formandchaos

• 2013-04-28

  Tomorrow

  

  

  

  

  

  A few months ago V&A hosted a poster symposium and exhibition under the theme of The Future of the Poster. Instead of making flashing screens and smoke machines me and Signe Kristjansen decided to use our contribution as an opportunity to sneak down into the world of the Letterpress Monster and put some traditional means in to use. 

  As always, there were a few lessons to be learned, such as that six point type is very hard to set if you own sausage fingers. In fact we probably had to remake that single word around twenty times. Centring a small line like this to a poster size sheet was another tricky task, not to mention the difficulty of taking a photograph of the finished print. I guess some things are just better to be experienced in real life, but — ironically — neither me or Signe had the chance to see the final poster on display at the exhibition.

• 2013-03-25

  Port issue 9

  

  Our new movie themed issue is out, and as modern films tend to have audio, this cinematic experience is also served with some wonderful sounds. You can read more about making of the soundtrack from our website, and obviously get a glance at the issue content too.

• 2013-01-26

  Unmaking Things

  

  Unmaking Things is a website founded, edited and run by students from the History of Design MA at the Royal College of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum. The aim of Unmaking Things is to provide a creative online space for exploring ideas relating to the history of design, objects and material culture.

  A few months ago Miranda Clow asked if I wanted to contribute to the column Beyond Text she is co-running with Stephanie Sutton. I was obviously very delighted by her request, but had no idea what to write about. However, after bouncing some ideas and a lot of cooking my text has now been published and can be read here.

• 2013-01-11

  Port issue 8

  Our latest issue has been out for some weeks now, so I am a bit late with my little promotion. But better late than never, considering that I never managed to write anything about the issue 7…

  Nevertheless, besides again hyping all the brilliant content I have to mention the great idea for the section openers that Kuchar came up with. If you have seen our past issues you will perhaps notice how this photographic approach works now particularly well in the magazine as it breaks the pattern of using only two dimensional typography. 

  The above film, Atramentum, shot by Thomas Brown, shows footage of Bread collective painting the signs used in the section openers.

• 2013-01-04

  BE THAT LW

  

  

  

  

  

  

  If there is an artist whose motto goes as I don’t want to fuck up someone’s day on their way to work, I want to fuck up their whole life, you just have to give this person a little respect. And that person is of course one of my favourite (conceptual) artists Lawrence Weiner, whose current London exhibition BE THAT AS IT MAY at Lisson Gallery is soon approaching its final week. On my last visit to see the show I decided to take some shots for inspiration. THIS IS THAT.

• 2012-12-23

  Music for films

  

  

  

  When Venus Febriculosa announced that it will run a cover design competition on Brian Eno’s Music for Films it was pretty clear that I had to give it a shot too. My attempt to simplify some of the obvious graphical cinematic associations fell short in the end, but nevertheless it was again fun to play along. I still stand behind the notion that minimal was (and is) definitely the right direction to go with this album, which naturally makes finding the perfect concept so damn hard…

• 2012-12-01

  An age of mechanical reproduction

  

  

  

  

  Remember that post about the magical time I got to spend with Mr B, 
  or — realistically speaking — his work. No? Well, luckily the post is still up here in case you are interested. 

  Due all the procrastinating, and other useless excuses, it took me nearly six months from that point to actually get to print my planned Baskerville replicas. Now another six months has passed again, so I thought it’s about time to share some shots I snapped whilst printing.

  Besides the experience of seeing Baskerville’s original craftwork from 1772, it really struck me to understand how far the form of the 20th Century metal type had drifted from his original typeface designs. And I don’t even need to mention most of the digital (so-called) Baskerville versions here. I think what I got to witness was exactly what one could call a transformation through mechanical reproduction.

• 2012-11-17

  Remixing Socrates

  

• 2012-10-30

  Giving voice to practice

  I have been thinking of this idea of a networked practice for a while now. This network is formed by hundreds and hundreds of little whispers that together form an unavoidable (loud) sound. A thousand whispers can hardly be silent, right? But what really matters is the quality of the whole; whole formed by the quantity it consists of. Therefore even a single whisper becomes meaningful.

  This is an extract from my ten minute speed writing essay responding to the theme of “giving voice to practice” set by Julia Calver at the Art Writing course during AcrossRCA, Royal College of Art, 2012.

• 2012-09-30

  Process books

  These laser printed and hand bound process books were made for the final portfolio hand-in at the end of my Central Saint Martins’ graphic design course. The books document all my college related projects from the final year in a linear way. They worked as a great tool to explain my thinking behind the creative process. In addition I also think that combining these thoughts into a printed form has helped me greatly in critical self-reflection and to analyse my ways of working.