Designblog

The Type Cruiser / Ebay Auction is spearheaded by Simone Vollenweider & Anna Sartorius.
Within the last month they designed a new typeface which is available on Ebay till July 29th. Ebay (Typeface Cruiser HGB)
Part of the concept is that the font is meant to undergo changes throughout the auction: With each new tenderer a new special character will be introduced into the existing font such as a comma, question mark etc. Designers – that are not part of project yet – are encouraged to contribute to the exciting pool of characters by designing such a special character. The design of each new character is not subject to the existing typeface and is free of any rules or limitations.

The designers who are participating: Angelo Benedetto, Anna Lena von Helldorf, Anthony Burrill, Carolin Kurz, Daniel Gaffner, Daniel Peter, Dino dos Santos, Fanette Mellier, Jennie Winhall and Kathe Burn, Kerstin Finger, Hudson-Powell , Markus Dreßen, Martin Aleith (Pfandfinderei Berlin), Martin Sperling, Mathis Pfäffli, Node Berlin Oslo , Oliver Klimpel, Radim Pesko, René Siegfried, Silke Klinnert, Stephan Fiedler, Stephan Müller (Lineto), Thomas Ulrik Madsen, Yoann Betrandy, Mind Design & students of the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig.

More Informations Both, Simone and Anna, are enrolled at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig/Germany and study "Systemdesign" with professor Oliver Klimpel.

In April we had a lecture from Ayumi Higuchi. The lecture was about her essay in which she investigates the impact rules have or can have on the process of cause and effect in the creative process.

To give us a visual example how the rules work, Ayumi let us make trees out of duct-tape.

Although it was not the goal of the workshop, it was really nice to see how quickly you could make a beautifull installation with tape. This inspired me to search more about tape and the artist who work with it.

Quick history

Duct-tape was developed during World War II in 1942. It’s a water resistant sealing tape with a standard width of 48 mm. It was used to repair military equipment quickly, including jeeps, firearms and aircrafts, because of it’s strength and it’s water resistand quality.

The original name is duct-tape but the soldiers in World War II changed it into duck-tape because the word duct-tape was to simular to the name for the cotton fabric they used for tents and rain clothing.

After the war soldiers returned home and took the duct-tape with them, to use it around the house. Since then it serves all kinds of perpuses. In the 1970’s duct-tape even made it’s introduction into spaceflights. When the square carbon dioxide filters from Apollo 13 failed, they used duct-tape to fix it.

This saved the lives of the three astrounauts on board.

Over the years duct-tape became a very popular product. People are making items out of duct-tape or decorate objects with it. You even have a lot of websites with information about how to make stuff out of duct-tape, and movies on youtube with instructions how to make it. Like this movie, that shows how to make youre one wallet out of duct-tape.

Increased interest in creating these novelty and fashion pieces has given rise to designer duct-tape handbags, wallets, belts etc.

Not only designers are interested in duct-tape. Also a lot of artist use it.

Click here for more of these installations.



Aaksh Nihilani

Also a lot of graphic designers use duct-tape. Within typography it even got a new name: Tapography. (also used for typography made out ofcasette tapes )

Artist Aaksh Nihilani is one of the artist who works a lot with tape. For the Arario Gallery in New-York he made three installations with duct-tape.

His explanation about the works:

“Since the show was titled Paraphrase, I took the opportunity to get into some tekst, tapography. I did ubiquitous words that we all encounter in our daily travels, especially as a New Yorker, but I wanted my paraphrase of the words to be aesthetically ‘better ‘than their original. So the words pull, push, and exit are all written out in tape, as well as simultaneously being shown acted out, or about to be (as in the exit piece). They were all a little bigger then human scale so as to more objectify their viewer rather than the usual other way around. I think these installations were particularly succesful because they stayed true to the site specific nature of the wordk that got me the show in the first place (i.e. Using the gallery’s door hinge to complete some of my lines), but also took on new levels of content in the figuration of the letters, and new concepts/processes of using the tape to express qualities like peeling and falling”



Autobahn

An other example of a tapografic experiment is tapewriter bu Autobahn. It is developed during a seminar by Richard van der Laken and Eric Wie, and later developed until a type specimin.

Tapewriter is a typeface that gets it’s form from the fence of a soccer-cage. The width of a role duct-tape is exactly the same as the room between two bars of the fences from thes cages. The thought behind this font is that any one who ones a role of ducttape can share their thoughts with the rest of the world.

Tapewriter showes that you can write with anything and that any surface can become your paper.

More information and the total typefase you can find on the website of autobahn.



Experiments with Duct-tape

Inspired by this all I started to experiment with duct-tape myself.  My first experiment was just to write something on the wall with tape.

