Open Set 2013 Commonomy

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open set 2013

dutch graphic design summer school



open set 2013

open set 2013 dutch graphic design summer school catalogue commonomy


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commonomy



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commonomy


all participants


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people

open set 2013 graphic design summer school catalogue tutors & speakers Jonathan Barnbrook Petr van Blokland Max Bruinsma Binna Choi Dennis Elbers Martijn Engelbregt Daniel Gross Wilfried Hou Je Bek Geert Lovink Joris Maltha Christian Nyampeta Marleen Stikker Jan van Toorn Annelys de Vet participants Janelle Aarts Jura Afanasjevs Federica Aruta Thomas Bevelander Ebrien Brinkman Emeline Brulé Peter Buwert Lara Captan Robert Cha Oana Clițan Alejandro Cresta Sylvana d’Angelo Arthur Dunster Mariana la Fuente Martin Gnadt Valeria Guevskaya Alexander Gustavson Joe Jackson Logan Kelly Ioanna Kyrtatou Anastasia Kubrak Alberto Matallana Ana Melo Selina Meurer Anežka Minaříková Larissa Monteiro Ana Radovanović

Federica Ricci Yurr Rozenberg Natsumi Satoh Christian Schlager Julia Schmidt Eonju Shin Priyanka Singh Tania Shoukair Emmy van Thiel Alexandra Tkachenko Nader Tfayli Phillip Tretyakov Steven Twigge Mariette Twilt Luísa Vieira Julian Wallmeroth Jurgen Wiegeraad initiators & organizers Vlad Butucariu Irina Shapiro


content 8

preface

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introduction

18 22

workshop at casco – interview with binna choi

38 60

workshop with jonathan barnbrook – discussions

76 94

workshop with jan van toorn – discussions

112 124 136

workshop with martijn engelbregt – discussions – dictionary

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workshop with petr van blokland

166

workshop with catalogtree

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preface

preface: commonomy

This publication represents the results from the second edition of Open Set Graphic Design Summer School. Open Set comprises two weeks of workshops and lectures that explore new shifts in the field of design. Its main goal is to promote design that reflects and has its starting point in contemporary social processes and discussions. We wanted to show the results of the event not as finished solutions but rather visual notes from the dialogue that took place and which sparked new collaborations and projects, even shaping some creative practices of those involved. We aim here to illuminate the working processes of an international group of young professionals who were motivated to change the patterns whereby we approach design and to be influenced by different ways of looking at design expertise. This pursuit was enabled by bringing together designers’ experiences from around the world, and also by embracing a diverse range of methods from key tutors. While each year has a theme that subscribes to Open Set’s core values this year we questioned the role of autonomy in a totally designed culture and how the processes within the contemporary society affect it. We assembled this idea under the term ‘commonomy’. The starting point for the discussion was the critical role of the designer within cultural, political, and technological development, and how this profession motivates social change. We focused


vlad butucariu, irina shapiro

on what design can bring into the life of a community rather than within individual creative practices, altering social processes and vice versa. This shift in thinking present within the profession raises questions on many levels pertaining to design expertise: What are the skills we designers need nowadays? Who is our client—is it industry, society, or must we conceive of the client in other terms such as partner and collaborator? We encouraged participants to join the discussion and to shape their own reflections around this theme. Being mainly design oriented, Open Set desires and supports influences on design from varied creative disciplines, as well as the appropriation of experiences from said disciplines. We believe this is crucial for innovation. The same applies for more remote professions in the fields of administration, politics, economy, sociology, journalism, and others, as they too enrich the conversation around design. This year was the first attempt to involve non-designers among participants, with applicants practicing journalism, photography, and business management. In order to facilitate a sense of tension with the intent to incite debate, the flexibility of the program was key and saw a selection of five workshops on offer, four of which were scheduled in two simultaneous sessions. Graphic designers Jan van Toorn and Martijn Engelbregt developed the first session of workshops, each having a unique approach to opening a dialogue with the public by questioning the systems in which we are involved, either through visual rhetoric or through process making.


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preface: commonomy

For the second session, design studio Catalogtree (Daniel Gross and Joris Maltha) with type designer Petr van Blokland approached the subject from another angle dealing with the complexity of the contemporary world and the ability to react to it by creating or adapting design tools. Given the international context of the event we found it relevant and necessary to introduce an external point of view from another design tradition and cultural scene. We were honored to have our first workshop guided by the British graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook who urged participants to formulate their own definition of design and encouraged them to look at the profession as an opportunity to contribute to sociopolitical debates. The lectures in the context of the whole event constructed a multidisciplinary aspect and supplemented the information not covered in the workshops. We accomplished this by inviting into the debate essential figures such as: design critic Max Bruinsma; the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, media theorist, and critic Geert Lovink; curator and director of Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory Binna Choi; graphic designer and head of the design department at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam Annelys de Vet; president and co-founder of Waag Society Marleen Stikker and writer and psychogeographer Wilfried Hou Je Bek. The 2013 Open Set Summer School succeeded in facilitating a fruitful design environment for experiments, collaborations, and debates, and more


vlad butucariu, irina shapiro

than that it fostered an international active network of professionals that is continuously growing. We’d like to thank to all of our partners, tutors, colleagues, and everyone involved for supporting us and making possible the second edition of Open Set. Vlad Butucariu and Irina Shapiro The Netherlands, 2013


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follow your doubt

introduction: commonomy

I think ‘commonomy’ is a strange word, a bit awkward actually. It’s either a pleonasm or an oxymoron. When you read it as ‘common economy’, it says the same thing twice; economy as we now perceive it is by definition a common thing, a thing we all take part in. But when you read the word ‘commonomy’ as a composite of ‘common autonomy’, it becomes contradictory; there is a principal tension between autonomy and the ‘commons’. Or to put it differently, all things common are built on at least a partial abandonment of individual autonomy. This is of course a fundamental feature – or paradox – of design; that it connects the autonomous professionalism of the designer to the common good. Design is not an ‘autonomous art’, it’s an ‘applied art’. It operates within the public realm as an individual voice – be it that of the designer or the client. So, pleonasms and oxymorons aside, ‘commonomy’ is actually a quite appropriate term to describe the field within which design acts. Design, in other words, addresses both the autonomy of clients, users and the designers themselves as the common realm which economically, culturally and socially embraces all of them. How could we clarify the essence of this ‘address’? A term, which recurrently surfaced during the 2013 Open Set workshops, can help us: criticality. For what is critique, if not the attempt of an autonomous individual to publicly analyze the state of affairs in a


