Designblog

This book shows movie posters from the last 60 years. Just like rock music posters they are trying to give you an idea of the atmosphere of the movie. Most times you will already get an answer on the question: Is it an action movie? Romantic movie? Comedy? Action movies posters have a black background with a guy with a gun on it. Romantic movie posters have a white background. Horror movie posters are hysterical.
Interesting about the book is the way they ordered the book, by country. You can really see the difference between for instance east European film posters and France film posters.

cat. nr: 754.1-PED-1

keyword: time

I was always very into illustrations i decide to looking for some book about that. I found one called “Illustration now!” by Julius Wiedemann. I have to say that i was quite disappointed, because i can’t found a lot of nice pictures in this book. Most of them was far from my taste.
Anyway there was few artist which works i really like. I have to
distinguished here Paula Sanz Caballero, Michael Sowa, Yihsin Wu and Graham Roumieu. I would like to present to you work of the last person. Graham Roumieu is  Canadian illustrator which was working with many famous newspapers(e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post). His works made by watercolor and ink has kind of bitter-sweet atmosphere that i really like. He describe himself like that: “I’m not a particularly religious person but sometimes I wonder if what I am doing with every little absurd scenario I draw is really laying down the blue print for my afterlife. I also wonder if I should work in a better-ventilated space. Either way I am quit scares. I use that in my work too.”

cat. nr: 758.4-wie-I

keyword: illustration

Some years ago I found in internet journey letters by a designer from Moscow, Artemiy Lebedev (www.tema.ru). There was one thing I was interested in a lot: road signs, street signs, signal lights that surround us everywhere we go, but with a national identity. So, last week I found in a library book, called 1000SIGNS, about same things, but with bigger collection of sign pictures from all over the world. I found it very positive and interesting, that, for example, toilet signs can look different and at the same time tells something special about the country or society they are coming from from. I can’t add any other comment, you have to see it.

And there are also some funny signs about dogs and…

cat. nr: 754.9-mus-1

keyword: identity

A book I found interresting is about pyramid design in ancient Egypt. The quality of the designs created by the ancients can be very inspiring tough it may seem a bit qliché, the mystery around the monumental pyramids as a timeless form are still facinating.

The book is an old and worn pocketsized relic it self. Its plastic wrapping that is protecting the cover almost falls off as you open it. It contains lots of illustrations and groundplan sketches of pyramidstructures, materials used, design methods and tools.

cat. nr: 712.5

keyword: pyramid

Although this is a completely black book, this book represents the best book designs of 1988.

The design of the books is simple but elegant. Just with the name of the author and the title of the book. Some designs make use of illustrations. There is not much use of different colors. Mostly, two

or three colors on one book. The designs of the books that are the most attractive to me are those with a simple choice of typeface , that represents just the basic information of the book.

For me the most attractive design of he book is the one that uses very light colors’ for illustrations. Although I already said that the most attractive books, for me, are the ones that use, just words for the design, I found this design the most fascinating in the collection of 1988 because of the simplicity of the illustrations that make the book very stylish. It’s a children’s book of Margriet Heymans “leveling, boterbloek Querido”. The book that is less attractive to me is the book of Poesjkin “verzamelde werken 3”.The reason for that is because of the use of, on my opinion, hideous use of the teletype and large font for his name. The color of the book is dark green that is used a lot in the design of books from that period. Although I like the simplicity of the design of the books from that period, this specific green is not attractive to me at all.

cat. no. 758.3

keyword: best

The book ‘The Art of Rock’ is about rock posters from 1955 until 1987, ‘From Presley to Punk’ stands on the cover.
I think. Only if you want a clear image of the atmosphere that these poster want to give you, you should not look at them closely. You should just brose through the book. Then you will find out that the atmosphere is mostly about drugs, endless summers and music. I like that. It takes me back to a few years ago when there were these cosy Friday and Saturday evenings with friends and no parents in the house when we just wanted to get as fucked as possible.

