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| − | We embrace technological development, which makes life easier, faster or cheaper. We think less and are always up to date about everyone and everything. Slowly, we become one with technology and at the moment, theres a thin line between human and computer. Everyone is supposed to be attainable every moment of the day. These developments changes the world every single day, most of them just because we think and we will become ‘better’.<br>
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| − | Of course, every sunny side has it’s dark side. Most of the people won’t know about these negativity, or will ignore them if they don’t wanna get confronted with it. As long as it’s in our advantage, we just close our eyes and act like it’s not around.
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| − | But what happens when there is a group of people that do see those risks and obstacles?
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| − | I got a fascination for company’s, organizations, groups or individuals who stand up to the risks and danger that technology can cause.
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| − | These activists stand ip for their own interest or for the collective interest, concerned about where this all ends up. They try to warn people or make them aware of the dangers where we’re surrounded with all day every day, but they also intent to solve these problems effectively. In both cases, this ‘war’ against technology tells interesting and relevant stories, actions an phenomena that should be brought to attention.
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| − | By doing a lot of research and interviews with these activists and people who suffer from the negative effects of technology, in this case especially technological radiation, I collected lots of information about this subject. With my background in mind, my passion and skills in graphic design I could translate my results to a bigger audience.
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| − | I come from a little town, called Den Hoorn, in the middle of ‘het Westland’ which is a region in Holland where there are lots of famers and greenhouses. “Keep it simple” is their motto. They say from their selves that they’re simple and that they’re not ashamed of it. Maybe that’s, somewhere, the reason I want to think and make understandable projects. Why make something more complicated that it already is? Besides that, as a designer you want to create something, tell something that makes sense and that has impact. In my opinion, the best way to do and to reach this goal is to keep it simple, so that everybody understands what you’re trying to say.
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| − | My profession will always be within graphic design. Therefor it’s not strange that all of my projects, done in this last semester of Digital craft, have a massive touch of graphic design. One of my qualities is creating and designing a visual identity for organisations and company’s. While I’m freelancing, almost all of these company’s are within the commercial sector. That’s why, while I’m working on projects at school and in this case during Digital craft, I try to think more out of the box and work within my personal interest and fascinations in a pro active manner. With these projects, I want to tell a story, pay attention to a problem or highlight a invisible organisation. As a commercial designer, working within this other field feels like freedom.
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| − | Wether I’m working with captcha codes to warn people about artificial intelligence, creating a visual identity for a website back-upper, called ‘The Archive Team’, search for unsecured camera’s on insecam.org or interview electro sensitives; there is a sensible and strong connection within these projects. Projects that make me happy.
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| − | And by coincidence, or not, they are all projects which arises by the technological development and human beings.
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| − | New relations between graphic design and journalism.
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| − | Ruben Pater
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| − | For me, Ruben Pater is a very inspiring graphic designer. A designer who’s also called a visual journalist. With his projects, Ruben tells stories that havent been told yet and wouldn’t have been told if he didn’t do it. He translates complex geopolitic subjects in a visual way so that they’re readable and understandable. In 2013, he designed the Drone Survival Guide, which shows a infographic about how to detect and recognize drones and in which areas they’re located. This guide was later on a educational resource and was used as a optical statement about the usage of drones. A fantastic example where graphic design is used as a way to make a political statement about a changing technological environment. For a long time i’ve been a big fan of Ruben Pater’s work, and our fascination for these ‘ordinary’ subjects are alike.