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certain field, and propose an alternative view towards it, or merely a more thorough understanding of it? Critique, in order to be effective – or valid – at all, needs to be autonomous, that is unbiased by any interest other than that of the critic’s reasoning. For critique is never neutral, even if it aims at being objective. The critic always invests his point of view. That is his autonomy – the critic speaks for himself, with the common interest in mind. His autonomy is therefore not absolute, but mitigated by that of others taking part in the common realm. It is the autonomy of someone who can afford to be tolerant of the views of others because his own position is firmly grounded in reasoned doubt. Pierre Bayle, the 17th-century French critical thinker who is seen as one of the arch-fathers of the idea of tolerance, beautifully formulated the essence of critique when he described a peculiar trait of reasoning: “Reason serves only to confound everything, and make us doubt everything : it has no sooner built a system, that it shows you the means to ruin it.” Critique is integral to rationalism, because any well-built argument can be, as we would say in our times, ‘deconstructed’ by the same mechanisms it was built with. Almost three centuries later, the underlying principle from Bayle’s insight came to be termed ‘falsification’: Karl Popper postulated that every scientific statement or proof should in itself carry the ‘means to ruin it.’ That is precisely what critique does, or should do: deconstruct reason’s apparent self-


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introduction: commonomy

evidence; test something on the basis of the very criteria that directed its making. And in the mean time question these criteria on their validity and consistency. Words like ‘ruin’, ‘deconstruction’ and ‘falsification’ seem to confirm the often heard idea that criticism is a negative affair, an analysis geared at undermining or destroying its object. But in fact the opposite is more true, or at least closer to the original function of critique: critique is the eye and mind that want to fathom how things work. And you don’t really understand how a thing works until you’ve taken it apart. The current negative aura of criticism would almost have us forget that we are dealing here with a central currency of our culture, to use today’s economized language. Once, in Pierre Bayle’s times, it was the golden standard of cultural, social and scientific development. Critique was a constant stress-test for truth. Everything one thought to know was constantly monitored and assessed by those who examined this knowledge for consistency, robustness and blind spots. Today, criticism is more and more instrumentalized for economical purposes, which distracts from its essential function of ‘falsifier’ of accepted opinions. ‘Criticality’, in other words, is currently perceived more often as stubborn opposition than as engagement with the rubrics of the thing criticized. Questioning how things are is, however, an act of engagement. And this makes it a central attribute


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of design; a product that does not engage in probing its own premises is not a design, it’s a reproduction. In the 1950’s, Buckminster Fuller described the new profession of ‘industrial designers’ as ‘productrefinement-designers’ – a biting summary of his view that most of what had by then become understood as ‘design’ was addressing superficial things like formal appearance or market appeal. Design as he saw it made sense on a much deeper level, that of criticizing the assumptions on which current practice was built, and argue for ameliorations on fundamental rather than formal grounds. That such critical scrutiny mostly resulted in forms that radically differed from the usual was both marginal to his critique and its logical outcome. He drew the map differently – literally in his Dymaxion World Map from 1943. During one of the sessions in Jonathan Barnbrook’s workshop, participant Ana Radovanović stated as her ‘design manifesto’: “Follow your doubt.” I think this is a very good motto for a designer, even if it sounds scary to many. But doubt becomes scary only when you follow it blindly; then you are prone to getting lost. Doubt as a guide, however, can set you on a course along which amazing discoveries can be made – philosophers call this a ‘discourse’. Following this guide does not mean that you can’t pause for a moment and marvel at a view that seems to be as true as life itself – but never assume you have reached a definite end. No sooner have you described a perfect place, to paraphrase Bayle, that the very terms of your


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introduction: commonomy

description show you its imperfections! Doubt, in other words, is a trustworthy guide to follow as long as you keep analyzing where it leads you. Engaging with the discourses on the very basic assumptions underlying the thing you are designing – that is the essential critical aspect of design as a cultural profession. Since critique is necessarily an autonomous voice speaking in public, it follows that design, in order to do justice to its critical essence, should be both autonomous and public. Now we have a word for that: design should be commonomous. Max Bruinsma, design critic The Netherlands, 2013

Part of this text is taken from a lecture on design criticism, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, November 22nd, 2013


max bruinsma


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workshop 1: casco


binna choi

“everyone can be political by taking part in the process of thinking, questioning, discussing and negotiating.�


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work with against

Open Set interviews Casco’s director Binna Choi about the means of criticality for design practice. Based in the heart of the Netherlands, dealing with artists, designers and theorists from all over the world, Casco can be seen as an important player in the field of critical practice. Even though design is one of Casco’s mainstays, one could wonder what brings this composer of debates to a summer school for young graphic designers. Under the theme Commonomy Open Set tries to discover methods for dealing with the critical practice within a totally designed world. What is the designer’s influence on the behavior of the community? An interview about the importance of criticality and political activism for society, and in particular with regards to the design practice.

“I think it’s true, unfortunately”, Choi refers to the quote of a design student of Rick Poynor who stated that the time for being against is over. “If we think about criticality as a form of opposition I agree that this is not effective anymore. Being against immediately gives a connotation of people burning cars and throwing fire in the city. But we can politically participate on many different levels. Take for example a daily work situation. What would you do in the situation when a client is opposed to what you did? I would say it is a political situation where you have to articulate the rationale behind your design and negotiate with the client. Not everyone needs to or can have ‘political’ ambitions. However everyone can be political by taking part in the process of thinking, questioning, discussing and negotiating.” With this notion Choi refers to the way Casco approaches criticality. “We work with a critical practice


binna choi, irina shapiro, mariette twilt

that is not one of being against, but one of being agonistic.” Chantal Mouffe is an important contributor to this theory and defined ‘agonism’ as the essence of the political process. In an interview with Red Pepper magazine Mouffe explained the term as “…allowing the possibility that conflict may appear to provide an arena where differences can be confronted.” This role of an arena where friendly enemies can meet is a role that Casco likes to fulfill. “We want to bring different partitions together without making evil and good but to accommodate friction. Compose a constructive debate. At the same time I want to state clear: I’m not waiting for this moment of confrontation. It’s open for me and that is very important. Otherwise I become kind of a circus manager, anxious for this moment of clash.” As an example of a confrontation between these friendly enemies, Choi refers to Casco’s recent contribution to a conference at Rietveld Academie Stadium Generale. There she invited artist Ei Arakawa, who made a performance that included preparing soup with dried radish from Fukushima (the performance was conceived in collaboration with Stefan Tcherepnin, Hanna Törnudd and Green Tea Gallery). “The radish was contaminated, but till what degree? Arakawa used a Geiger counter to detect the amount of radioactivity. The radish was within the safe range but in fact we don’t know how safe that is. There is no reliable system for measuring what is safe or not. Some people from the audience and other conference contributors got upset and were outspokenly critical. It was a confrontation


