Gestalten - News

Dieter Rams

lucas — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:41:33 +0000

Exhibit in Berlin

Four days after Rams' 80th birthday, Appel Design Gallery will be opening an entire exhibition dedicated to the furniture creations of the pioneering industrial designer.

During his work as head of design for BRAUN, he continually designed furniture systems. The exhibition will feature a timeline of his work as well as an unseen selection of furniture. The opening is on Thursday, May 24th, from 6-10 pm. Recommended Reading: Less and More - The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, the ultimate collection of images of all the products that Rams created throughout his career as well as selected sketches and models.

Reza Abedini

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:56:22 +0000

Identity and Definition

For Tehran-born and Amsterdam-based designer, Reza Abedini, graphic design is not merely a visual art form but "a value".

Combining traditional and contemporary types in his own body of work—logos, posters, corporate identities and three-dimensional designs—for more than 20 years, he is also teaching as professor of graphic design. In our Gestalten.tv feature, he gives insight into the merits of Arabesque 2: Graphic Design from the Arab and Persian World, why there is a "useless distance between the letters" in western printing and how to find one's own visual identity these days.

More Podcasts on Gestalten.tv

Urbandrifting

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:48:22 +0000

Performance at Utrecht Festival

Austrian artist Willi Dorner's Urbandrifting aims at opening up and provoking a discussion on habitation in cities.

Extended Content:

Urbandrifting by Cie Willi Dorner whose work is featured in Urban Interventions and Doppelganger will take place in the context of Festival a/d Werf, Utrecht, Holland:

17.05.2012 at 3.30 pm

18.05.2012 at 2 pm and 6 pm

19.05.2012 at 2 pm and 6 pm

Emiliano Ponzi

lucas — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:26:39 +0000

On Display in New York

The award-winning, Milan-based illustrator has been dedicated a solo show in the seventh floor gallery of the New York Times' Manhattan office.

The exhibition contains 40 artworks and was curated by Nicholas Blechman, Art Director of the New York Times Book Review. Ponzi's illustrations, among them a number of commission-based work, can be viewed until the end of the month. More of his work is featured in Illustrators Unlimited.

Emiliano Ponzi

Workshop with Prem Krishnamurthy

lucas — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:52:04 +0000

Discounted early bird price extended until May 18th!

Prem Krishnamurthy of Project Projects will guide a site-specific workshop at Gestalten Space.

In today's digital, constantly evolving media landscape, the modes and mediums in which we communicate our ideas and concepts are radically changing. Whether you're a young designer promoting your ambitious visions, or a creative professional with a large budget to sell a product and business concept, we're all faced with the same basic challenge of translating abstract ideas into unusual visual concepts with limited materials and time.

Participants will be instructed to realize their visual concepts using only the materials available in the store. The consumable objects within the store will thus be converted back into materials for production and presentation. Participants should come prepared with a specific idea or concept they would like to communicate, and will visually develop their ideas by appropriating, montaging, and remixing in-store materials with the goal of strategically finding the most fitting and compelling medium(s) for the content. The workshop will culminate in a public event on the second day (June 12th), which the participants will organize, announce, produce, and use to present their resulting projects.

Date: June 11 - 12, 2012
Time: 10:00 - 19:00
Location: Gestalten Space, Sophie-Gips-Höfe, Sophienstraße 21, 10178 Berlin
Language: English
Limited to 15 participants

Project Projects

Vortex

lucas — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:48:32 +0000

Making real artificial tornadoes

Photographer and filmmaker Ryan Hopkinson has teamed up with artistic duo Lightning + Kinglyface to recreate waist-high tornadoes in the studio.

With the help of colored smoke and an industrial extractor fan, their science project yielded some stunningly beautiful photographs. Hopkinson, who is featured in the book Taken by Surprise, shares his thoughts:

"Tornadoes have this unpredictability and destructive force combined with a colossal beauty that appears to move gracefully disregarding everything in its path. They have always fascinated me and watching programs like 'Storm Chasers' got me thinking about ways of taking weather elements out of context and bringing them within a controlled environment and ultimately into my own work. I wanted to create these artificial tornadoes for real so I collaborated with Lightning + Kinglyface as i'm not only a big fan of their work I also knew they would be up for the challenge. It was at first a game of trial and error, delicately balancing the right artificial environment with the correct amount of rising smoke. Any slight wind changes in the studio or on the surface would knock the vortex and stop it from forming. In total we managed to create twenty tornadoes, each around 4ft in height all with their own personalities and weight. The delicate nature of our creations was a big juxtaposition in many ways between natures own, but being able to create one and see it up close, regardless of its size and power was mesmerising."

