End Enter Title Here

This is the last post on this blog and I will finally say good bye to what has been a good platform for me in the last year. This is a selection of what I think have been one of the most interesting pages, then followed by my most recent project (still in progress) and  some pictures of all the things that I did not find time to blog about in the past months:

page 6, A message/The image of, page 10, page 13, The Graphic Designer as Creator of Existences (in German), On Transperancy, Rubber Walls, Quick Thoughts, I now know why, Letter to our Generation, Saturday Shutterday, Production as Human Beings, mein Heim/Nietzsche

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lieb a hints for dissertation2

Lecture Poster

 

In collaboration with Marie Artaker we created the poster for the next wednesday lecture at Central Saint Martins. Organised by, and also mainly for the BA Graphic Design Course, speakers come to talk about their work, or sometimes also about other people’s work. As members of the print matters interest group we decided to design the next poster for Dan Lockton’s lecture entitled ‘Designing Behaviour’. In his own words he describes the content of his lecture as following: “Whether we choose to do it or not, everything we design is going to affect how people behave. This has consequences – for society, for the environment and for our everyday lives. With a bit of thought, and learning from examples in different disciplines, as designers we can help influence behaviour to make things better.”

 

Our design solution was to create posters that would be brought to live by the interaction of students. We created 7 posters with letters to be coloured in. The posters will come together on the day of the lecture in front of the lecture hall and spell out the words ’empower’, reflecting one of Dan Lockton’s major projects. The actual result will be posted in a bit! I’m looking forward to see what people did to them so far!

wwI Project

 

“my limbs are glued to the ground I press myself into the earth we’ve been melted down everything is fluid, liquified. The earth the torn mangled brown earth. Our thoughts have turned to clay slippery fragments of flesh the earth  is cracking”

(words by Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front).

The Belgian Tourist Board set students of Central Saint Martins to create an image that reflects the First World War based on what it means to us.

My take on the subject is quite straight-forward and is primarily influenced by a book I read during the summer, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, or in its original title, Im Westen nichts Neues. Even though I have visited Verdun some years back it was only through his powerful account that the history came truly alive to me.

The recurrent theme of the earth and the soil as symbol for shelter and protection as well as death, the rotting of humen and nature, violent battles, complete destruction and the daily life of soldiers surrounded by mud engraved itself deeply in my memory. The trenches, the chaos, the mash-up of human lives, destinies and deaths, senseless and horrifying, seems to be represented in this omnipresence that wasn’t only specific of one of the camps but invaded both sides of the front in the same way.

I decided to represent what the First World War is in my mind by taking fragments of Remarque’s text and transform them in a typographical piece that illustrates the chaos, and mash-up of the war. The upper and lower, more solid block remind visually of the two fronts, and the part in the middle, the landscape of the noman’s land, the ground for violent battles and deaths. I aimed to create a feeling of depths through the different sizes of type, as to drive in the viewer.

My main inspiration were expressionist wood cuts of the 1920s, an art form used by many artists that had themselves experienced the trenches. This quite raw and impulsive technique has some of the roughness and ‘earthness’ that I was looking for. If my piece is among the 20 chosen projects it will be exhibited in the OXO tower gallery, from Armistice day, November 11, and then travel to Belgium.

After my crit on thursday I decided to cut off the lower, black part of the board as it was distractive, when the piece is held on eye-level.

calligraphy workshop with rathna

indian scripts as part of the print matters special interest group in college

first draft

first draft of my dissertation. hand in tomorrow.

-currents on structures

still dissertationing

Dear Reader

I may warn you, here and now, before the text starts that you may at the start, feel a little disoriented.

Many things will be left hanging in space

Please do not leave board but clinge onto whatever you can hold.

Things will make sense through progression. Like when you first arrive in a foreign city.

And I might here give you some hints that may help as it is in my, even more than in your, interest to keep the ship running and instill some confidence in you for what lies in the immediate future of the next pages

a) i explain why me, I, want to write what I want to write about

b) i start.

… and write describe analyse connect

c) i ask the question that I have progressed towards between b) and c) and in fact already answered between b) and c). In c) I will bring things together in a summarised form.

d) i express my hope that you enjoyed the journey

and probably regret that I was not able to serve you a clearer argumentation

dissertationing

 

my main activity these days. Draft hand in in 2 days.

b oo k

 

Bestetti Tumminelli Treves book pavillion, 1927

by Fortunato Depero

 

more

alan fletcher at kemistry

The Kemistry Gallery in Shoreditch has brought together a great compilation of archived material that gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the work that lies at the base of Alan Fletcher’s great ‘The Art of Looking Sideways’, a book that also occupies a nice space on my bookshelf, and that I cherish very much. I good effort by the gallery.