BIO 26, the Biennial of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is titled Common Knowledge. The biennial took on one of the greatest challenges of our time: information. Concerned with the widespread crisis in information, BIO 26 seeks to harvest the best ideas that explore ways to creatively take charge and react to it, as well as to propose experiments and present alternatives to the ways we currently deal with information and knowledge.

The new biennial identity takes the topic very literally: information is in crisis. Short attention spans, infobesity and an overload of visual content forced designers to rethink their role in the information society. As gatekeepers, they can hamper or feed the culture of post-truth.

The identity for BIO 26 questions the design representation of the real world with an intentional emphasis on form over substance. Manipulating objective facts to the point of beauty, Ljubljana-based design studio Ljudje created cheerful infographics based on sad, alarming or plain mundane data about our world. From global causes of death to probability that people who attend a Facebook event will actually turn up, the design puts the biennial topics into the context of the media where identity appears.

This years’ biennial is curated by Austrian design curator and cultural producer Thomas Geisler and assistant curator Aline Lara Rezende. You can apply to BIO 26 before April 21, 2019.