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| − | Graphic Design as Political Practice
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| − | Metahaven
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| − | A great example of a company that puts their own values and perspectives on the first place while designing for others is Metahaven. They designed the graphic identity of Sealand and Wikileaks, organizations that, in the first place, don’t have the priority to have a nice visual identity. Metahaven just does a pro active design proposal, which gave them these jobs. Sealand is one of these projects that really got my attention. Zealand is a unrecognized micro nation. It is an offshore platform, which was used during war, close to the UK coast. Back in 1967, when this platform wasn’t used by the British anymore, Roy Bates and his wife went to life there and pronounced themselves prince and princess of Sealand. After a while, Sealand got their own currency, passports and stamps. Since 2000, people named Sealand ‘Data Haven’ because of an internet provider called Havenco. They used some internet servers, located on Sealand as a heavily secured network. Sealand became a phenomenon when you talk about cryptology and secrecy, “a true Ark of Noah of network society”.
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| − | Metahaven got inspired by this platform. By giving Sealand their visual identity, the platform got taken more serious. Metahaven had a lot of work to do, like the flag, a monetary unit and a website. Because of the client and Metahaven’s pro active attitude they had a lot of freedom during the project.
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| − | After Sealand, Metahaven gained their current practice; graphic design as political practice. They have their own aesthetic and intellectual way of working that makes their outstanding designs world famous.
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| − | Once there is a fixed subject and the project has a short deadline it’s remarkable that i dare to experiment more than in a longer therm project. It’s something I discovered since we did very short therm projects in different theme’s at the beginning of this year. By completing a project each week within the overall theme of Radiation, we were forced to make quick decisions; it’s because we simply didn’t have the time to overthink something. This motivated me immediately to narrow down the given topic the first day when we had a new kick-off. By doing a full day of research, we gave ourselves the opportunity to target our experiments to a specific subject next day. It was a inspiring way of working on a high pace and it forced us to experiment with unfamiliar techniques. For me it felt really good because I did not felt the anxiety of having a conceptually masterpiece. In this case the outcome of experiments set the tone for our presented end project. This allowed and at the same time forced us to get familiar with new techniques and materials playful positive way. I noticed that there was a good atmosphere in our class and it motivated everybody to work as hard as possible.
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| − | The first week of this school year, Arthur Boer, Meike Brand and I tried to master the magic of the Lindemyer System. This is a set of algorithmic mathematical rules that make it possible to grow organic structures using a computer code. This specific formula was invented in 1968 by biologist Aristid Lindenmayer, who got inspired by the growth of certain algae and small organisms. Later, this system was used for various purposes such as composing music, growing digital plants and trees for gaming and generating weaving patterns.
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| − | In our group we literally used all the time we had to understand the L-System and work with it. For us it was impressive to see how many experiments we could do within this short time period. The key to succes was having the courage to make fast en smart decisions. We had moments that we were really stuck because some experiments did not gave the expected outcome. In this certain moments we had to motivate each in order to take a good look at what went wrong, so we could decide what our next step would be. It showed me that making fast decisions in a experimenting phase, provides new material to work with and reflect on.
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| − | During this proces, we created our own L-systems with wood and tape in order to understand the system, we let the L-system decide a walking route trough the city, weaved a L-system pattern and let the L-System compose a beat for us.
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| − | Finale we examined the growth of a L-system based tree into a 3d program called Cinema 4D. Arthur managed to find a connection between the variables of the algorithm and a sound input. For this input we used one of our earlier experiments, where we let google translate read a list of generated l-system generations out loud, which resulted in a unfamiliar but very rhythmic sound file. By combining these two experiments, the two experiments formed a special audible and visual performance. We called it: A-AB-ABA what literally are the first three generations of the most common L-System.