After that I wanted to create a 3-d effect into space, wich I achieved to tape tekst to my window an fotograph it with the outside landscape:

In my last experiment I really wanted to go 3-d. So I made lines with yellow tape in the air and made letters with black tape in it. It creates

a very interesting effect because it looks different from each side. As you can see on the picture below and the title picture.

Subjectively searching for a very unsubjective assignment, but still with the subjective thought in mind that it is not possible to be subjective in command, I saw a large white book. The title is not really that interesting, but the bigness of the book attracts me. It might be worth taking a look on the inside. So that is what I do. The whole book (798 pages) is filled with the same text in different sizes and fonts. If the book was on sale, I would buy it. But it is on lend, so that is what I do. It is fascinating to read the same text (‘In our house we had a cat with the grandiose name of Gonnosuke …’) over and over again. If not knowing the purpose of this book (a sort of shopping guide for fonts), you could think it was written by someone who was or high or compulsively neurotic or both.

In my first post about two of the most important and influential dutch graphic designers, Wim Crouwel and Anthon Beeke (pdf), i tried to compare them by their different approach. Especially the way Beeke designed, really intrigued me.
It was provocating and controversial which made him one of the leading conceptual engaged designers.
On the other side, Wim Crouwel is known as a more functional designer, which means less conceptual.

But is it really that easy to divide and are all this categorizations correctly made?

Especially in the case of Wim Crouwel i doubt it. His design of the new alphabet was based on the begin of computer technology, in a time were blogs, facebook and internet in general didn’t exist. Coming up with a font type based on this new technology combines in a perfect way a clear, functional and computer like approach. Computer like is also the keyword for, in my opinion, a highly conceptual design.
With the awareness that this technology will change they way we communicate, document, the way we are. His style is timeless (even if it also relates to the early 70s) and applicable still nowadays.

Beeke’s Human alphabet, using the aesthetics (look at the swedish film makers Ingmar Bergman and Vilgot Sjöman) and social and political topics like sexuality, seems more related to that specific time.

So Aesthetics is next to conceptualism and functionalism a really important aspect, what makes Crouwel’s design less depend on a certain time period.

Never the less, Anthon Beeke’s radical and shocking way, even if it is not so applicable in our times anymore, was responsible for breaking through the conservatism of (Graphic design) and is so a mirror of other important political and social openings in this time period, and even if his aesthetics are not so up to date, his conceptual engagement is.

link: The Human Alphabet as a visual brand

link: Anton Beeke exhibit at Centre for Visual Arts Zeeland

you should not pick up “guerilla advertising” if you don’t have at least an hour to flip through this book.
it is reporting about advertising campagnes of various kinds.
numerous firms and organisations (e.g. nike, addidas. mcdonalds, the protestant church, the united nations, amnesty international, unicef or oxfam) with different approaches such as provokation, investigation, simply advertising or social criticism are represented in this book.
the methods are new; investigation of space and the use of human habits in western society are part of the adverting strategies.
there is several opinions about the capitalistic aim of advertising itself, but in my point of view is this book dealing with a lot more than only the selling aspect of it. definately worth a glaze… or two.

cat.no. 754.5-lue-

keyword: overview

Excavating the library, looking for pyramids, lead me to a late 60´s representation of posters by the graphicdesign artist Milton Glaser. The choise for this book is solely based on the cover graphics and has no other connection to the first book selected, though it seems that the facination for pyramids and their monumental quality are shared by many designers regardless of the time or designfield.

The size of this book (A3) is  in my opinion very well adapted for displaying these incredible handdrawn posters. Every page is a poster and the more you look into them the more you see.

Bob Dylan poster 1966.

cat. nr: 754.1

keyword: pyramid

This letter I want to attach to my last messege about identity in a street signs. For the second time I’m using this book, which you can also take in a library. This time I made a selection of posters made in different countries, but for the same movies. My thought was about the possibility of existance of different schools of postering. This posters, that you can find below, were made in the time when there were no internet for sending files with information and designer or artist had to improvise making a new masterpiece for the public. But this problem had made movie presentation even more interesting in different countries. Each country had added something special, non cliche. So, enjoy, and thank’s for your attention.

cat. nr: 754.1-keh-1

keyword: identity

I will start with a beautifull sentence that has inspired me often. ‘’standing still for a moment, is actually a big step forward. So I stand still the whole day”. This sentence is a complete overview of what slowness is for me. But is this in connexion to any kind of design or art? For me in some cases this standing still adds a big layer in looking at things. By looking at objects and art for more than an hour and from the same perspective, it gives a new strength. But is there a way to make other people expierence this power of standing still. What could design/art add to this?

Maybe you find it puzzling that this posting about Helvetica and Wim Crouwel starts with an image of Paul Elliman’s “Bits” Alphabet.