Another reason to not look to close at the posters is because most of them are not that good. When you do look good at them and look true all the tricks you will see there is a lot of graphic design creativity, which can work inspiring.
cat. nr: 754.1GRU

keyword: time

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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

how would it be to echo somebody?
how would it be to be echoed?
how does it feel, to be allowed to echo somebody?
how sensitive are you to get a good connection to his/her mind or presentation?
hoe does it feel to be echoed by somebody else?
is he/she sensible enough with your thoughts?
should everything be open, or is it better to hold something behind?
are there any rules or lines which should be followed?
i mean… is it really necessary to be always soft and sensible or what would change it, if you would cross the line?
about yourself, it is an easy question, i think you know your inner mine very well?
but how much do you know about the lines of the others?
or how easily can we meet in the middle of that line?

link: Osilloscope

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

After asking my friend about her experiences in her new design class, I’m just as confused as she was when she attended the class last week. Even now, she seems a bit lost when talking about it. She was talking about having to work with strangers, disagreements, posing, shyness, copy-machines and silhouettes. Although these words might seem a bit random, they’ve all got to do with making a booklet, with writings about their experiences in the design class. This is going to be published and I must admit; it sounds an awful lot like what we’re doing the coming three weeks on the designblog!

link: http://www.museums-vledder.nl/eng/index2.html

After having spend the whole day yesterday with the Jackson 5 ABC song in my head, I clearly was inspired by the subject and couldn’t let it rest!

While still searching for an alphabet, Karoenja sat down eating his peanut butter sandwich with a surprising huge fascination of the relief of the butter! He started looking at all other kinds of structures in vegetables. He dove into the Dutch foods; which reminded him of mashed food (hollandse trots!). First have the vegetable in their natural “earthy” state, then you peel of the skin, cook them, mash them, pour gravy over it, finally eat it!
During this process he documented every step by photographing his actions, witch resulted in his personal alphabet

posted by Tessel Schole

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

Cyril Duval is a french artist based in Tokyo. His work is like a modern day collage sampling various other artist’s work. His pieces basically consist of nearly exact copies of excisting work. For instance he recreated some of Damiem Hurst’s type aquarium, or Bart Simpson for the Colette shop. Cyril Duval collaborates with and continues to work with some personalities, Like Sarah [from Colette], Bernhard Willhelm and Terence Koh.
He creates artwork from logos or visual identities of big international companies. Cyril Duval plays with the whole concept of marketing in different collages – for example transforming a Louis Vuitton bag into a costume. The Item/Idem project by Cyril Duval is all about that.

The lecture he gave in Amsterdam for the design week was extraordinary because he didn’t give a simple lecture of his work but transformed it into a show. After reading some articles and interviews about/with him, I discovered that Cyril Duval is an amazing artiste. His manner to think about the development of his work is very interesting. He’s very sensible about sophistication of design and marketing which are surrounding us all. He asks himself about art and how to show it in a new way to push the view on art. Still studying the past to create a new fragment of art.

interview:

T: Why did you chose to go work in Japan ?

C: In Japan it’s more easy to export world wide, because you have this sens of bring it art to life. To propage of design, because in Japan the people have the sens of community and live together. And after 6 months in Japan I took some characters of this country, a form of interiority a things very specific to Japan basicly.

T: After Freedesigndom, do you have other projects ?

C: Yes, of courses, at the moment I work on a new project – interior design for a night club (Le baron de Paris), which is now opening in Tokyo.

T: Talk to me more about “Tokion” and the idea of that magazine

C: Tokion, is a glocal magazine ( glocal is a concept which means the mix of global and local). Who the Tokyo culture is inside the world and who the world is coming back to Tokyo, that exange of information. His bleeding of culture.

T: I read on the internet that you’ve worked with Bernard Willhelm!?

C: Yes, I worked with him, I created and designed, the concept store the first one on the world of Bernard Willhelm. His it a conceptual rechearched inspired by japaness homeless house. because for me Japeness homeless house is sophisticed and also design.

Cyril Duval is a recognised artist, with a lot of imagination and he poses serious questions about art and especially design. He is invested and have a lot of projects. I think that Cyril Duval will keep surprising us and I invite you to follow him and learn more about him on the links below.

posting by Talal Al Akkad

Did you see the ExperimentaDesign posters by KesselsKramer ! How long did it take you to find out what was going on? It was only after missing all the opening events, at which a score of great designers and artists like (Cyril Duval, Anthony Dunne, Ron Arad, Ian Anderson, Graffiti Research Lab, Mark Jenkins, Rem Koolhaas, Álvaro Siza Vieira) did their presentations, that we realized that something special was going on.
ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008 opened its “Lounging Space” and Droog Event 2 “Urban Play” curated by Scott Burnham, behind the empty SMCS building, in these lost spaces “under the bridge”. “Come To My Place”, “Sunday Adventure Club” and parallel events like “Red Light Design” were all part of it.
At a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon, 6 weeks later, a small group of intimi braved the bad weather and enjoyed some inspiring presentations of an other select group of invited participants among whom, Kamiel Klaasse (NL Architects), Scott Burnham (curator Urban Play), Renny Ramakers (Droog Design) and Ji Lee (New York graphic designer).

