Turn The Page #77 Motion

COVERSTORY

A Designer’s Perspective on Minimalism

DIALOGUE

Mahir Alkaya is a designer turned politican

INTERVIEW

“Ballroom to me is a place where I can be myself.”

July 2021 № 77

The Turn The Page falls on the doormat as the Netherlands slowly opens her doors. 1.5 years ago a crisis began of which no one expected it would last so long and turn our world completely upside down. COVID-19 brought us challenge after challenge. We proudly look back on a year in which we as ID have adapted ourselves to this situation and reinvented the whitebooks with the creativity we have as designers. Now, accustomed to “the new normal”, are we moving back to “the old normal”?

What exactly is “the old normal” and do we really want to go back to it? We are now used to working from home and organising our days flexibly. We can no longer imagine organising something without a back-up plan and you are never late for a meeting because you missed the train or got stuck in traffic. No, for practical reasons we do not need to go back to “the old normal”.

But how we long for the days when we spontaneously bumped into someone in the corridor or when your project took a different turn because one of your fellow students passed by and had a completely different view on it. We are happy to star t moving normally again and not over think ever y thing. Even though we have learned a lot this year, we are happy to take off our lockdown glasses and look forward to seeing each other again in ID Kafee. See you soon to catch up :) Lonneke Orij Chairman of ID

Contents

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IN T ERACT I VE

Rip the page

16 I NTERV IEW

Tens across the board

07 R ECU RRI NG

10 COV ERSTORY

Minimalism

B.A.B.E+

20

22

I D PAG ES

S USTAI N AB I L I T Y

Upcoming

What can we do?

24 28 31 CO LUMN

Dear Pottenlikker

F EATU R E

ED G E

World of Conveniences

Drugs Distilled

32

B E H I N D T H E PAGES

A small step to freedom

NOT YOU ( ? )

It’s a little human

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28

34 ID PAG ES

Creative Market

I D EXPO

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40 42

Hey, are you free tonight?

DI ALOG U E

F EAT URE

Designer turned Politician

46

F EATU RE

Landshapes

Spill the Tea!

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REC URRING

Hutspot

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So, apparently, unicorns do not exist. Boom! My childhood dream of ever owning an animal with rainbow manes smashed to pieces. Fortunately, I can always count on my fellow Turn The Page editors to cheer me up with random facts. In this case: unicorns did exist, approximately thirty thousand years ago.

However, their appearance slightly differed from what we might imagine.

Some internet cruising provided me with more information: these so-called Siberian unicorns did not have a cute horse figure, but more of a thicc pelt and a two-meter-tall frame. Whether they were friends with the humans roaming the world at that time, we may never know. Yet, like all cute bears they might just have had a little bit of rainbow under their thick layer of fur. The more you know…

Enough about unicorns, let us focus on this edition of Turn The Page, themed Movement. Everything around us is constantly in

Editorial

motion: either fast, like your eyes reading these words, or slow, like societal change. Tangible or not, fast or not, things move. We tried to capture this motion in this edition, not only the physical one, but also the sociological and psychological movement of people and their points of view.

The result is a Turn The Page filled with stories about people’s personal ambitions, cultural progress and a tad of nostalgia.

Maybe, these stories will inspire you to reflect on the buzz around you and find your own motion as you go.

Frank van Beek Chairman

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INTERACT IV E

Rip the page Fold the dotted lines. Connect the circles and squares in order. Circles means inward, squares is backwards. Puzzle away!

by Nathan Douenburg @nietzoscherp

Aim for the eye

Fold the page

BABE +

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APPS

BOOKS ROBIN RHODES

BLOGS EVENTS

by Eva Le Navenec

Since last spring, Museum Voorlinden is presenting an exhibition made by the ar tist Robin Rhode. With a wall and just a few lines, he brings imaginar y worlds to life.

His per formances are a visual combination of street ar t, drawing, painting, sculpting, per formaning, film and photography. The work is play ful and includes many references to music, poetr y, ar t and histor y. The museum also has a pret ty garden to enjoy after having seen the exhibition.

) www.voorlinden.nl/exhibition/

The creators of this website surely were fed up with their zoom meetings. They came up with a way to use a valid excuse to remove yourself from any meeting. Pretend that you have a bad internet connection or make the sound echo.

But you can also be more original by star ting a construction site in the background or making a baby cr y. If this technique still does not work, tr y combining the sound effects.

