How to Illustrate Science - a Lesson from the 1970s
	Pille-Triin Männik, Co-curator of the exhibition Science and Today/Big Science

	In the course of the last few years more attention has been paid in Estonia to introducing the achievements of science to the wider public - via science-oriented summer schools and articles in the press. The scientists emerge from their labs and meet people at various events and on television screen. Science is popular again. Within the framework of the Tallinn Applied Arts Triennial a special exhibition took place this March for the first time, which we curated and organised together with curator Anneli Porri. We examined the connections between science, medicine, technology and design on the basis of Estonian design, and included in the exhibition the works of young designers, as well as works from the archives of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design. The general title of the exhibition that divided between three galleries was Science and Today/Big Science, the first half being borrowed from a collection of research articles published in 1979. That bulky book, compiled by Juhan Kivi and illustrated by Tõnis Vint, constituted the ideological starting point for us as far as the exhibition was concerned. Design, including graphic design, to which we tried to pay more attention, is applied art, and beside fulfilling a certain function a well-designed item also offers aesthetic enjoyment. At best, however, the designer provides another value and more information in addition to the functional and aesthetic aspect. With his design and illustrations, Tõnis Vint provides the book Science and Today with extra information that is more than the simple sum of functionality and aesthetics. The book not only enlivens science-related issues, but comments on them, using specially created illustrations, a wide range of reproductions from the world art heritage and nature photographs in rhythmic compositions. Anyway, Juhan Kivi who edited science articles at the magazine Horizon, made a bold decision to have Tõnis Vint design the publication, and it paid off brilliantly.
	The process of actually getting the book out, however, was wrought with difficulties, such as delays, changes in direction and rejections. Tõnis Vint: "It took four-five years to finally decide about the choice of articles and illustrations. The story with one photograph (showing a meeting at the Academy of Sciences) was really hilarious - it was changed and replaced so many times that in the end I had no idea which one was actually published." The people in the picture changed according to who happened to be accepted by the authorities at the moment. Official censorship also banned photographs showing the horizon, and thus the pictures in the book mostly have artificially obscured vistas. Besides concealing the location of strategic objects in the photographs, the aim of the censors seemed to leave the impression that the Soviet Union was immense, stretching far beyond the horizon.
	Every change in the contents of the collection of articles necessitated a change in the design, every change was followed by yet another round of getting official approval at various stages of power - luckily for the designer, the approval was mostly sought by the editor-compiler Juhan Kivi. Even when the whole thing had finally reached the printing press, several sheets of illustrations were removed, thus considerably shaking the visual rhythm of the book. All illustrations should have been in groups of four - models and schemes drawn up by Vint himself, about the construction of the galaxy or biosynthesis of proteins, supported by visual quotations by nature photographs taken by Ene Kull. Some intact groups of four can fortunately still be found in the book.
	An interesting trick of visual analogy employed by Tõnis Vint in Science and Today, in fact derives from the work done by Ülo Sooster and Juri Sobolev at the magazine Znanie Sila in Moscow. Vint: "How did I come to use this method - they were the ones to illustrate the most contemporary issues with parallels from a previous stage. The result has a slightly surrealist flavour." Finding imagery analogues to the achievements in technology, astronomy and chemistry-physics, Vint illustrates the articles with the motifs of Gothic carpets, places the mysterious sun-seeking lion of the alchemists beside working excavators, uses photographs about the historical stages of park architecture.
	The illustrations of the article collection form a parallel plot that - although relating and explaining the main plot - is nevertheless easily followed as a separate visual textbook. The abundance of detailed pictorial material full of information is intentional - to offer the reader of the 1970s who was inevitably not very well informed, plenty of references to the intertwined information in the world. Leafing through Science and Today, a viewer with an open mind can find innumerable connected visual references, despite the fact that quite a few images and ideas were edited out of the final version. The design is profuse and diverse, and it is a pity that it all lies between such modest covers - out of eleven cover designs presented by Tõnis Vint, the dullest was finally chosen, and even that had to suffer alterations and cuts.
	Science and Today is a fascinating work, an example of Estonian design graphics that had gone through considerable development in the early 1970s, with the main outlets being various cultural magazines. We, the curators, were captivated by the manner how the schemes and models re-drawn by the artist-designer convincingly proved that it was possible to present even the most usual scientific information visually enjoyably. The task of design, especially graphic design, is to convey information more smoothly, pleasantly and readably - either in the form of an object, image or system. We wanted to include Tõnis Vint's design for Science and Today in the exhibition namely for the elegant visualisation of scientific language. Pille-Triin Männik (1978), BA in art history at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Activities include art administration, organizing art and culture events, criticism, translation and curating. Believes in exchanging thoughts beyond the boundaries of culture, fond of wandering in the forest and contemporary literature.
	| Estonian Art 1/06 (18) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2006 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |