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Aidan Winterburn

Senior Lecturer

Aidan is a Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design and teaches on both the BA (Hons) and MA Graphic Design courses in the Leeds School of Arts.

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About

Aidan is a Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design and teaches on both the BA (Hons) and MA Graphic Design courses in the Leeds School of Arts.

Aidan has taught on Graphic Design since 2001 and has been instrumental in attempting to integrate the students' studio work with their critical and contextual knowledge through the introduction of the Critical Study on the course. In this capacity, he lectures regularly and his particular areas of interest include; Modernist design, activist graphic design, the history of artists' magazines, post-punk graphic design and typography, the essay film and sequential art and experimental animation.

Aidan has also written articles for Grafik, Tribune, Varoom and the Modernist magazines as well as having contributed to Street Talk; the Rise and Fall of the Poster and Public Address System, discussing the politics of typography in a book of typographic treatments of famous political speeches.

Research interests

Aidan's research interests are mainly centred around the role of writing within graphic design and typography - Walter Benjamin wondered aloud in 'One Way Street' what would happen once writers gained control of the means of communication rather than seeing writing as a separate autonomous activity. He writes prophetically 'the precision of typographic forms has entered directly into the conception of books. One might suppose that new systems with more variable typefaces might then be needed'.

Aidan writes and designs typographic chapbooks/ zines of poetry, makes typographic projections onto buildings and produces essay films that emphasise the written and typographic form, particularly looking at the notion of writing with images through montage.

Aidan also writes critically for magazines like Varoom about illustration and for the Modernist and Tribune magazine about visual culture generally.

Publications (18)

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Film, Digital or Visual Media

Siz Pap Brick

Featured 04 March 2019 Publisher
AuthorsAuthors: Winterburn A, Editors: Winterburn A, Winterburn A

An essay film that attempts to animate the inanimate. A filmic portrait of the brick, as both building material, as art, architecture and as a wider signified for a post-wr society in general. It is a city symphony in microcosm as well as a portrait of my father.

Design

Merrion Centre Paintings

Featured 24 July 2023 View More Info

Design, essay and publication of a book of paintings and drawings by artist Adam Stone responding to the archive at the Merrion Centre in Leeds. Published by redundant span.

Design

Faded Supplies

Featured 15 May 2023 View More Info

the fourth in a series of publications/ zines that are interested in combinations of text/ typography and imagery that combine in complementary and conflicting ways to achieve a kind of fugal effect. the zines/ chapbooks are published on a bi-monthly basis by redundant span. they are available both in shops/ cafes and bars around Leeds for free and I have a subscription list who receive the free publications every other month

Design

Semestral Classifieds Part One

Featured 18 April 2022 View More Info

the third of a series of publications and zines that attempt to give visual form to my writing. i am interested here in the combination of image and text working in complementary and conflicting ways to create a kind of interweaving fugal effect. the zines/ chapbooks are published on a bi-monthly basis by redundant span. they are available both in shops/ cafes and bars around Leeds for free and i have a subscription list who receive the free publications every other month

Design

Point Loss

Featured 24 January 2022 View More Info

the second of a series of publications and zines that attempt to give visual form to my writing. i am interested here in the combination of image and text working in complementary and conflicting ways to create a kind of interweaving fugal effect. the zines/ chapbooks are published on a bi-monthly basis by redundant span. they are available both in shops/ cafes and bars around Leeds for free and i have a subscription list who receive the free publications every other month.

Design

the Stacks

Featured 06 December 2021 View More Info

first of a series of publications and zines that attempt to give visual form to my writing. i am interested here in the combination of image and text working in complementary and conflicting ways to create a kind of interweaving fugal effect. the zines/ chapbooks are published on a bi-monthly basis by redundant span. they are available both in shops/ cafes and bars around Leeds for free and i have a subscription list who receive the free publications every other month

Design

the Wrangthorn Enquirer publication

Featured 08 July 2025

A small zine published through my imprint Redundant Span that captured 30 days in June 2025 as a series of typographic headlines of a putative left-populist newspaper, the Wrangthorn Enquirer, photographed within the area of Hyde Park, Leeds itself.

Newspaper or Magazine article

Hit the North

Featured May 2004 Grafik Woodbridge & Rees5 Publisher

An overview of graphic design in the North of England for a special issue of Grafik magazine.

Journal article

Editorial Irma Boom: the Architecture of the Book

Featured 05 September 2022 The Modernist The Modernist Society

As part of the Modernist magazine’s special issue on Layout, [number 44] I wrote an essay about the work of bookmaker and designer Irma Boom, which was a summation of my interview with Irma for the Inside Out Lectures in May. https://the-modernist.org/collections/the-modernist-magazine/products/the-modernist-magazine-issue-44-layout

Other

Speaking to Leeds

Featured 30 July 2021 Tribune

During lockdown, a bookshop placed Pete Mitchell's photographs of Leeds in the 1970s and 80s on billboards near their original locations – juxtaposing the modern city with its own nostalgic past.

Exhibition

PAGES Artists Book Fair

Featured 2014

Exhibition of Artist’s Books at PAGES Artists Book Fair, 2014/15.

Chapter

Up Against the Wall

Featured November 2006 Street Talk : the Rise and Fall of the Poster Images Publishing
AuthorsAuthors: Winterburn A, Editors: Lewis A, Frost M, Winterburn A
Journal article

Self-Reflexivity and Contemporary Illustrated Children’s Books

Featured 2016 VaroomLab4:124-131
Chapter

Politics Is A Matter of Leading and Kerning

Featured November 2006 Public Address System: Poster Speeches by Typographers Images Publishing
AuthorsAuthors: Winterburn A, Editors: Warden H, Winterburn T
Journal article

Editorial Art Into Pop

Featured 02 December 2022 Tribune

A critical review of the book and exhibition No Machos, No Popstars by Gavin Butt in Tribune magazine.

Exhibition

The Wrangthorn Enquirer

Featured 08 July 2025

An exhibition of a putative community newspaper called the Wrangthorn Enquirer that showed printwork, zines and short films reporting, quite abstractly, on a summer in the Hyde Park area of Leeds. The exhibition changed every week over the period of the two months in response to the events of the summer.

Design

A Thought Occurred To Me

Featured 03 June 2024

A zine published by Redundant Span that attempts to trace the evolution of a thought as it occurred both within a specific time and place, walking across Woodhouse Moor in Leeds and how it then manifested itself through the production of the small publication itself.

Journal article

Mixed Up: Music and the Art School

Featured 26 March 2025 Corridor 8 Corridor 8
AuthorsAuthors: Winterburn A, Editors: Barra B

An essay on the relationship between the art schools in Leeds in the late seventies and early eighties and art practice in response to Gavin Butt's curated exhibition at Leeds Arts University.

Current teaching

BA (Hons) Graphic Design:

  • 4.3 Visual Literacy
  • 4.5 Contextual and Historical Studies
  • 6.1 Negotiated Studio Practice and Critical Study
  • 6.3 Extended Studio Practice and Critical Study

MA Graphic Design:

  • 7.2 Research Methods