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| − | Exhibiting this project was our next goal. How could we present the video in a way that a viewer would be hypnotized by our project. The two key elements presenting were in this case the audio and the visual. At first we experimented with a borrowed directional speaker. This to not disturb other projects with our sounds. Unfortunately this speaker died when we plugged the electricity in so we used headphones. We found a screen with a normal size what suited our idea for the visual presentation of the installation. But it still felt as just another tv screen and while looking at it we got distracted by the things happening outside of the screen in the space behind it. In a quick brainstorm session we decided that we had to make a frame around the screen that would transform the screen into a object. At the same time this frame will be serve to kill distractions around the borders of the video. We made al this from metal, what was a quite new material for me to work with. At the same time we programmed a Raspberry pie with the video on loop in order to reduce the space in the metal case behind the screen. While checking out the exhibition space we got excited with the idea of hanging our installation onto a concrete pillar. This gained a lot of extra work because the frame needed a new construction. In this design proces we made a very big mistake. We did not think about a opening in the installation wherein we could arrange our cables and our hardware. So when we closed and installed our installation on the pillar after two hours it was not possible anymore to change something inside the metal frame. We had to trust on the fact that everything will stay in place. And then it happened, ten minutes before the exhibition opening the audio containing our two headphone plugs felt out of the raspberry pie. We were shocked and it was not possible to reopen the installation before the exhibition opening talk of Simon. We fixed this problem with a messy solution. In order to play the audio part into the headphones with out seeing the source we taped a mobile phone on bottom of the installation wat was not direct visible. Very messy but because we got de sound sync with the video it was a solution nobody noticed. In the future I will ensure that the technical part of a installation will always be accessible.
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| − | In the second project Koen and I tried to create a radiation pattern diagram of a wifi antenne. Along the way we figured out a system to do this without expensive measuring equipment. We made two ‘cantenna’s’, which are directional wave guided antenna’s for wifi to increase the range or receiving signal of wifi measurements. It is made out of a few components and a can originally used for packing cheese and coffee. The cylinder portion of these metal cans are perfect to us for building your own powerful antenne. After a week of experimenting and building we came to the sad conclusion that we still needed a professional expensive measurer tool to visualize the pattern.
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| − | However, during the process we got really fascinated by the amount of wifi signals we could detect on our programmed raspberry pie. When we did a measurement with the cantenna was positioned in the direction of a near building we detected around 90 different router signals. The software we used gave us for each signal a small string of information, including the signal strength, mac-adresses and the channel. While positioning the antenna we made a joke about sucking the networks into the can which gave us the data. It felt like we were collecting invincible radiation signals. We came up with the idea to make a wifi vacuum cleaner wherein the dust bag is a screen what shows a data visualization of the collected wifi signals. For me this was a personal goal to create in processing. Our free week without a assignment we went coding the visualization. By working all day every day in the Interaction station we had the opportunity to ask Brigit, Simon or Thomas when we got stuck in the process. Due our lack of coding knowledge every small step we made felt as a personal victory and gave us a lot of energy.
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| − | How can you create depth with light? That was our main question during the ’thermal radiation week’ project with Kars. By starting directly with doing research we made a quick decision to focus on structural light beaming. This is a method where, by projecting a line on a three dimensional object, you can generate depth. To do this, we used processing. By using a kinect, we could also try to manage the same effect using infrared. We did some experiments with glass, paint and infrared radiation, which gave a weird and interesting outcome after it was 3d scanned. We have tried a lot and got a bit lost during this process. At the end, we got fascinated by a technique which the British and American army used back in the days to disguise boats and planes from the army. The camouflage technique is called ‘dazzle came’ and is a technique where black and white stripes are a big part of the appearance. By adding these stripes lengthwise and crosswise on a vehicle, it loses it’s original visual appearance and shape. With a appearance like this, the distance, direction and speed of a vehicle or boat is different and difficult to assess. While doing our research in the beginning of this week, we read a lot about still life compositions, which we thought was a nice way to make our own dazzled pattern. Creating the basic tools to make a still life, we used geometric shapes like a boll, cube and prism. By painting these objects by hand, we made two still life compositions, photographed to discuss and explore the effect of the dazzled pattern.
