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"David Bennewith" Tag


Understanding a message


Saturday, October 27, 2012

LatentStare_CatCoverSteinberg
*Latent Stare* exhibition guide cover by Saul Steinberg

 

David Bennewith (who is born in 1977) is a graphic designer from New Zealand living in the Netherlands. He has a small design studio named Colophon (since 2007) which focuses on graphic and type design. He works on both commission-based and non-commission-based projects as well as research-orientated. He has been working as an advising researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie design department (since 2010) and is currently teaching in the graphic design department in the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. David Bennewith doesn’t want to call himself the curator of the *Latent Stare* exhibition, but the organizer. The exhibition is a project that explores the practice, methods and messages of type design. The exhibition was open from 8 July – 30 September 2012 in Casco, Utrecht, but had also been set up in the design department at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (in 2010).

 

To begin with I had to research the title because I didn’t know what Latent Stare meant.

 

*Latent Stare*, definition:

 

la·tent /?l?tnt/ :

1. Present or potential but not evident or active: latent talent.

2. Pathology In a dormant or hidden stage: a latent infection.

3. Biology Undeveloped but capable of normal growth under the proper conditions: a latent bud.

4. Psychology Present and accessible in the unconscious mind but not consciously expressed.

 

stare /ste(?)r/ :

    An intent gaze.

 

So I guess a *Hidden Gaze* would be close to a synonym.

 

I visited Casco with my class and teacher to see the exhibition and listened to David Bennewith, the organizer-not-the-curator of the exhibition, explain some of the works. Unfortunately I couldn’t really follow what he said due to the strict programme that day which didn’t include any breaks to refill the students’ brain energy and empty stomachs. So all I could think about was food. Type design hasn’t got much in common with food. What did happen though was I paid a lot of attention to David Bennewith’s New Zealand accent. *Latent Steeeer*. I started thinking about how interesting it would have been if the exhibition were about his accent and not only the letters of the English alphabet. How boring is it that even if you speak with this amazing accent you still have to write the same way as all the other accents.

 

LatentStare_CascoExpo1LatentStare_CascoExpo2

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