive, functions here as the form for 'I'. As the name Miss Read itself suggests misreading, this visual language refuses fixed readings and moves fluidly between form and meaning.
This version then moves SET into a new medium. The forms that began as walls and installations now travel as bags. SET has always searched for the next surface; here the surface walks out the door. The bags are not newly made — each is a secondhand tote, already carried, already worn, given a second life through silkscreen. The identity is printed onto what already exists, so the archive of forms meets the archive of use. A misread shape lands on a surface that already holds its own history, then moves on, shifting hands again. The project is made with Studio Maus. The collaboration is part of the work, not behind it: two hands deciding how a form meets a worn surface, how the old bag and the new mark are read together.