The Prelude Exhibition of The First Shanghai Graphic Design Biennale – TopoPoster: International Poster Design Exhibition, after six months (June – December, 2025) of planning and preparation, was successfully held from December 13 to December 22, 2025. As one of the larger-scale exhibitions in recent years featuring an international selection of works in China, it showcased over 300 representative poster designs from 153 influential contemporary designers and studios active in the forefront of the field across 28 countries.

Magical Realism

These posters are made for the exhibition « Magical Realism, Imagining natural dis/order» taking place at Wiels from the 29th of May to the XX September. This group show is an invitation to move away from systems driven by endless growth and resource extraction, encouraging a deeper connection with the many entanglements that shape our biosphere. Since it’s a group show, we chose to not use a picture from a specific artwork and to use pictures we found on an open source database, by writing keywords related to the theme of the show. The idea was to create a vaporous background, evoking the speculative and dreamlike dimension of the show. This is created by interpolating and layering images, creating impossible hybridizations, notably through an interplay of opacity. As Belgium is a multilingual country, we were asked to create a poster for each of the three main languages spoken in Brussels: Dutch, French, and English. The background spans all 3 posters, to create a single, coherent entity. Nevertheless, each poster functions independently, as they were designed for a wild posting campaign (i.e. the 3 posters together) and for bus shelters (individual poster). The compositions of each poster respond to each other and are deliberately organic. Elements are placed intuitively to create a harmonious whole, but without any pre-existing structure or grid. The partners' logos are placed in such a way as to evoke an invasive element that spreads across each poster. Since it’s an order from a public, cultural institution, the posters have to be as clear as possible, for a very vide range of people. That’s why we chose to use a very legible and bold sans-serif font: Refusit, made by Regular Lines type foundry. As this typeface was inspired by Paul Renner's Black Futura from 1929, we thought it would be interesting to parasitize its modernist design—charged with the universalist utopia of that time—with filaments, or “roots,” evoking both the blob and the typography used in punk, and alternative zines. In this way, she mutates and embraces the contemporary theme of the exhibition. In terms of color, we chose a pale and greenish/purplish palette invoking the aesthetic of the covers of the 90s sci-fi novels, and also « Magic » in the collective imagination (think about the color of magic potions in the comics…). This palette contrasts with the choice of the green Neon Pantone made for the texts & partners. This contrast makes them easily legible.

An animated version of this triptych exists, on 3 big screens, inside the art center and visible here: https://cloud.d-e-a-l.eu/s/fdJkpgKJBYQGxwc

D-E-A-L

Morgane Le Ferec
Victor Coupaud