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about a choice, which seems to be very banal: to eat a soup or not, a soup of which an insignificant amount of ingredients is said to be contaminated. This moment of confrontation enabled a lasting discussion and an agonistic space emerged.” At the same time Choi explains that composing this kind of events is not always successful. Sometimes a discussion gets in a mode of attack. “It made me think of an article by Bruno Latour: there is no good or bad, or evil and good. There is well composed and not well composed. To compose well, Casco has to create a common framework of doing and thinking and act as a moderator of discussions.” The theory Choi refers to can be found in Latour’s Compositionist Manifesto: Above all, a composition can fail and thus retains what is most important in the notion of constructivism. Everything that happens has to be slowly composed instead of being taken for granted. Choi: “When it fails, you have to continue from the failing to compose again. When there is friction or failure, work with it. Work with against.” Although the role of a designer is not always very visible, Choi wants to stress the significance of design in their approach. “I find the ability of designers to arrange and articulate information amazing. They immediately lay down a system with multiple layers of information. For graphic design it means space division through lines and typography. Space could be two-dimensional or three-dimensional; there it could meet architecture. It’s about how to compose


binna choi, irina shapiro, mariette twilt

information between these lines.” Can a designer’s skill to organize and structure information also be applied to research? Choi wonders for a moment. “I think design can be applied to any field if you want to be reinventive or conscious of what you are doing. Research and debate is part of design, although it does not define design.” Not everyone agrees with Casco’s more theoretical approach to design. It becomes clear by the responses they sometimes get. “Once we had a project that involved surveys about the assumption that graphic designers are not well paid, precarious, flexible workers. As a response we got ‘why don’t you just do design practice in proper conditions instead of this research?’ It touches the notion of audience. Should Casco’s projects reach for a broader public than artists, designers and theorists? The question alone is causing Choi a headache. “I hate public,” she laughs. “ No. Actually, a reason for Casco to rent a storefront in one of the busiest areas in Utrecht is our desire to speak further to a more pluralistic public. However, I think that the general public has already a code embedded. How to have a cultural life? Go to a museum. What should you do there? You see things, have some comments around it and then you go for dinner. This thinking is of a mass-market logic, which cannot be applied to critical practices that have to work ‘against’ the established systems, the mainstream, and the popularity. I don’t know how to break that code.” The problem that Choi is addressing here, however,


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leads to a broader one. How to make people think? ‘General public’ seems to trust expertise, an established label of good art. In order to break with this one should, according to Petra Loffler – professor of Media Philosophy at Bauhaus-University – promise their audience something. A cultural cookie. Promise a little bit of shock and you have a little bit of attention. Choi muses, “that’s interesting. So openness and questioning does not work. You need to have a shock effect. Shock as a product…” Choi thinks about the idea for an instant. “Perhaps it could work, to use such cookies, as a reverse decoy. As soon as people are inside they appreciate the work of Casco. But the idea of coming here, that could be the problem. You might deploy all kinds of tactics to invite the public, without the need to change your actual content. Maybe we should change our language or style of communicating, we thought about doing that. At the same time I don’t want to lose our current audience. My proposition would be again: negotiating differences and compose. You cannot only insist that your approach is right, take distance and condemn the other.” This complexity around the notion of ‘general public’ gets harder in the context of the Netherlands. “I think criticality or negativity is not culturally welcomed in the Netherlands. There is this atmosphere of gewoon (ordinary, ed.) where people live in a culture of consensus. Maybe they don’t see hope for change, are in a comfortable situation or


binna choi, irina shapiro, mariette twilt

think that the present system is okay and will get better by itself. Yet, being part of a system does not mean you cannot question it. A system without questions gets corrupt. At the same time you should be aware that you are not outside the system.” Choi Laughs. “Take a look at Casco. We are an anti- or rather post-capitalistic organization financed by the neo-liberal government.” But then again, how should you deal with critical practice as a designer? Reality is rather schizophrenic: designers conduct their self-initiated projects in a parallel world alongside their commissioned work. Choi is quite resolute about it. “It’s the opposite of an agonistic process: either you serve the client as a graphic designer, or you do your own work. I want to remain against this approach although I feel quite sympathetic about it. It assumes the otherness and a certain ethics of violence – betraying the other.” According to Choi, Metahaven is a good example where you see a certain integration of commissioned work and autonomous work. “Maybe it has to do with the context. In the Netherlands you have a general appreciation of graphic design. Even every annual report is designed.” But Choi acknowledges the difficulties that (young) designers have to deal with. “If you are a critical designer and you want to be socially and politically engaged it means you want some change. Does it mean you should refuse a commission by Coca Cola? It does not. Try it, go into the composition and dare to be antagonistic inside. Even if the commission in the end fails and the contract is broken down.“


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How is this awareness embedded in contemporary design education? Binna: “I once had a talk with David Bennewith, our designer who also teaches at Rietveld. He stated that he did not want to educate his students to be political. He would be happy enough if they can do the job properly. But what does it mean to do the job properly? You should know how to deal with various conflicting and limiting situations. How toxic is the production process? And if you print, what kind of paper do you use? How durable are materials and what is the budget of the client? Without knowing how the material and social world works your words become empty signs, you become a parrot. Yet I don’t think there is an order of learning: first you should learn social and material knowledge and then you get politicized. But the problem is that the majority of the students have no interest in political questions. Maybe it is a chicken and egg discussion: from what point do you confront them with this? Young designers should know that the world is complex and is more than this front and backside. Having your opinion, reading about what is going on in the world, that is participating. It’s about contributing to a collective intelligence and knowing that everyone has an effect. Even in our own office: if one person is in a bad or good mood it has an effect on the whole. Everybody is able to influence.” Mariette Twilt and Irina Shapiro, 9 July 2013


binna choi, irina shapiro, mariette twilt


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binna choi & all participants


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anežka minaříková with priyanka singh, larissa monteiro with phillip tretyakov


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index lecture binna choi

notes from the lecture and discussion binna choi

workshop christian nyampeta anežka minaříková and priyanka singh (pic.3); larissa monteiro and phillip tretyakov (pic.4) workshop christian nyampeta presentations and sketches with proposals from all participants

workshop 1: casco



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workshop 2: jonathan barnbrook


jonathan barnbrook

“…that’s really what designers should be doing, we shouldn’t be imposing our world on people necessarily, we have to understand the way they live.”