) www.zoomescaper.com

ZOOMESC APE R 7

BAB E+

July 2021 | turn the page

This website is a good distraction during a break or to take your mind off things. Each let ter on the keyboard has its own unique sound and vision. By tapping the screen or typing on your keyboard you create your own music and animation. The combination of keys and effects changes ever y time. So, star t playing with words and tunes.

) www.patatap.com

PATATA P T H E C U LT U R E MAP In this book Erin Meyer describes a model to decode how cultural differences have an impact on international business. She provides practical, actionable advice based on real life events for working in a global world. No mat ter your task, the eight dimensions featured will help you improve your effectiveness. The dimensions also enable you to decode how these culture influences have an effect on your own international collaboration.

The Pantone Color Match Card measures and matches coloured objects, materials, and sur faces to their Pantone Color, no mat ter where you are! With a por table card and the app, the unique tool matches your inspiration to a colour code. It is as easy as taking a picture. Simply position the Color Match Card on the targeted colour and save your desired and best-matching Pantone Color. The colour can even be saved to your Adobe Creative Cloud.

PA N T O N E 8

BABE +

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K HROMA On Khroma you can choose from an endless list of colours. The website uses ar tificial intelligence to create limitless palet tes for you to discover, search and save. It generates a colour algorithm personalized to you. Now you always have an inspiration source for type, poster, gradient, image and palet te colour combinations. Favourites can also be saved for later. Good luck picking!

) www.khroma.co

Many designers use folding techniques during prototyping and model making. The book Folding Techniques for Designers by Paul Jackson is a practical guide to seventy key techniques of folding, such as pleated sur faces, cur ved folding, and crumpling.

These techniques are useful for product designers as well as architects and jeweller y and fashion designers.

FOLDING TECHNIQUES T H E P O L L I N AT O R S Ever y year around spring and autumn, this company distributes free flower or tree seeds.

The Pollinators strive to create a healthy environment for pollinating species, such as bees and but ter flies. In addition, they organise play ful events and activate people to get involved themselves. If you cannot wait until they hand out the next batch of seeds, you can also at tend one of their many workshops or lectures. Here you can learn about food, bees and seeds.

) www.thepollinators.org

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COVERSTO RY

July 2021 | turn the page

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nn ee rr ’ ’ ss ii vv ee oo nn ll i i ss mm

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Imagine an empty room, except for Steve and his backpack. This backpack contains all his valuable possessions. He is at peace here. Steve is a minimalist. He is the extreme metaphor. But seriously now, what is a minimalist?

by Nanko Hefting and Eva Le Navenec

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a m m a

M M m m

n i i i

COVE RSTORY

turn the page | July 2021

/ˈm n məˌl z(ə)m/

Well, it can be someone like Steve, but not necessarily. First and foremost, minimalism is a way of living with just the things you really need. Not to make your life miserable, but to give yourself room for things that make you happy. Minimalists firmly believe that more belongings do not actually make you more... happy.

We all have (or are) that one friend who compensates for that gaping part in his soul by buying more and more things, without seemingly filling it up any time soon. ‘Obviously’, a minimalist would say, ‘You cannot just buy happiness at a store, take it home and put it on your table. Happiness comes from inside.’ What do you think? Total rubbish, or sensible? Many have tried to answer this question. Plenty of role models for you to look at and get inspired by. Take for example the two Netflix documentaries: Minimalism and Less is Now, by Matt D’Avella.

Money does not create happiness

These documentaries share the stories of Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. While writing three books and producing a podcast, they have named themselves the Minimalists. They are sharing their life stories and how minimalism has improved their lives. “When we were growing up, I feel like we could have used minimalism, because minimalism is basically the intentional use of resources you have by being more deliberate with those resources.” Both men started working hard in their 20s and thought they would therefore find fulfilment in their lives. However, they soon found out that this was not the case.

Money does not make you happy. This is a well-known lesson and although money does so to some extent, one should also keep in mind that you are never going to have the money for everything you want.

So, where does the pursuit of money come from? And why do people feel as if they must comply with a certain template? Good job, expensive car, beautiful wife, big house, great children... You know the ongoing drill. The documentaries refer to this as the “American Dream”.

“You are never going to have the money for everything you want.”

The American Dream

We all know how unrealistic it is and still we strive for it. What feeds this relentless pursuit? The advertising world! The money spent on advertising has increased tremendously over the past few years. Most of advertising has also moved from television and radio to digital advertising. “The result, intelligent and predictive advertisements that seem to know us better than we know ourselves.” Companies now know how to stitch our devices together, knowing whenever you pick up your phone or switch on your laptop. Using the GPS on your devices, they track your locations and see which stores you visit frequently. Compiling this data, they know the perfect time to message you next.