New Release: Confessions

lucas — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:37:53 +0000

Eroticism in Media

Although Internet porn is just a few clicks away, independent print publications devoted to erotica are currently thriving.

While porn became digital, more anonymous, and even faster to get, recent examples of printed erotica became more individual, more distinct, and more elaborately presented. The current edition of Nico, “Confessions: Eroticism in Media,” takes a compelling look at the recent boom of smaller, independent erotic publications.

“Confessions: Eroticism in Media” introduces ten groundbreaking publications from around the world that are creating a contemporary visual language for erotic content. The issue also features telling conversations with their makers, all of whom are using the haptic qualities of a printed magazine and the power of well-made images to address more distinct erotic preferences. Some of the included interviews are so personal and refreshingly honest that they feel like pages ripped out of a personal diary, while others focus on the commercial and anthropological challenges that come with creating an independent publication. Readers can learn, for example, about how the makers of Butt, Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom, created a movement and then went on to craft two of today’s most relevant fashion publications; while Thomas Lenthal, Paris’s man of the hour, used his connections in the international fashion world to forge a visually powerful erotic bible called Paradis. From the other side of the Atlantic, Danielle Leder explains why she chose to breathe new life into Jacques to continue to celebrate America’s girl-next-door.

“Confessions: Eroticism in Media” also includes a candid feature on the historic evolution of erotic magazines from their inception to today by prominent magazine expert Samir A. Husni, the founder and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media, who is known internationally as Mr. Magazine™.

In addition to giving voice to those who showcase erotic images in their publications, “Confessions: Eroticism in Media” provides a curated platform of 100 pages for ten photographers, illustrators, and artists who share their intimate thoughts on the intricacies of their work. Readers are, for example, taken behind the scenes of Jules Julien’s erotic illustrations for the cult music magazine les Inrocks, Justin Morin’s juxtaposition of vintage erotic images, and the work of artist Malika Favre, who garnered much attention for the erotic alphabet she developed for the cover of Penguin’s recent re-release of the Kama Sutra. Last but not least the reader will be stimulated by the work of some truly talented photographers with radically different perspectives—from Autumn Sonnichsen, whose images are nothing short of an unabashed celebration of the female body, to Hanna Putz, whose relevant discourse has landed her in the Hyères Fashion & Photography Festival 2012.

Purchase Here

Roman Klonek

lucas — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:16:28 +0000

Three shows opening in May

Roman Klonek is one of the leading representatives of the German printmaking scene and is known for his colorful woodcuts.

The Dusseldorf-based artist is celebrated for his characteristic style which alludes to Eastern European comics. More of his work can be seen in the book Illustrators Unlimited and of course at the following exhibitions opening this month:

CRUDELY PRINTED
May 13-25, 2012
Opening: Sat, May 12, 19.00
Elefant Art Space
Heidenkampsweg
3220097 Hamburg

RARE BIRDS
May 17 - June 03, 2012
Opening: Wed, May 16, 19.00
Galerie Kielkind
Lessingplatz 1
24116 Kiel

KLEIN UND FEIN
May 11 - June 01, 2012
Opening: Fri, May 11, 19.30
Kunstraum Dreizwanzig
Honschaftsstrasse 320
51061 Köln-Höhenhaus

New Font: Gratis

lucas — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:29:52 +0000

by Martin Aleith

Gratis is, as the name may suggest, not a free font, but instead a highly visible and recognizable blackletter typeface.

The repetition of few but very typical characteristics gives it a memorable appearance, ideal for headlines, titles and signage. Gratis is stylistically compact and achieves a readable form and yet the jagged-edged look yields a powerful, energetic and dominating effect.

Martin Aleith is a contemporary graphic designer whose fonts, design work and video installations are closely associated with music. Since 1998, he is a founding member of the Berlin-based collective Pfadfinderei, known for their bombastic moving image shows for the likes of Modeselektor, Pharrell and Radiohead, since 1998. The company is known structured in three main divisions: Corporate Design, Production, and Installation.

INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN ALEITH

Gratis is not your first blackletter typeface (see Haudegen). Do you have a personal passion for designing blackletter alphabets?
I don‘t have a special interest in blackletter fonts! The GRATIS, however, is about my twelfth font, and I suppose passion is always the fuel for my font designs, no matter what the typographical color. Gee, did I really make another blackletter font?

Nowadays, blackletter families come in many modernist shapes with a huge variety of contemporary elements and styles. Would you agree that we are experiencing a renaissance of this typographic category? Or is it just a short time trend?
I don‘t believe blackletter fonts will be new and formative apart from their iconographical meaning in graphic design. However, every contemporary visual form of expression is part of a reincarnation. Today, calligraphic fonts are secretly very trendy, but ornaments in fully justified text will put an end to this era.

Did you study older or ancient alphabets to get familiar with blackletter designs or does your inspiration totally stem from another point of view?
My extensive preparations for GRATIS were dominated by ignoring all knowledge of the matter. There were no influential archetypes. My visual memory is of course a great charioteer, as reliable as Ben Hur, but I felt the necessity to innocently design something that already exists. I guess I use this method for all my creative output.

Many of your alphabets are designed for a personal purpose and later released for the public. Does Gratis also originate from a certain application or was it designed primarily for other designers and typographers?
There was no specific assignment for this font, so I came up with a purpose myself. I imagined that prior to an important match with the FC Zürich, the chief of a group of FC Basel ultras came to me, asking for a CI with logo, corporate type etc. for his organization. The briefing simply said: In our group, the fence flag is the centerpiece! Indeed, the game was going to happen the following weekend and out of town, so the deadline was too short notice and I had to decline.

Are you familiar with using black ink, a drawing pen, and classical handwriting & calligraphic techniques?
During my graphic design studies, writing with pen and ink was a required course. The master craftsman was tired of decades of teaching the matter and thus my euphoria for this kind of employment was quite limited. The exercises resembled punishment, just like writing your misconduct a thousand times on the blackboard. Though it probably wouldn‘t hurt to catch up on the skipped classes in more dedicated way. Just like one should freshen up his first-aid-skills every now and then.

Did you come across any favorite elements, while creating the letters, which you wish to repeat often as you can? Or was it more a mix of styles that influence the flow of Gratis?
My purpose was to find a stylistically compact and readable form for all letters by frequently repeating few but typical characteristics. Of course you can‘t sell an O for an A, but the repetitiveness of this typeface creates the actual appearance of GRATIS. For example, the apertures of the minor a and e were very good advisors for designing the minor k, x and y. Seriously!

Any letters you particularly struggled with and that troubled you a while to find the right shape, or was it more a done project in a couple of days?
Time wise, the design process was quite broken up. Sometimes the breaks lasted for days or even weeks. I was never in a hurry with this font. And it never felt hard to immerse myself into it again, since the general script is quite simple. Even the nasty characters were not a problem. They simply had to wait until they would show up by themselves.

Finally, you chose a funny name. Gratis means “free of charge” or “cost free”. When looking at the sample images, you play with the element of luring the people with a fake free offer, correct?
Technically, it would probably suffice to assign a barcode to a font and that‘s it. But fonts have a soul, they have the potential to become a brand and this implicitness only works with the right name. This kind of baptism is always a great treat for me. In my opinion, fonts are female and so their names must always be created with feminine associations. I don‘t like to invent new words. I insist on borrowing from existing vocabulary. Graphic designers remember words better that they already know. Additionally, there are always characters within the alphabet that are exceptionally well shaped, and these naturally have to be included in the name. And in the case of GRATIS, an expression unfolds whose arc of suspense is a bit larger than “50% off“!

Graphic Design - Now in Production

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:22:08 +0000

Exhibition in NY

The show explores some of the most vibrant graphic design work produced since 2000, including posters, books, magazines, identity and branding and information graphics.

Extended Content:

Designed by Project Projects, the event explores the worlds of design-driven magazines, newspapers, books and posters; the expansion of branding programs for corporations, institutions and subcultures; the entrepreneurial spirit of designer-produced goods; the renaissance in digital typeface design; the storytelling potential of film and television titling sequences; and the transformation of raw data into compelling information narratives.

“This ambitious exhibition looks at cutting edge ideas and breaking cultural revolutions in the world of graphic design,” said Director Bill Moggridge. “Focusing on design in the 21st century, this exhibition provides insight into the phenomena shaping culture today and transforming traditional conceptions of graphic design practice.”