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jonathan barnbrook


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assignment: your design manifesto Peter Buwert:

The way it is was not always, and will not always be so. Yurrian Rozenberg:

Good design doesn’t treat you like shit. Steven Twigge:

Crop, filter, frame and compose as you may. There is no need to improve the nature of things. Arthur Dunster:

Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing. Julian Wallmeroth:

Differentiate between the process of designing and criticizing. Christian Schlager:

Contribute to the clearance of shortcomings in society without forgetting to have fun. Phillip Tretyakov:

Giving an appropiate response to the question. Selina Meurer:

Designing is more about taking out than putting in. Sylvana d’Angelo:

Design is contemplating reality. Or simply: contemplating reality. Robert Cha:

K.I.S.S.

Joe Jackson:

Design is responsibility, strive to fulfil its potential.


all participants

Ebrien Brinkman:

If we have an ability that can help people understand the world around them, that allows us to (re)create that world in new, innovative ways and yet speaks to a shared awarness – if that same ability allows us within the same design to call into question those things we take for granted and the injustices we see around us, are we not obliged to ourselves to use it to its fullest potential? To educate, challenge and record our person, our society, our hopes and dreams. Use design to it’s fullest potential. Educate, challenge and record. Eonju Shin:

I, the undersigned, am a graphic designer, a multicultural based visual communicator who has been exposed to many different cultures from traditional Asian culture to post modern western society. Often, I’ve witnessed contradictions, which could be discovered anytime, anyone related, anywhere. There are relationships between High and Low culture, history and future, analogue and digital, corporate versus independent, realistic to abstract and so on. Occasionally, they are discovered and connected, and that shouldn’t be happened in a single access. The multidisciplinary approach is inevitably needed for designers in this particular time. I propose the multiple approaches to graphic design in the common collective mind. Alejandro Crestá:

If the client is an asshole, don’t work with him/her. Never work for the money but never work for free. Never work for politicians.


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Ana Melo:

Never assume anything. Priyanka Singh:

Designers will continuously endeavor to ethically and responsibly evolve design to be socially and culturally relevant to the environment in which it survives. Martin Gnadt:

I plead, that design must work within a certain set of parameters: honesty is inevitable, the ongoing desire for originality is the motivation, the communication of content is the purpose, and the feeling that the design enhanced somebody’s life or touched his heart, is the reward. Ana Radovanović:

Follow your doubt. Julia Schmidt:

Bring empathy and conceptual thinking together to result in a good design. Janelle Aarts:

It is what it is. Federica Aruta:

I believe in simple design born from the chaos of everyday life. Mariana La Fuente:

Be aware. Be passionate about the problems you can solve. Be honest.


all participants

Larissa Monteiro:

Make a note of any interesting thought that you have, even if you are almost falling asleep. Alexandra Tkacenko:

If you can live without doing design, don’t do it. Don’t try to shock people. Just do your best. Use visualization as an instrument for a discovery. Natsumi Satoh:

Design makes people happier. Anežka Minaříková:

Don’t be afraid of the unknown, get to know the unknown. Emmy van Thiel:

We are anti-machines evolved from the restrictions we lay upon ourselves in order to create opportunities and progress. Anastasia Kubrak:

Think systems, bring awarness, create behaviours, be honest; stay fun. Alberto Matallana Espinar:

Let the others fuck your mind, so you will have great children.


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anastasia kubrak


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phillip tretyakov, larissa monteiro, anežka minaříková


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priyanka singh, christian schlager


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student ana radovanović 1 name


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joe jackson, yurr rozenberg


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workshopworkshop 2: jonathan 1: Jonathan barnbrookBarnbrook


introduction max bruinsma sylvana d’angelo, alexandra tkachenko


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discussions: examples of good design – desire paths Steven: It’s a concept called “desire paths”. You can take a good design, the park, even though it’s perfectly well made up, you can find bits everywhere where humans walked around or cut a corner. What you see here in the path, they cut through some flowers… you see it everywhere. And I think it’s good design because you’ve done something and it doesn’t work, and somebody else tries to make it better. Jonathan: That’s very nice! They’re called human desire paths, right? […] This is about designers following humans instead of humans following designers. It’s about the natural process of doing something. And it’s very interesting to see how it physically manifests itself. I think you picked up on something really interesting and very human, and that’s really what designers should be doing, we shouldn’t be imposing our world on people unnecessarily, we have to understand the way they live. on conflict Peter: To me, good design is good for society. And I think what I’m interested in is design that creates tension or conflict. And this image to me creates a bit of a conflict. There’s a sociopolitical issue there about money-lending economics

workshop 2: jonathan barnbrook

and they’re obviously trying to sell this by the man that holds money but he looks mad and there’s a bit of a tension there. You start thinking about the sociopolitical issue. Jonathan: And why is it good? Peter: Because I think it’s good for society to think more about these issues… we need a bit more conflict. Jonathan: You sound like Charles Manson! I mean I find the photo really terrifying on all levels. Peter: It’s unintentional. Jonathan: Yes, but it looks really cool in some way. But this upfront materialism, if you’re building a better society, it needs some pretty depressing… I mean I don’t think they took the photograph, these are stock images. And I love stock images because they… if you just go through a website of stock images, they are great social revealers. They’re very, very clumsy, but put human aspiration, human ideology into a very awkward, physical form. So you can tell a lot about society just by looking at stock images. I think it would work brilliantly for a record company. But I do pick up on this. It’s basically a symbol for the crisis of humanity. on the public, nondesigners, and comic sans Robert: I have this guilty pleasure for things that are designed by nondesigners. I really find it interesting