“And the end goal is always the same. To get you to buy more stuff.” Another trick companies use is called deficit advertising.

“They send us advertisements that make us subconsciously feel like we are inadequate, if we do not have this product.” This feeling causes us to buy more and repress this inadequacy till it eventually comes back. 1

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COVERSTO RY

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COVE RSTORY

13

COVERSTO RY

Less stuff, more love

Another very important point shown in the documentaries is how children encounter this phenomenon at an increasingly younger age. Many children have a device at their fingertips before the age of four, which has led to companies advertising to children themselves rather than to parents. This means that the disaster of shopping with children now also takes place at home. In addition, the concept of shopping is already within your own home. You can find what you need on the internet. It is delivered to your address, in some cases the same day or within 24 hours. Shopping becomes an automatic activity that does not require a single brain cell. Convenient, is it not? Well, no...

“We are losing the stuff that actually makes us happy.”

Instead of using time to work hard to afford that new expensive bag, people should think about what they really need. By asking yourself that question, you are likely to save money. Saving money allows you to work less. The free time can then be used for hobbies, family, friends and community. In the long run, having less belongings permits you to live in a smaller space and for a lower price or rent. Perhaps even live closer to your ‘happinesses’.

Design for less

So, as designers, we have more say in people’s lives than we might care to admit. Minimalism makes this abundantly clear to us. Therefore, we should ask ourselves what we want to achieve with our designs. Imagine someone purchasing your product.

Of course, you would want them to use it, to cherish it, to feel excitement every time they look at it. This is what minimalism can

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July 2021 | turn the page

teach us: to limit our belongings to those that add as much value to our lives as possible and to make sure they last. As designers, we should prevent our products from ending up in stores that are designed to let you buy as much as possible (We äll knøw whät störe we äre tälking aböut hëre) without needing most of it. We like to talk about our responsibility to innovation. Yet, we rarely discuss the immense influence we have on the environment by creating products that are ready to be thrown away as soon as they are unboxed. This does not mean a responsible designer is by definition a minimalist, but that we should all consider how our design identity contributes to wastefulness. Why not take it a step further, from identity to policy? We should regulate companies that sell products that break easily due to bad quality. The shorter the lifespan of a company’s product, the more they should have to invest in cleaning up the mess they make. After all, it is not the products that last for generations that end up in the ocean. It is the cheap products, fabricated for quantity instead of quality.

Challenge your inner minimalist

A lot of inspiration can be taken from those who have already adopted this lifestyle before you. Community is larger and older than you think, and a lot of books and documentaries have already been made (Fun fact: minimalism is a movement started in the visual arts in the 60s.) There are many techniques to make this a habit. For example, there is the 30-day challenge, in which you say goodbye to one of your products every day. Start small and pick up the pace. Many people have also tried the 33 items challenge. They reduced their wardrobe to 33 items. This is proven to be enough to mix and match. A more drastic approach is fake moving. For this, you pack all your belongings in boxes. For the next month, you only unpack what you really use. The rest remains in boxes. The biggest lesson of minimalism is that it is a learning process of discovering what gives you value. So, your Turn The Page magazines may stay on that one shelf! 3

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COVE RSTORY

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INTERVIEW

July 2021 | turn the page

photo

by Ja nett eM ir

mo ja

It is five minutes before he hits the runway, his adrenaline levels high. The past hour, days, weeks even, he has been hyping himself for this moment. And then his shoe refuses to zip up. This is Angel’s story about his first time walking a ball.

by Frank van Beek | special thanks to @themodelcalledangel

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INT E RVIEW

turn the page | July 2021

“I was panicking”, says Angel, a model, fashion student, and ballroom participant. “In my head, I had already lost. For a stroke of luck, I tried closing my shoe with my foot on the stairs. This was my last change before having to get to the stage. It zipped up and hit the runway.” Angel will tell you what happened on that runway later, but first: what is ballroom?

Rooted in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the house-ballroom scene emerged as LGBTQ+-youth flocked to New York City in the 1970s. In short, houses historically are places where parent-figures, often LGBTQ+ themselves, provide a safe space for queer youth. A space that their biological parents were unable to provide. The expression of the house culture became ballroom, where houses competed against one another in so-called ‘balls’.

The ballroom scene was created as a haven by black and brown, gay, queer and gender non-confirming people. “We needed a space to party, so we created our own”, says Angel.