Extremes can sometimes meet when you least expect it, and this fascinates me. It became apparent again during the investigation by the FoundationYear C group, into Gary Hustwitt’s Movie “Helvetica” and our consequently visit to the Wim Crouwel exhibit last month at the “van Abbemuseum”.

left: Bits by Paul Elliman, right: Objectified by Build (click images for blog info)

“Bits” was developed by Paul Elliman in the mid 90ties and published in the 15th (Cities) issue of Fuse’s conceptual Font Box. quote: “Language moves between us and the world on patterns of repetition and variation, and a mimetic example of this might be something like an alphabet”
Later, in 2004, it was included in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial N.Y. which made “concept type” part of the established design world.

Gary Hustwitt’s new documentary “Objectified” takes design, and as a matter of fact “Bits” too, one step further by making it popular in the same way as he did with “Helvetica”.

Modernist thinking, or even constructivist-, lays at the base of the “Helvetica” concept and the work of Wim Crouwel, as this first movie on typography has him stated. As a true Dutch graphic design icon Wim Crouwel illustrated this through work, presented at the library exhibition of the van Abbemuseum, celebrating his 70th birthday. A small but beautiful display of catalogues and posters made for both this and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

pages by Crouwel versus pages by Jan van Toorn from publication “Het Debat”

Extremes met in person when Crouwel and Jan van Toorn celebrated their life long controversy with a recurrence of their famous 1970 debate. Functionalism versus engagement. Jan van Toorn succeeded Crouwel as a designer at this museum under the directorate of Jean Leering to manifest in an inspiring cooperation what that leads to in terms of exhibition concepts and graphic design (“Museum in Motion” at the library). Jean Leering also closely work together with Jan Slothouber (read part 1 of C group’s research) at the TU-Delft where the published several internal essay’s on the philosophical and social consequences of design.

80/20/100 © Nijhof&Lee booksellers – Laurenz Brunner, final exam poster

More research was conducted to explore related content or work approach of other designers like, Laurenz Brunner’s “Akkurat”, his successful contemporary remake of Helvetica, Experimental Jetset convicted users of Helvetica, the cooperation “8020100″ between Vivid Gallery in Rotterdam and Nijhof&Lee Bookstore in Amsterdam. Context was created by turning the focus on Adriaan Frutiger, designer of Helvetica’s conscientious alternative “Univers”. To further explore the relation to language and image we further focused our investigating efforts on the visual legacy of Charles & Ray Eames, the “El Hema” exhibition/store and Massin’s timeless publication “Letter and Image“.

With the inclusion of Belgian artist Guy Rombouts the full circle of our focus on type design was completed. The investigation into his visual language concept “AZart” will be presented soon in a separated part 3 C_group posting. This was part II of the C_group research
All researches linked in this posting can be downloaded in A4 format and are also available as hard copy research prints at the ResearchFolders available at the academy library

Isn’t that a great name Merel Woudwijk. You know i am wondering about Merel, because she got an idea to make her own alphabet.  An alphabet  that no one can understand. Very abstract and powerful alphabet. She call it “The alphabet of spaces”.

Why these abstraction, because of the inspiration of artist Sol Lewitt and her conceptually idea spread away in her mind to make such alphabets. There were more than 100 prints in woodcraving, some prints in silkscreen, 32 prints in etchings, and 42 prints in lithograph full with care and patient. She choose the basiccolor black for her alphabet, because it gives her good results and comments

posting by Raz Barsati

Charlie hasn’t been very lucky at finding the information she needs to write for the Rietveld’s DesignBlog. Before, she wrote something about Typography artist Bram de Does. She told me all about her search to find the information she needed, which was all in one book ‘The Kaba Ornament’. Totally fixated on that one book, she searched the Gerrit Rietveld library, the Rijksacademie Library and even the Amsterdam Public Library, to find nothing but a video on de Does. Now Charlie has to write something for the blog again, which involves a handmade book from Rietveld students. But this book too proved hard to find.

Five days before the deadline of the Bram de Does piece, she found the publisher of the book, who shared a number of useful anecdotes with her. Let’s hope she’ll be successful in finding the handmade book as well.

link to ilovetypography.com

posted by Jesse Muller

With a speech by Simon den Hartog, former director of The Gerrit Rietveld Academie, a small retrospect exhibit on the work of Jan Slothouber was openened at the “van Abbemuseum” in Eindhoven NL. An intimate group of affectionado’s and family bridged the gap of almost 50 years, when Jan Slothouber together with Willem Graatsma started his fascinating journey into the world of the cube. The Centre of Cubic Constructions represented a highlight in this extraordinary focussed research, culminating in the 1970 representation at the Venice Biennale.
Seemlessly scanning the architectoral space occupied by art and design, the exhibit –designed by Erik Slothouber and curated by Diana Franssen– clearly presented an extraordinary focussed spectrum of work

Some weeks later we revisitted this exhibit with a student research team of the FoundationYears C group. Exploring the cubic constructions we found direct relations between the work of Slothouber and the minimal art of Sol LeWitt. The choice for a simple universal and modular form makes it posible to built a grammar for an entire body of work in which all the steps in the process can become interesting in their own right. “in which even the concept can become as interesting as the final product” (Sol Lewitt, cat Sonsbeek 71).