jonathan barnbrook, steven twigge, robert cha, peter buwert, alberto matallana

how they approach solutions, and it’s very entertaining as well. So everything about this is so funny cause it’s so crappy that it’s interesting. I always try to explain to people: there’s always this border to me between being crappy and being so crappy that it’s good. And it’s interesting when it goes beyond that point. Because I could never do this even if I tried to do it. Jonathan: What does that say? Do you know? Robert: No I don’t. Yurr: “There are 10 rules you have to keep to behave.” It was in front of a pub? Robert: Yeah. Jonathan: I mean maybe it’s done by a designer, I don’t know. I mean they’ve understood these notices, they’re saying something quite dictatorial but they have to look friendly. They’ve understood something about design unconsciously. And I mean they’ve used the Comic Sans. Maybe they’re very clever designers who are using irony. I know the designer from Comic Sans, he used to work at Microsoft; he doesn’t get any royalties, he would be a billionaire if he did. To me it’s a very interesting font. And we were talking earlier with Irina about them having a board where stuff they liked was on one side and stuff they didn’t like was on the other side, and Comic Sans

kept moving from side to side. And to me it’s a very interesting example about how designs are treated in the real world. No matter how much designers hate it, real people, nondesigners, still use this typeface. Because it’s friendly and it’s readable, and it puts over a message like this in a non-threatening way. It’s not beautiful, but we just have to accept sometimes what the public does. And the same with images as well. We dictate to the public, although we should lead sometimes quite ideological direction. Alberto: Is it a good design? Jonathan: Is it a good design? Um… it’s an interesting design. Robert: I don’t think it’s good design. It’s just so crappy, that the fact it’s so crappy makes it so fun. I’m interested in that, as opposed to someone who has formal training. Girl who works at the newspaper: Does it come back to the intention? Is it good or is it intentionally crappy? Is it bad trying to be good? Jonathan: That’s what I wanted to talk about. This is the level where designers contrive work. There are some areas of graphic design more appropriate for something like that. The designers taking up the dirt from the street: it’s bad; it’s good. Well we do that with language as well. Bad means good and sick means great, shit means fantastic. I spoke earlier in the lecture about the fact that


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sometimes I wish designers would leave stuff alone. I would be very happy if that stays there and it’s not replaced by a perfectly done piece of typography. Cause it improves the world, replacing this one? Actually no, cause it makes it feel like not everything’s being designed, thank Christ. For instance Pentagram redid the yellow taxi forms in New York, and I was so disappointed, because they were something beyond design, they just existed as themselves, you know, all the different drivers had a slight variation, and now it’s much more… I mean Pentagram have done a good job on it, but now it’s a little bit too uniform. Just leave some stuff alone. Very good sign to bring up. on cultural influence and the American flag Eonju: So this is from the bar right next to this place. And I thought there is much cultural context in this simple torn American flag in Breda. So first seeing an American flag in Breda is really interesting to me, because of the physical distance, it’s like 9000 kilometers or something. And then Yurr told me that it says “every last Thursday”, so people in Breda might be drinking like Americans every last Thursday or something. And then the bar is called Coyote Ugly, and the movie Coyote Ugly to me it’s like the American Dream. I don’t know exactly what their intention

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about tearing that American flag is, but that tells me something, cause um, I’m studying in the USA as an international student, so I know what the American Dream means to many other foreigners. And then seeing this flag in this country is really interesting to me. Like I said, Coyote Ugly is about the American Dream, and they tore the flag like this, where the name is written, and you still know the bar as Coyote Ugly. So I think that’s how design works in this society, often many things are contradictory, but something like this simple act is what we do as designers. Jonathan: What a fantastic explanation! I’m glad that someone else walked around this place and saw the same contradictory ideologies in there as I did. Cause I walked past it and was thinking “what the…?!”. Also It says “Catholic”… what’s this word? Leke in Dutch? Did you guys notice it when you walked past, there’s all this American-style thing over, might be the Catholic Church, a missionary or something like that. So there’s that puritanical aspect of America as well. So yes, I mean these symbols are powerful but most of the time we just absolutely take them for granted. Why do we do that? Cause it’s actually quite difficult to deal with the world. If we understood the meaning of everything, our heads would explode. So now yours almost


jonathan barnbrook, eonju shin, priyanka singh, yurr rozenberg

did, when you were thinking up an explanation for that. But I think that’s the way designers should be thinking. We understand and take meaning from the world and put it into our own work. Were you gonna say something about it? Martin: It would be interesting to know whether they tore it from the bar, or if it was somebody else. Jonathan: Yes. That’s the bizarre thing in America: you can’t deface the flag. It’s not actually about defacing the flag it’s about defacing values. Cause the flags are all made in China. Anyway, go on. Priyanka: I noticed it and I thought it was a reflection of the locals, to tear off the flag to send a sign that “you can’t impose your culture on us”. It’s very strange, such a long distance, like you said, to have something like this, and the architecture looks different, everything looks different, so I thought it was a sign of rebellion from the locals saying that “you can’t impose your culture on us”. Jonathan: What’s the film about, Coyote Ugly? Eonju: It’s about a bartender. Priyanka: It’s about a small town girl who wants to become a musician, and then she goes to New York City and realizes the realities of life there. Jonathan: It’s interesting to me that you still know what is says, even though it’s gone. Cause the phrase is so well known in English.

The signage is unbelievable. Jonathan: Yes. To me it’s also about the American influence. I mean, I used to get really upset about it when I was younger and refused to wear or listen to American music,… which is ridiculous cause America has a complex culture, with good and bad, much fantastic stuff and also bad, but here it’s so much about the idea of having a good time; that’s something perpetuated by Hollywood. And Hollywood is a propaganda machine for America. I mean you just have to look at the films that were nominated for the Oscars last year: Zero Dark Thirty and Argo. They’re both very pro-American. And I remember one of the people talking; he said “we all support the American Government.” And these, I mean most of the stereotypes, wearing Princeton t-shirts and that kind of thing … do you understand what’s happening? I’m over that now. I’m obviously not, but just… Priyanka:

good design doesn’t treat you like shit Yurr: I think you should treat people and design like you would like to be treated yourself. I think you have to do good to your environment, to the people near you, and we have to take care of each other. So I like the word “shit” cause it’s like a contrast to… don’t do that to the people.