Influenced by social media, the scene expanded globally to places such as Finland, where Angel lives. I gave him a call to talk about his experiences in the ballroom scene.

How did you start walking balls? “I was asked to walk a ball, when I did my first drag performance, in November 2019. Back then, the gay scene was still new to me, and I did not think I was confident enough to be out there as a super queer person.

However, when this person kept on asking me to walk, I said to myself: ‘Sure, why not? Let me give it a try.’ I joined, and I doubt if I could ever live without it.”

At balls, participants ‘walk’ a category, in front of a panel of judges and among an energising crowd.

“Everybody is rooting for you”, says Angel. Created for a specific need of representation within the scene, each category calls for a different list of elements.

“When you first walk a category, you are walking to get your tens. This essentially is your pass to the next round”, Angel explains. When that happens, the ball’s host often exclaims: ‘Tens across the board.’ “If participants do not get rewarded a ten from all the judges, they are ‘chopped’”, meaning

“WE NEEDED A PLACE TO PARTY, SO WE CREATED OUR OWN” that they cannot continue walking this category at this ball. “Next comes the battle round, in which you battle everyone that got their tens.” The judges then decide who wins, based on, amongst others, attitude, voguing skills and costume design.

How did that first time turn out? “I had no idea what I was doing. Since it was my first ballroom performance, I only had a couple of days to practice. Despite the Finish ballroom scene giving me everything they had, on the runway it was like telling someone not to think of an elephant. The only thing you can think about is... an elephant. I did not know what I was doing, apart from walking.

What I had to show in my face was that I believed the fantasy I was presenting. I walked, got my tens, battled other people and won.” 1

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H UTSPOT

HUTSPOT HUTSPOT HUTSPOT Everyone has their own style and everybody wants to be unique. What you wear is who you are, right? Then let me ask you, how sustainable are you already? Perhaps your wardrobe could be a little greener? If the answer to that is yes, then look no further! This Hutspot will be all about showing who you are: at home or on the move ;)

by Megan Seker

Autumn ready

From head to toe, let us start with your exterior: a coat! These amazing raincoats by Amsterdam based brand Maium are made from recycled plastics, down to the last tape and lining! It may still be summer, but you will be ready to shine at the first drops.

)

www.maium.nl

Plastic bag +

Enjoying your days at the beach, but not so much the plastic litter you find there?

Nukak has got it covered! Their bags are made from kitesurfing sails, inner tubes & advertising banners, and are spacious enough for any shorts, bikinis and towels.

) nukak.es 50

COLOFON

turn the page | July 2021

Of ficial body of ID Volume 22 / Issue 76 July 2021 Turn The page is issued four times a year.

Contac t ID study association Landbergstraat 15 2628 CE Delf t +31 (0)15 2783012 www.studieverenigingid.nl Comments, questions,

“Hello?”, “It is your new case!”

Your phone case is basically an extension of your outfit. So, why settle for ugly and plastic? Pela has designed eco-friendly cases, with an amazingly soft feel, in a wonderful range of colours. The best part: when your done with it, just stick it in the ground, as these cases are 100% compostable!

Step into the future

Sneaker fanatic but also environmentally conscious? Cariuma has the best of both worlds. With every sneaker you buy, they will plant two trees, and all of their materials are ethically and sustainably produced. And for all of you hip designers: they even got exercise a collaboration with Pantone! That is enough colour to stand out in the crowd.

) int.cariuma.com

compliments and remarks can be sent to: turnthepage-svid@tudelf t.nl Issues 7000 Copies Press Opmeer papier pixels projec ten T TP Thanks

) eu.pelacase.com

Marc de Kool, Henk Jan Oudenampsen, Nathan Douenburg, Bennie Mols, Frederik Ueberschär, Mickey Linskens, Khalid El Haji, Anton-Gomez Escolar, Jerome Herpers @themodelcalledangel, Mahir Alkaya, Jet te Stuy t, Emilie van der Spronsen, Saskia Mosterman, Juliët te van Driel, Meike Huisman, Liza Slootman, Dionne Oomen Subscribe/ad Members of ID receive Turn The Page free of charge. A yearly subscription costs €9,50 (4 issues).

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Please contact turnthepage-svid@tudelft.nl Copyright The committee has strived to own the copyrights of the included texts and images.

However, if you believe you own the rights to a piece that has been used, we request you to contact us. Nothing from this issue can be reproduced. The committee claims the right to shorten, alter or refuse submitted pieces.

The Communication department of the IDE faculty and the Alumni Association have contributed to this Turn The Page.

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Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it...