Standard Practice is concerned with the values and impacts of standardisation. Through an exploration of the methods and discourse of various standards, the research constructs and disseminates alternative standards and reconfigured standards, in order to generate debate about regulation.

The research was initially framed in relation to a ten- week postgraduate brief led by Corinne Quin and Ruby Hoette, and with the participation of members of the British Standards Institute (BSI) in the spring term of 2018. The preparation, delivery and outcomes of the brief generated a range of prototypical alternative standards which were exhibited at a BSI conference, with a display of prototypes and textual material coming out Quin and Hoette’s brief (2018).

Subsequently the project was developed by Quin as Sizegiver, an edited collection of photographs capturing ubiquitous demonstrations of scale (2020), and Sizegivers, a visual vernacular of popular artefacts printed true-to-scale by photogram (2020). The publication and photogram are published online, through the researcher’s Instagram and GRO.

The enquiry was supported by a review of standards, including the BSI and International Standards Organisation database whose elements are licensed to a range of professional and industrial bodies, along with diverse historical standards including DIN 476 which led to the dimensions of A4 paper. The researchers recognize that while standards are essential for replicability and quality, the application and effects of standards are also political, as evidenced by the Nazi-era architecture of Ernst Neufert, who extended DIN 476 into the dimensions of social housing. Standards are therefore taken as paths for mediation and speculation, to provide contexts for design interventions that support alternative forms of calibration, expose issues, or counter blind spots.

The publication and photogram refine a core interest of Quin’s with the use of standard objects to represent and communicate scale in digital space, and these artefacts are published as a catalogue which invites designers and creative practitioners to respond to the collection, through the researcher’s Instagram, shared on GRO, and given to project partners at the BSI. Quin presented Sizegiver at the BSI e-conference in April 2020, to open up discussions about how standards can be visualised and re-appropriated in new and innovative ways.

• Quin, Corinne. 2020. Sizegiver. [Artist's Book]
• Quin, Corinne. 2020. Sizegivers. [Art Object]

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/29050