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Maybe some people want to be treated like shit with their design. Yurr: Maybe. Jonathan: I obviously understand the sentiment. You’re saying that all designers should be human, on a human scale, and for human beings. But there’s this thing when design does go into the creative world and into art, you need some subversion or some nastiness to evolve as human beings. Unfortunately the world can’t be nice all the time. Yurr: I know. Jonathan: Yeah. Jonathan:

differentiate between the process of designing and criticizing Julian: I often find myself doing this all the time, and I think it needs to be separated. When you design you design, and afterwards you can criticize, but you shouldn’t do both at the same time. Jonathan: Is it that simple? Julian: Probably not, but it’s something that I’m trying to do. Sometimes not to have a concept and follow my feeling and afterwards to go back to it and see if it works, and if it doesn’t, just do it again. Selina: I agree. I know what you mean. When you’re too critical in the process, you don’t keep on going. Maybe it’s more of a balance question: How critical and effective you should be while doing it. There’s

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a very nice phrase, something like: “If you ask too many questions, you just stay with your questions.” Jonathan: I partially agree with you. I think it’s right that sometimes people over analyze and they don’t do. It’s what I was saying this morning about making decisions, really you just have to get on and do something occasionally. For me personally where I work it’s not so separate, it’s like increments: you think forward, you analyze it, you think forward, you analyze it, and it happens in milliseconds in your mind. So it’s not like you can’t think about why you design when you design. It might be impossible. Obviously you have to work on instinct and if you let yourself go, then you shouldn’t evaluate at every mark, but evaluate every idea you come up with, evaluate whether it’s valid. It’s a constant refining process of an idea. Selina: Maybe the question is also if we are able not to think about it. Whenever we see something, especially with visual people, we can’t just not look at it or not think about what you see. Jonathan: When you’re trying to solve a problem, you have to criticize. contribute to the clearance of shortcomings in society without forgetting to have fun Christian: I think as a designer it is more or less a must to say something about society and social issues but I think


jonathan barnbrook, yurr rozenberg, julian wallmeroth, selina meurer christian schlager, priyanka singh

that it’s still important that you have fun in the process of designing. I also think that you get a bigger audience in an ironic, humorous way than only with a teaching finger. Jonathan: I agree with your last statement, that it’s better to use humor and irony than to be dogmatic. But um, suppose somebody wrote a fantastic book, and you say, well it’s not good unless you have fun writing it. And he says, “It was a terrible process, but I got something fantastic at the end.” What would you say? Christian: I think that if you only have projects that are annoying, that forces you to only thinking and questioning yourself, then it gets frustrating. And I think there should be at least some projects that are just for fun. Jonathan: Yeah, we are obviously dealing with . . . I mean there’s this sort of push in the world to constantly enjoy ourselves all the time. Which is okay, cause we’re mortal and we only live for 70–80 years if we’re lucky, but good work doesn’t come from having fun a lot. It’s quite a difficult evolution of the soul. That’s what I’m trying to say. Christian: Yes I agree with that. Jonathan: But I agree that you shouldn’t spend all your time hating what you do. But you have to take design seriously as a creative professional. Christian: Yes, for sure.

designers will continuously endeavour to ethically and responsibly evolve design to be socially and culturally relevant to the environment in which it survives Priyanka: Now that I’m thinking about it, the metaphor that comes in mind is being like a garden, something that you have to tend to continuously and you have to keep in mind all the factors that contribute to keeping it growing. Jonathan: Does it relate to what Julian was saying earlier: first do it and then think about it? Or you’re saying it’s a constantly evolving process? Priyanka: Yes, that’s how I see design. It’s not something that can provide a one-stop solution, very quickly, and it’s gonna work forever and ever. It’s something you need to revisit, especially studying attitudes, behaviors, patterns … when you’re designing for people, there are a lot of things that come into play: sociology plays a role, ethnography plays a role, economics… I mean these things start playing a role, so I think it’s nice to keep that in mind, and then approach design. That’s why I’ve written words like “evolve” and “be relevant”, especially in the environment where it is. You draw something from it and should give something back, so it can sustain itself. It helps me eliminate. It helps me move forward.


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julian wallmeroth, anastasia kubrak


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peter buwert, natsumi satoh, federica aruta


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martin gnadt, ebrien brinkman


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index lecture jonathan barnbrook the cover for David Bowie’s album The Next Day

group discussions

poster google (mindmap) anastasia kubrak

anti-consumerism poster phillip tretyakov While sketching ideas for the poster, I have seen a lot of people searching the web for some accusations or bad information about these large companies. That was a funny thing because at the same time they were using these products. This poster is about hipocrisy, I don’t feel guilty about using products of large companies, I choose them because they are good, not because they make me buy it. So why should I lie to myself? poster nestlé larissa monteiro In this project, the students are supposed to choose a big company and with the poster they need to tell the truth to the public. I chose Nestlé and the issue about its “aggressive marketing” of breast milk substitutes (infant formula), particularly in less economically developed countries, which campaigners claim contributes to the unnecessary suffering and deaths of babies, largely among the poor. I used the painting ‘Mother’s Milk’ by Tintoretto to express my point of view. poster google anežka minaříková Our task from Jonathan Banbrook was to create a B&W poster to inform the world about the truth about one of these companies: Nike, Gap, Starbucks, Google, Nestlé, Apple. We could either cherish these companies, or show something negative. I chose Google, with focus on Google Street View. Does Google really, or Street View in particular, respect our privacy? During the creating process I’ve come across

workshop 2: jonathan barnbrook

an interesting concept by Indian writer and social media activist Sid Vaidhyanathan, called ’Googlization’: the process of being processed, rendered and represented by Google. This pushed me to go further into how Google Street View is dealing with the security of people captured by their scanning cars. Google helps to protect people’s privacy with blurred faces, but is it enough? I found tons of websites like streetviewfun.com, filled with ‘supposed to be’ amusing pictures of individuals captured mostly in embarrassing poses. These people don’t always know that the whole world is laughing at them. And in my opinion, not knowing is the key to being the victim in this system, and I want to inform society. This is the main reason I created these three posters with shoots from streetviewfun.com and real user comments below them. Together, these two components of final posters visualise the disturbing trend of voyeurism in nowadays society, supported by Google’s helping hand. poster google priyanka singh The anti-consumerist Google poster has a play on the word ’ogle’ in Google to show how it has its eyes on everything and the search bar has been strategically placed as a tape slapped across. poster nestlé christian schlager In the poster there is the manipulated Nestlé logo. The birds are depicted falling out of their nest in order to show the consequences (e.g. the pollution / harm to nature) of Nestlé’s behaviour during production, that causes the death of animals and nature in general. presentation jonathan barnbrook design manifesto terms and conditions, poster google joe jackson The idea behind the Barnbrook workshop was Google and others violating our information through us inadvertently accepting their ‘terms and conditions’. So I designed something


