Within the framework of the European Digital Treasures project, the partners are working on the key objective to generate a greater added value, profitability, visibility and economic return for European archives.
While creating new business models, one question arises: Why do archives throughout Europe receive hundreds of thousands of visitors and users every year, but unlike museums, most of them do not have their own shops or merchandising products?
To try to fill this gap and evaluate possible sources of revenue, the project partners engaged 12 graphic and industrial designers from Spain, Austria, Hungary, Malta and Portugal to wrap their creative heads around selected archival key documents (50 in total) from the three planned transmedia exhibitions of the project and turn them into resourceful merchandise objects.
This catalogue and gallery is the result of the work of each one of the 12 designers. It was complemented with an artistic residence that took place in Madrid 17th to 21st of February 2020 hosted by the Spanish State Archives.
During the residence the group united to present, evaluate and discuss prototypes of merchandising objects, including visits to the most inspiring artistic hotspots of the city.