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| − | It always intrigued me how random generators in games work, like the map generator in the game Age of Empires. How was it possible that a computer could create such natural looking landscapes by one mouse click. I’ve been doing some research, trying to get the knowledge of how to create these natural looking landscapes and how this technique works. During this research I came across the algorithm ‘cellular automata’, often used as a base for this kind of maps. One of the most basic ways to generate these maps with this algorithm are cave generators. A cave is a two dimensional map, often used in games for caves and dungeons. I recognize these structures very good, or actually not that good because I was always lost in these dark generated levels within games. I’ve used these algorithms in Unity, a strong game engine. After experimenting with these codes and algorithms for a while, I could create my first composition and got fascinated by the idea that I could walk through these compositions, through these caves. By programming these levels in a certain way, I made it possible to walk through the caves, using virtual reality glasses so you could literally walk through the caves. At first, it was very difficult to add the good position for the character. I was so hooked by this, for me, new world of programming that I could not stop developing and evolving my caves and levels. To make everything working, I got lost in the project and a bit lost of the whole concept why I was working with the caves after all. How frustrating can it be, trying to make something work for days when the solution were tree little steps, made in 30 minutes. On the other side, the joy and happiness you feel, coming up with this solution yourself and fixing your problem is fantastic.
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| − | After the evaluation of the first minor projects we started working on our final minor project. Koen and I decided to get back to our wifi research. In the beginning we still wanted to continue the progress we made into visualise of the ‘cantenna’ wifi collector. Besides that, we decided to investigate a illness called electromagnetic caused by hypersensitivity (EHS), caused by wifi and other radiation signals. For me this is a very personal topic because of the neighbours of my parents who demanded in the past that we decreased our radiation emission. Starting this project we had lots of ideas, including the information and research we already gained, but the direction completely changed since we started our investigation in this topic.
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| − | The Electro Sensitives:
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| − | Is it possible to escape the electromagnetic fields? Short answer: No. The long answer, however, is the context of our project. Over the last six weeks we have engaged with the tight-knit community of people who identify with a contested illness called electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). Our project aims not to refute or confirm their claims, rather explore very real objects and stories directly from those who see the darker side of our wireless world.
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| − | The process of this project forced to rethink the way we look at connectivity and to take pause when we say ‘I need to disconnect”.
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| − | Due conversations with these people we gathered tons of materials and information. The conversations became chapters in our project and each chapter consists our reaction on the given data. These reactions include graphic designs, objects and shown phenomena.
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| − | For us every visit contains valuable content which we want to make accessible while exhibiting our project. While interviewing the electro sensitives we recorded the conversations through our mobile phone (in airplane mode of course). We listened back every audio file that we collected and wrote down all the relevant questions and answers. We bundled this all into a publication which contains the conversations, our photographs during the interviews and a explanation how we got in contact with these persons.
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| − | During the interview with Hans we discovered a lot of stones and crystals near electronic objects. One of those is the black tourmaline, which seems to convert the negative electro magnetic radiation of a television into positive radiation. We went a step further and gave this stone the ability to not only convert, but also kill all of the emitted radiation by simply smashing the device.
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| − | People describe the moment they discovered their sensitivity to electro magnetic radiation as drowning in panic and helplessness. The Radiation Emergency Hammer refers to a life-hammer, world-wide used for escaping a sinking car.
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| − | From Patrick who is a contact person of the foundation “Stichting EHS” we received a lot of documentaries, research documents and presentation videos who all claim: “electromagnetic radiation is dangerous”. In these we saw one specific argument about the dangers of mobile phone radiation which occurs in almost all of these documentaries. Far away, hidden in the manual of an iPhone, apple says that you actually can not touch your phone. For example the restriction’s of a iPhone 3 is telling you, not to keep the phone closer than 15 mm to your body. The transparent iPhone shells are revealing this hidden sentence in a tangible object.
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| − | The HFE35C Analyzer is a device designed to measure high-frequency radiation. While visiting Tineke she demonstrated this device to detect the incoming radiation from their neighbors. A lot of electro sensitives do this in order to chase the origin of their symptoms. The analyzer translates the frequency into sound, which means you have to recognize each sound to understand which elektrosmog is present.