which could work as a pop-up for them when trying to access our information. In essence, to ‘fight back’, they must accept OUR terms and conditions. poster google yurr rozenberg Revealing the thruth about Google. Google makes us Numb. poster h&m sylvana d’angelo A tongue and cheek commentary on today’s consumerist culture comparing our shopping behaviors and a subtle dopamine high. Even todays window shopper is said to experience a high simply by indulging the fantasy of shopping. What could be the harm in a little comfort shopping? poster gogle, dead souls alexandra tkachenko Mostly, the main theme of all the projects from the workshop was connected with media and the Internet. Trying to make people think about their life through pieces of design – that was the goal for me to reach. The result appears in posters about our addiction to the internet, social networks and media. But at the same time Internet makes us feel as a commonomy, being at once so different and having completely different lifes. Sometimes we need to stop and think about it, asking ourselves what will be the future? At least that was a real question for me during my work on these projects. poster google julian wallmeroth This poster is the result of the workshop with Jonathan Barnbrook. The task was to create a poster that informs the world of the truth about a company that a lot of people deal with on a daily basis. The Amercian corporation Google Inc. was chosen. Apart from solving problems, design also has the responsibilty to reaveal problems. This poster deals with the future product Google Glass. Using their iconic logo as a substitute for their product hints at prevailing and prospective issues concerning privacy and neutrality regarding their services. The manual

destruction of the poster invites the user to think about the possibility of alternatives. poster google anastasia kubrak Unofficial slogan of Google is “Don’t be evil”. Google found a smart way to deal with censorship in countries such as China, where the internet connection fails with every request containing words such as “democracy”, “dictatorship” or “anti-Communism”. Though accepting the censorship policy in order to get a work permission, Google informs Chinese users when their search is being censored and provides a smart way to avoid it: it translates Chinese words into English. Aiming to attract attention to this issue, I made a series of posters containing requests, which Google automatically responds to. Google’s “Did you mean …” option invites to proceed to another search, which sounds alike the typed word when the original request would be misspelled. In this case democracy transforms into hypocrisy, and spring roll would sound exactly like dictatorship control. poster peter buwert With Jonathan Barnbrook I struggled to reconcile the relatively autonomous antagonistic graphic design approach with the task to communicate “truths” to the wider public in a meaningful way. poster gap natsumi satoh Chosen subject: Gap is polluting Indonesian rivers for dying clothes. Concept: Gap’s clothes made by victims in Indonesia. poster nestlé federica aruta The policy of Nestlè with a massive propaganda tries to convince the mother to abadon the traditional African breast-feeding and replace it with a bottle of milk made out of Nestlè milk powder. The problem isn’t the milk powder Nestlè produces, but this is a great problem in Africa, because bottle-feeding kills from the lack of hygiene. So this poster would show Africa’s


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situation related to this important topic. double irish with a dutch sandwich, poster martin gnadt The “Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich� is a strategy to avoid paying taxes. Basically what the companies do is: they move their generated earnings from the land where they generated it, for example Germany, to Ireland to a company that is holding intellectual property claims of the patents. The transfer of the money reduces the taxes considerably. Than they move the money to the Netherlands and back to yet another company in Ireland. They do that because the regulations for transferring the money to the Netherlands decreases the amount of taxes once again. In the end the money is transferred from Ireland to a tax-haven (in most cases: the Carribean). With this strategy some companies decrease their taxes by almost 70%. That money is missing in the countries’ tax revenues and that in a time of big financial crisis. The idea of my poster is to show the way the money is being moved within this tax-labyrinth. Because of the requirement to only use greyscale colors I came up with an confusing type-labyrinth. poster ebrien brinkman

workshop 2: jonathan barnbrook



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jan van toorn

“an image is the world where we live in and communicate.�


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jan van toorn


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staging the message strategies, method and language use

The seminar intends to offer participants theoretical and practical tools for an editorial approach of visual production. It concentrates on the diversity of means of the critical ‘journalistic’ tradition in media that works in the tension between realistic imitation and self-conscious artifice, i.e. between representation and presentation. In reaction to the virtual realism of the spectacle dominating mainstream media, which prevents a substantive use of word and image, the workshop deals with textual, visual and other practices that further more complex and argumentative forms of communication and foregrounds the constructed nature of messages in order to solicit the active interpretation of the viewer/reader. That is why the emphasis is on the potentialities and richness of the ‘reflexive’ or ‘dialogic method’, trying to recuperate the specificity of its projective and emancipatory practice. By concentrating on the editing and making process, the workshop introduces a way of working which structures the collection and editing of information in a way that establishes the basis for the staging, the mise-en-scene of content and vision to the multiple sensory tracks of the visual rhetoric.


jan van toorn

subject

To keep the substantive discussion concentrated in a short workshop like this it seems reasonable to opt for a commonly shared field of interest: the asymmetry of unilateral globalism in internet services [as signalised in the two articles included], and a division of the participants into a maximum of six groups. Each group then formulating its own subject within the given arena. assignment

Create a proposal for a project in any media – poster, book, website or short video that clearly articulates a point of view on the chosen subject within the above mentioned asymmetry. Jan van Toorn The Netherlands, 2013


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julia schmidt with valeria guevskaya and ana radovanović


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anežka minaříková with larissa monteiro and alexandra tkachenko


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anežka minaříková with larissa monteiro and alexandra tkachenko


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jan van toorn


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jura afanasjevs with peter buwert, robert cha and yurr rozenberg


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jura afanasjevs with peter buwert, robert cha and yurr rozenberg student


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discussions: on looking for things under the surface Joe: So for a written brief we got to raise awareness about information and then to show all sides of the interpretation of the information and to provoke discussion. And towards a more general approach of understanding and sympathy towards the news as well. Not just from one angle. So while doing that… you said the same thing, it would be done, but with a different meaning. Jan: And what is that same thing? Joe: Well we… um, global news. So we have to figure that out but… Mariana: To pick just some news as examples. Philip: Some Russian things that are happening right now maybe. So, we have some ideas, maybe writing something like a review for a point of view to some problem, and then maybe ask guys about a country and what’s happening there. Mariana: With the responses, maybe create a website with all those points of view. Philip: To compare. Jan: Well there’s a danger because then you have a point of view and then you have another one. So you’re only describing that there are more points of view. Once you have an opinion about that, and that’s what we’re asking, you have a problem in there. That again is what we’re asking.

