NTU Associate Professor and DEVIL Lab founder Lisa Winstanley brings together three designers from three continents in a 156-page limited edition publication that is part manifesto, part archive, part research, and designed to be torn apart and used.
The dust jacket is neon orange and purple. The cover beneath it is blind debossed cloth, quieter and more tactile. Open the book and the perforated pages can be torn out and used as posters. Every material decision in Posters with Purpose is a layer of the same argument: that print can still surprise, that it can slow you down and invite touch, and that a book about posters should itself behave like one.
“I’m interested in how print can still surprise us,” Lisa Winstanley says, “how it can slow us down, invite touch, and create a more deliberate connection with the work.”
The visual metaphor driving the publication is the onion: each layer reveals something beneath it, from the bright outer jacket to the quieter cloth cover to the gradually unfolding content within. “The aim was to create something that doesn’t just sit on a shelf, but invites interaction, whether that’s unfolding, tearing, or reusing the posters within.”
The book brings together in-depth conversations with three international designers, one from each of three different continents, revealing their processes, influences and approaches to poster design as purposeful practice.
“I was drawn to posters because they allow me to step outside of commercial constraints and engage with issues that matter,” Winstanley says, “using design as a way to provoke, question, and connect.”
The project repositions the poster as a medium that disrupts rather than decorates, grounded in the design ethics research Winstanley pursues through the Design Ethics and Visual Integrity Lab at NTU.
Released in August 2025 as a 156-page large-format publication in a signed and numbered edition of 85, the book is available in Singapore at Basheer Graphic Books and internationally via Draw Down Books. It was funded by the NTU 2023 CoHASS Humanities and Arts Research Grant.
Lisa Winstanley is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Research at the School of Art, Design and Media at NTU in Singapore, and founder of DEVIL. Her work has earned over 80 design awards and been exhibited across 32 countries.
Website: lisawinstanley.com Instagram: @lisawdesign Purchase: draw-down.com
Posters with Purpose, August 2025. 156 pages, large format, limited edition of 85, signed and numbered. Art director and lead designer: Lisa Winstanley. Designer: Cammie Toh. Printer: Focal Print Singapore. Publisher: DEVIL. Photography: Lisa Peh, After Dusk Media Singapore.