It is all over by now. But do not worry Rietveld’s A group Foundation students did go out there to capture most of the events for you.

“Beeldtaal, een design of logo probeert je altijd wat te vertellen” – Jeroen Bruijn, Designer van Design bureau Thonik
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Jeroen Bruijn heeft het logo en de tentoonstelling voor het droog event 2 URBAN PLAY  ontworpen. Het logo verwijst naar straten en zebrapaden wat wel duidelijk is. Het verwijst naar straten omdat de tentoonstelling ging over straat interventie, kunst in steden op straat.
Het leuke van de logo is dat het vrij kenmerkend is voor de stijl van Thonik en voornamelijk Jeroen de Bruijn. Een stijl die gemakkelijk te herkennen is (er word veel met strepen gewerkt, herhaling en zware letters) en uitnodigt om ernaar te blijven kijken. *

De tentoonstelling is opgebouwd uit dozen met het logo erop in het midden van de zaal, met het idee van een stad. Tussen die dozen waren kleine tv’s geplaatst met daarop video’s van de artiest en een poster met informatie ernaast. De bedoeling was dat je ging zoeken naar de kunst in “de stad”. De keuze voor kartonnen dozen heeft hij gemaakt met het idee dat karton net als de kunst op vaak makkelijk beïnvloedbaar is door zijn omstandigheden. (Jeroen Bruijn zei zelf dat hij naderhand gemerkt heeft dat de tentoonstelling een vochtige ruimte is en dat dit ook effect had op het karton.)

Ik vond de tentoonstelling er leuk uitzien en opgezet, alleen voor mij was de bedoeling niet helemaal duidelijk. Ik vond het best verwarrend om daar tussen die dozen te staan en ik kwam pas later in het gesprek erachter dat het een stad moest zijn. Ik vind het niet erg dat ik er geen stad in kon vinden, maar wat me wel wat dwars zat is dat ik me nogal verloren voelde tussen die dozen en naar mijn opzicht het geheel chaotisch overkwam.
Maar het kan ook zijn dat hij het juist zó bedoeld had, en dat het gevoel van verlorenheid en juist de chaos die daarbij aansluit overeenkomt met de siuatie waarin je de kunst op straat normaal  aan zou treffen.

posting by Annelot Meines

Stefan Sagmeister is a graphic designer who lives and works in New York.You might know him from his CD cover designs for the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed and many more.

In Experimentadesign he showed us a quote from an old diary of his, saying; ’obsessions make my life worse and my work better’. Spelling out these words he used 250.000 Eurocent coins. He left it completely open for the public to do with the work whatever they wanted; take the coins and start using it as money; take some and create a new image, turn them around, destroy it or just look at it.

It’s ironic to use money as a kind of ink for this line and put it on the street like that. He’s playing with the value of the money. As soon as you realize that the work is made out of money, there is a desire to have it. But then, he’s talking about obsessions. So it feels like a stupid act to take the money and start using it for your own pocket. Beside that, you really need to carry a lot of those heavy 1(!!) Eurocent coins to have a high number. It would be a real torture to take it. You must be really obsessed almost… This reminds me of the work of Damian Hirst (For the Love of God). Wich you can now be seen in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. He is playing with the value of art by making the money aspect in art so dominant, marketing. The big difference is though, that Hirst is putting it in a commercial context himself, provoking a discussion and then, he is the one who is leading it. And in Sagmeisters case, it just happened. He didn’t had a hand in it, while Hirst is blowing everything up and it becomes a hype in a way.

The night after the opening of Experimentadesign two people started to put the coins in bags. The police were called and they decided that they had to secure the work so they took it to the police department. How Dutch is that? Due to a lack of interests by the authorities in events like this, you’ll get this kind of results. They’ll fund you to make things possible, and end up taking the artwork after a few hours to protect it. How much room is there left for interventions like these in our super save and over regulated society? Whose space is this anyway?

But still, it’s an unexpected interaction, and that is what the artwork tried to provoke. Therefore, I must say, I love it.

posting and police logo by Doris Boerman