The specific context of typedesign addressed in our workshop presented striking relation between their works and those of more contemporary designers like Radim Pesko and the Swiss designers Dimitri Bruni & Manuel Krebs of Norm

More research was conducted to explore related content or workapproach of other designers like, Bram de Does, Karl Nawrot, Na Kim (website) and Ji Lee.
This was part I of the C_group research.

All researches linked in this posting can be downloaded in A4 format and are also available as hard copy research prints at the ResearchFolders available at the academy library

Ji Lee (pleaseenjoy.com) is a Korean born New York based designer and initiator of urban interventions. He grew up in Sao Paolo and later moved to New York where he studied at Parsons school of Design. He is now working as creative director for Google, a freelance designer and a design teacher at Parsons school of design. Some of his most well known works are “the Univers Revolved”(universrevolved.com), “Abstractor”(abstractor.tv) and “the Bubble Project”. (thebubbleproject.com)

Ji lee´s contribution to Experimenta design is “the bubble project”(ABC World News). It is a project that he’s been working on since 2002. He initiated it in New York where he printed 50.000 talk-bubble stickers and placed out on top of commercial ads allover New York City, leaving it open for people of the city to fill in their own words. The project has continued to grow ever since.
The idea of the bubbles originally comes from the Situationists (Situationist International), a small assembly of artists and politicians active in the early 60´s. Their main intention was to create disobeying people. In 1968 they made bubbles and stacked them on commercials. They didn’t like the way big companies took advantage of creative people to sell their products so they turned it around and used these commercial images to support their own messages.

Ji Lee is questioning the way our cities are overrun with commercials and our limited possibility to express ourselves in the urban space. Many of the graffiti tags we see on the streets are also a reaction on this but most of the tags we see in the cities are also commercials for artists and crews and the conversations going on in the graffiti world are most of the time only readable for the initiated. By using the Situationists means and turning the commercials into public conversations he encourages all people to communicate their own thoughts without writing anything himself. He is basically giving the word to the people of the city.

posting by Chandra Sen

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film by Gary Hewitt, about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. (http://www.helveticafilm.com/) Helvetica introduces type as more than common. A specialized design discipline.

A lecture by Henk Groenendijk on experiments in type design, related to ‘developping cultural and economical progress in the 1950-’70, gave more insight in the context that proved so fertile for Helvetica’s rise to stardom.

Time and space is a given phenomenon in education at the Rietveld Academie, where things constantly present themselves in past and contemporary creative projects. As an almost casual gesture, some 2nd year students from the graphic design department dropped by to present their recent type designs in progress.

Finally research material was edited down to A4 sized guided tours into selected subjects. All subjects presented in this list are also available as hard copy research prints at the ResearchFolders available at the Rietveld library.

As usual we selected subjects with a direct connection to the context of the presented material in this classbloc. In this case Helvetica the Movie” and its content, was researched through subjects like the Corporate Alphabet, Wim Crouwel, Laurenz Brunner, Experimental Jetset, Norm type design and their publication “TheThing” or Letterpress.

The lecture gave a much broader perspective from which researches like de Stijl fonts, Buro Destruct, Zaph Dingbats, the Univers Font, Systemfonts, Swiss Style/Modernisme, Guy Rombout’s AZart and Edward Fella were initiated. Widening the discussion towards the Helvetica subject by adding links to the actuality, some more subjects were added, Jonathan Barnbrook. Richard Niessen, Type Radio, Emigre’s Zuzana Licko, Jonathan Puckey’s Type Tool, the mysterious typebased posters of Michel Schuurman and ultimately the concept of Dead Type by Hansjakob Fehr

Design Researches available for everybody.

Hard copy prints of all researches from 2005 – 2009 are on file in the Library folders Vol#1-12. You can study them anytime during opening hours [Openingstijden: maandag t/m vrijdag van 11.00 tot 17.00 uur]. For example you could check out this beautifull research on Amedee Ozenfant in the context of “Le Corbusier Art and Architecture”. for more see X

Fransje Killaars Soft copies are available on line as jpeg’s or pdfs. You can download these pdfs and enjoy the content and its hyperlinked guided tour. Here is an example of such a tour into the work of “Fransje Killaars”. see for more X