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| − | We made a guide which includes these sounds and helps to identify the most threatening high frequency radiation in your home.
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| − | Later in our journey we met Dieneke. A women who voluntarily maintains a list of radiation poor places to stay. This list consists out of tips and reviews written by electro sensitive people who emailed the Dutch foundation: stichting ehs. We visualized this list by translating it into a travel map.
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| − | After the exhibition we also participated on the digital craft pop-up expo in the new institute. We tried to evaluate the project and how people react on it during the minor exhibition. From that we’ve learned that our project needed our explanation. It was not clear that the numbers next to the object on our presentation pedestal referred to the chapters in the publication. It was unclear where the origin of inspiration came from and what the object’s were about. The project needed our explanation. We started to notice that people got very excited after we told the concepts and the story. This was a big problem for the pop-up expo because we could not always be present to explain our project. Next to that we felt required to fix a few obvious grammar mistakes in the radiation poor travel map to keep the presentation onto a professional level. Due the school holiday we weren’t able to use the school’s facilities. We had to come up with a solution to fix the bugs and rearrange our exhibition presentation. We’ve made a selection of objects for the show, wrote small concept texts and corrected the travel map. We outsourced the printing orders to a print office in Rotterdam to get good quality. The project was well accepted and there was much interest during the tursday night lecture in the Nieuwe Instituut.
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| − | I am very happy with the project. It felt like a treasure hunt where we needed to act neutral to find succes. Interviewing was new for us and it was pleasant to not have to do this alone. We went to places and tangled ourselves up into weird situations. Gaining the trust of people we don’t know was in the beginning hard but felt natural after some experience. To invite yourself into a strangers home, you need to have a lot of confidence. For us it was an advantage that these people really want to share their feelings to the rest of the world. A lot of people are doubting the reliability of this illness. It was heartbreaking to see how scared the electro sensitives are for the radiation of their neighbours. Still after the interviews we really felt te urge to react on these stories. We also both wanted to make something that refers to the most interesting parts of our research. This is why we divided the project in chapters. The object we created for each chapter were strengthening our story. This was also a possibility for us to create something tangible and touch some materials and unfamiliar techniques. We’ve made molds for the polyester blocks and poured resin, we created the black tourmaline emergency hammer from old bush craft instructions and we’ve hacked a mobile phone. It was a challenge to capture emotion and a story into photographic while we did the interviews. In april we are invited to present our project on the yearly meetup for people who suffer Electro Hypersensitivity, organized by
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| − | It is almost certain that, after my graduation, I will be part of a Graphic Design studio which designs visual identity’s in the commercial sector. During my internship at Studio Dumbar it was clear that i was in the right place. Studio Dumbar has a rich history, looking at Dutch graphic design For example, they designed the visual identity of the Dutch Police, PTT post, the NS and Transavia.
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| − | My goal at the Willem de Kooning Academy was to avoid commercial work and instead of that, expand my experience in doing experiments and autonomous projects. But I notice that in a lot of my finished projects, I was tempting to find a way to create something for a business, a organisation or a group. During these processes, I took in a journalistic position to find a story or a phenomenon that suited the topic or theme of the project, which gave me the opportunity to translate these results and research a visual appearance. For me, I find it necessary and maybe even safe to have done a lot of research to make sure that I’m always able to support possible questions about my visual design or work. I think that all of these ways of working eventually shows that I’m always providing a service, work in name of somebody or to serve someone. Something quite difficult to admit and haven’t always been a strength but it is what it is, and somehow also shows the direction I think I’ll be working in in the future.
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| − | However, for this last project I want to step out of this clear pattern of serving others. The only one I’m gonna serve during this project is myself, exploring some directions that I need to before I graduate and leave the freedom the academy gives you.
