formandchaos

Tomorrow

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 02:45:00 +0100

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.

Port issue 9

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:14:38 +0000

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.

Unmaking Things

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 03:07:00 +0000

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.

Port issue 8

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 01:05:00 +0000

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.

BE THAT LW

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 02:27:00 +0000

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.

Music for films

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 01:53:43 +0000

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…

An age of mechanical reproduction

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 03:38:00 +0000

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.

Remixing Socrates

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 16:50:55 +0000

Giving voice to practice

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:21:13 +0000

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.

Process books

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 16:11:07 +0100

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.

Failure pt. 2

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:07:49 +0100

I have written earlier a tiny bit about the Redesigning (Graphic) Design Education conference, following some of my thoughts on (design) education. To continue the conversation Joshua and Yvan decided to call us R(G)DE participants from Central Saint Martins and London College of Communication together to have an informal recap. The guys combined our conversation into a transcript, which they have now published on their website.

Funk-Y

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 02:44:50 +0100

These Y letters I spotted yesterday just have to be the quirkiest little bastards I have come across in a while. As shapes they are completely off and weird, but yet somehow so absolutely brilliant…

Exponential growth

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:38:00 +0100

Understanding exponential growth is one of the key issues in humanity’s attempts to reach sustainable living conditions on planet earth. The exponential growth model affects our population growth, economy and energy consumption, just to name a few examples on its importance on our lives.

The most common way to “visualise” a mathematical formula would be to present the data in a graphic form. And this is exactly what we see every day repeated in countless data visualisations and information graphics in the media.

However I believe that the problem with a visual presentation is that it often hardly manages to generate true understanding of the quantity, and most importantly it does not reach to the physicality that would be needed to “feel” the information. This is why I decided to start experimenting with sound.

For the best impact I recommend using headphones.

Original audio sample from Dr Albert A Bartlett’s lecture “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy”.

"We are designing surface. Surface multiplies, beyond any measure of necessity, beyond the laws of..."

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:54:41 +0100

“We are designing surface. Surface multiplies, beyond any measure of necessity, beyond the laws of demand and supply, beyond reason. The multiplication of surface, formerly called information overload, is the new reality of design. Its unit of measurement is virtual.”

- Metahaven

CSM degree show identity proposal

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 03:35:00 +0100

Last winter Central Saint Martins organised a design competition for its graphic design students to create a visual identity for the summer’s degree shows. I teamed up with Nathalie Alvång to work on this fairly time consuming and labor intensive pitch.

We took a conscious decision not to build our theme around the degree show work that was going to be on display, as many of the show visuals tend to be nothing but. Instead we wanted to emphasise the physical contexts for creation within the institution.

The angles in the architecture provided us a great echoing point for our graphics, creating together a vibrant yet harmonious feel. By focusing on the existing architectural elements we wanted to enhance the sense of flux and energy that a creative environment carries at its best; where creativity can exist naturally. Hence we titled the concept in-situ.

We got as far as being shortlisted with this entry, but at the end it was rejected by the college board. Now that the shows are a few months behind us — and people have had the change to see which way the college went with their visuals — I think it was about time to get these images off from my hard drive and show what we came up with.

AN at The Tanks 27/07/2012

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 05:05:44 +0100

As a part of Tate Modern’s The Tanks: Art in Action series Five Years hosts a discussion around their open submission project (Im)possible School Book: As Found. Together with Boo Wallin we designed an (in)formative poster/leaflet for the participant Amateurist Network.

The poster can be read and downloaded here.

Social identity application

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 02:14:00 +0100

By looking at almost any known attemps on building utopias we could state that one of the most common reasons for failure is the individual need to build structures and hierarchies.

If the desire for conceiving these structures is so deeply inbuilt in our human genes that this process seems simply avoidable, would it still be possible for us to function better within a created structure if we were more informed about our choices and actions?

The social identity application form is an attempt to test people’s capacity to act independently (agency) and measure recurrent arrangements that influence or limit the choices and opportunities available to them (structure).

You can download a pdf version of the application form from here.

Identifying SALT

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 02:49:00 +0100

Browsing through a bunch of tourist photos after having just spent nearly two weeks in Turkey, these images stood out as something different. They are taken in the two sites of cultural institute SALT in Istanbul, where our friend Ayşe is currently interning.

I was highly impressed and very inspired by the whole institution and all its research led activities. I have been aware of SALT prior arriving to Istanbul after having seen its brilliant identity system by Project Projects popping up all over the wonderful world of internet.

I have been referencing this typographic system in a few of my college projects, and apparently talking about it to an extent that my girlfriend now thinks that I am being obsessed by this identity, so it was now very nice to see how it works in real life.

BA dismantling

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 02:51:00 +0100

Sometimes one story must come to an end before another one could start. This particular ending point in my life was the dismantling of our BA Graphic Design degree (and our degree show) at Central Saint Martins. As much as I loved my the time at the college, I am certain that this completion gave us a fresh starting point to many new adventures to come, so stay tuned…

Port issue 6

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:17:00 +0100

Earlier this week it was again the time to be press passing a new issue of Port. As this fresh of the printer cover sheet reveals, our first themed issue is all about the power of food. Although that might sound like a massive topic to cover, I think we have gathered a really good selection of opinionated, visually engaging and indeed tasty content.