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| − | The first weeks during Digital craft, while we experimented and had those weekly projects were really inspiring me. The amount of work we’ve created due short deadlines, making quick decisions and just go on with it, was impressive. We didn’t even had time to think about concepts; we just got motivated by the outcome of experiments that we stood up to during these days.
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| − | My idea is to commit myself to this way of working during the last remaining months of this school year, during my graduation. I want to challenge myself by giving myself a short deadline for each experiment that I’ll be doing.
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| − | Back in the days, when I applied for the Graphic Design department at the Willem de Kooning Academy, I hoped and expected lots of lessons about typography and stuff, things every graphic designer should know. Only the first year of graphic design we had some lessons from Brit Moricke about typography. But since the school came up with it’s new education system, the lessons stopped and instead of that there were only period projects. Within this new system the classes were organised to discuss your current project with a teacher. Since this changes, a few graphic design students switched from the WDKA (Willem de Kooning Academy) to the KABK (Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten). I never hesitated to switch, but I will never understand that the school kept us from experimenting more with the craft of typography within the Graphic Design course. Isn’t it so, that typography is one of the basic elements of visual communication?
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| − | During my second internship at 75B, I developed a typeface for an exhibition that will take place later this year at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It tells a story about minorities and organisations in Philadelphia who are getting connected through this project. (I can’t get into details about the project yet, I’m sorry!) The mission for us was to create a typeface which consists the identity of the project. “Together we are strong” was what the letter had to effuse. Besides that, we discussed the possibilities to create it in a way that the letter can be placed legal and cheap into the urban landscape of Philadelphia. The inspiration for our concept came from a photo of the streets of Iran during the elections. Here, it’s forbidden to stick posters on the wals in the streets of the city’s and villages. Iranians are bypassing this rule by placing it on the ground. As a result, some sidewalks are completely plastered with ads and posters. By seeing al those paper surfaces on the ground I suddenly knew how to create this letter. I used the most regularly used paper format in the US, the us-letter, as a building stone for the typeface. For the fundamental part I took a exciting font and re-builded it with multiple papers. I managed a way to portray the corporate identity with only a stack of papers. It is a very low cost approach for crafting the letters into a big two dimensional installation. The logo mark became a composition of 5 us-letters, which was a logical step when we carried the concept through the rest of the graphical identity. After that we examined what are the most common colours of us-letters in basis paper shops. In a later process, these colours where used for the subdivision of the project. It was quite remarkable that finding the identity within the typeface, gave us a super clean communication tool which directly refers to the corporate identity of the project without showing the name or a logo of the project.
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| − | The designs of Studio Dumbar for Alzheimer Nederland are an other good example of corporate identity based on a transformed typeface. The disease alzheimer affects the brain and memory. Patients slowly start to forget very common things. The letters are disappearing from the center which refers to the symptoms of alzheimer. This feels (besides that I think it's genius), for me as a very logical design choice. Yet it proved to be a design process in which hundreds of designs were rejected. During my internship I joined the team to Dublin. They where invited by Offset festival to give a lecture. Liza, one of the owners of studio Dumbar showed the sketches of the alzheimer nederland identity to emphasize the urgency of ‘trying harder’. The clear corporate identity of Alzheimer Nederland has won Studio Dumbar many international design awards.
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| − | So in both cases I have witnessed typography which have been edited to tell a story and carries a clear recognisable visual identity. The next months I want to investigate how I can tell a story with a typeface. Will there even be a way to let go of the process at a certain point?
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| − | This brings me to my second fascination that I have developed the last years. How can coincidence take place into a design process? I’ve seen a lot of artist embracing accidents and searching for outcomes where they are taking away their own power to influence the end result. But how far in this process is the designer in control and from when does coincidence generates the outcome?
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| − | Abstract Browsing
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| − | Rafael Rozendaal
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| − | Internet artist Rafael Rozendaal became famous because of his web experiments. Normally, he creates pieces of art that got their own url. With his project ‘Abstract Browing’, we can make a piece of art of every website that’s online. On Google Chrome, you can download a plugin and as soon as you activate this plugin, you’re website changes in an abstract composition of blocks. It changes every part of whats normally the visual content of the website in a random color. In one glance you can see how the website is build. Besides the fact that I think that the outcome looks beautiful, I think for me it’s relevant to see how this is done since i’m also working on websites as a freelancer. Rafael created a tool where everybody could transform their website into a abstract piece of art.
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| − | Is this about coincidence? The website’s already existing, but in fact you’re transforming them so that you can look at them with other eyes. Rafael created this project so that it would be a open source project, available for everybody. The moment you’re downloading the plugin and install it on your browser, the design proces is out of his hands. You and I can use his design tool to transform every website by choice to a abstract piece of art.
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| − | Experiments with caddisfly larvae to form jeweled cocoons
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| − | Hubert Duprat
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| − | I’ll never forget the moment I realized what I was seeing and what was happening in front of my during a exhibition in Palazzo Grassi, during the Venice art Biennale 2015. In an aquarium where two caddisfly larvae, surrounded by some sort of golden cocoon. This cocoon wasn’t just gold. It existed out of little pieces of gold, diamonds and small pieces of gems. While reading the text next to the aquarium I got what these things were.
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| − | These caddisfly larvae create their own habitat of materials they collect around them. Out of these materials, whatever they are, they make some sort of cocoon to protect themselves from predators. Normally, living in rivers, they use little pieces of wood, sand and small stones to create this cocoon, but artist Hubert Duprat made the caddisfly larvae use something different like pearls, rubies, gold and sapphires.
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| − | It took him a long time experimenting and doing research about the larvae in his studio. After a couple of weeks, the caddisfly larvae got used to their new environment and they started too created their new cocoon, made of the materials around him, this time the expensive materials that were in the aquarium.
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| − | This leads to beautiful combinations of materials, carefully selected by these little larvae. It’s crazy and impressive to see that each of them have their preference for some of the materials.
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| − | By letting go of the control of the design proces, the artist leaves it up to another living creature, the caddisfly larvae, whom designs a beautiful piece of jewellery only by instinct. One thing the artist still manages is choosing which materials the caddisfly larvae is making this piece of jewellery with. This decision has a huge influence on how the cocoon eventually will look like. But it’s a collaboration on which the caddisfly larvae has it’s last influence.
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| − | Your line or mine
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| − | Moniker
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| − | While visiting the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 2014, I bumped into the installation “Your line or mine” from studio Moniker. I was already familiar with the work of this studio, whom have outstanding interactive projects where they do research about the social effects of technology on the society. In “Your line or mine”, they invite the visitor to make a drawing on a piece of paper which has to cope with some restrictions they made. Each restriction is printed below on that piece of paper. After you’ve drawn what they asked from you, you’re being asked to make a scan of your drawing, which will be uploaded on a computer and then automatically will be part of a animation. This animation is live showed in the same room where you can draw and scan. Each frame is a unique but restricted drawing, showing the imperfections and the creativity of the drawing the visitor made. Like this, all of these frames create a unique and forever changing animation, set up by studio Moniker but executed by everybody else. It becomes a collective piece of art. Studio Moniker made some decisions and put op some restrictions at first, to make sure the instructions were clear and it could be a working succes, rest of it is up to the visitors!
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| − | From this moment on, looking back on what I’ve done, I see a connection between my personal interests in the magical moment of coincidence and having a storytelling approach in past projects. Somehow I’m afraid to work in a more abstract and autonomous way, where I won’t be able to explain the steps I took during my designing process. But also the idea of searching for a moment in a design process where I will lose control somehow excites me. Typography might be a tool, a way to explore this way of creating and having that magical moment of coincidence, where everything can come together. I’m aware that I can be a control freak now a days. That’s why I’m curious what can become a way to let go of structure, let go of control and find a way that’s workable, even for me.
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