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But if you see more opinions, then you get the whole thing. Jan: You hope so! Philip: I hope so. It usually works. Jan: No, no, because you only have individual things. Philip: Yes but by understanding things from other countries, from a native country, I think you can understand the real thing. I think you can do that. Joe: We want something that you can base your opinion on. Not just like: I watch BBC so I get a very British perspective on whatever is going on. So what we want to show is that it’s wrong to do that. You should have a more global, more sympathetic opinion. Jan: Why don’t we come back to my story about photographing a woman. That happens everywhere in the same way in the world nowadays, because of this taboo. So if you really wanna say something else, that’s there, then you should try to make something else. Like I showed in the pictures of the Austrian lady. Then you get somewhere. But by saying “well they do it here this way, there that way,” that’s not working. So you should qualify the alternative. Then it works. Philip: So it’s like combining the two things and having something else that’s there. Jan: It’s trying to get through to the other, that’s not so superficial. So it’s not the difference between say, Philip:


jan van toorn, joe jackson, mariana la fuente, phillip tretyakov

a Russian and a South American, that doesn’t work. It could work if you show something about a Russian that perhaps,… that shows that people are the same in the world and there are more serious things that you never see. So you should look for something under the surface, and try to visualize it. And there you have truth. Then you have meaning, do you understand? That’s not so easy… Philip: To dig deeper. Jan: Yeah, yeah. We all have experiences that you can’t find on the Internet. Not represented anywhere. And the moment you get one, and try to photograph it or whatever, that’s what the best movies, in all traditions, deal with. This conflict, they break apart within it in all arts… literature. It’s not this and that, that’s what we are living in. Joe: So one issue that can be interpreted in different ways… Jan: What issue would you like to take to criticize? Joe: Something controversial that,… I don’t know. Jan: There are many. When you say for example that all politicians are photographed in the same way. Putin is a little bit more extreme than the others but… when you see Obama running up the stairs, this kind of,… this is the stereotype of representing politicians. It could be different. This is a simple example but you can get it.

I was thinking also about the cropping technique that you mentioned as well. So you have imagery from something in the news in a certain way that you think “well this is good” or whatever, and with different headlines from different places in the news that would constitute that photo. Philip: We can compare different newspapers from different countries and how they behave with photos and headlines. Jan: I would love to see no text, because it makes it too easy. But for example when you photograph, like we were saying politicians, in unusual situations, then it’s kind of an apolitical representation. It’s not marriage or this kind: I have this photograph of Brezhnev and this other Eastern European leader, and they’re… Philip: Kissing? No? Jan: And they’re… how do you say… hunting. In the cold. And Jesus, it just shows. That is what you should be after. To expose the unofficial world—the everyday world. That’s what you should be after. You can make it yourself. So get away from this comparison, from what you expect, to what you don’t expect. So it’s the whole story of the political cartoon, the political comic visualized. It’s very similar. You can find different fields… do you understand? Write it down. Joe:


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on the artificiality of the internet Mariana: So we started questioning what is then real life. The Internet gives you facts plus reality. It’s a window for the world, but not… Jan: Exactly, yes. The problem is that the global work is artificial. The whole culture is artificial; it’s fiction. On the one side, it’s absolutely stereotypical, institutional. It keeps us away from it. So we should deal with reality also in fiction, but in a better way. That is the contrast, you see. Mariana: So it dehumanizes. People expect stories with an end on the Internet, when we researched and everything. So they expect a context. So we came up with this idea that Joe can explain. Joe: So about the artificiality of Internet: Do we rely on it too much? Is it maybe getting in the way of reality, the real world, real experiences? It will be a digital base cause we are targeting people that are maybe using the computer too much. They are relying on it too heavily. So we will have short video clips or something that will spark some kind of emotions, maybe from sport, from music… you know, all that kind of… But they wouldn’t last very long, they would maybe be 3–4 seconds, just popping out. Philip: So it’s different approaches for cropping the images. Like the most interesting thing is cropped—you

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can’t see it. So the Internet gives you only a window, where you can see only one part. Mariana: So we were thinking to have these short videos with examples. Jan: What could be the examples? Football? Philip: Not only football. Jan: There should be images of other stereotypes, like football. Go for these extremes. So I’m thinking about pornography, for example. Because it’s so directly on us, you see. What do we have more? Crime… all these terrible stereotypes. There are many more. But the idea is great. Joe: Just to show this artificiality of using the computer, maybe at the end of these images we have like… This is another idea, but we were thinking maybe to have an image of a person using a computer. So you can see he’s moving very slightly or just typing, but that won’t ever get cut, it would just keep on, so it’s another way to emphasize. Jan: As a kind of background. Joe: Yeah, just to say: this is reality. This is what you can experience. You might think the Internet is reality but this is what you’re actually doing.


jan van toorn, joe jackson, mariana la fuente, phillip tretyakov


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student joe jackson with mariana la fuente and phillip tretyakov


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arthur dunster with eonju shin and priyanka singh


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arthur dunster with eonju shin and priyanka singh


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alberto matallana with julian wallmeroth


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julia schmidt with valeria guevskaya and ana radovanović


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julia schmidt with valeria guevskaya and ana radovanović


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index

introduction lecture jan van toorn

group discussion julia schmidt, valeria guevskaya, ana radovanović, jan van toorn

series of torn-up images anežka minaříková, larissa monteiro, alexandra tkachenko Our first idea was to destroy and tear up notoriously famous pictures of men and women interacting to illustrate the effect of social networks and media on relations nowadays. The phenomenon of being ‘’together alone’’. We’re connected in social networks but still maybe more alone than ever before. As a group, we created a complex of torn-up images, and our task became for us more as an exercise and useful tool for discussion. We started with replacing women’s figures with internet layouts to illustrate trend of being online anytime and anywhere, and in contrast being offline in real life. The question remains, what’s real life? During the working process, we started to think not only about relations but also of how these before mentioned trends affect the image and role of women in the 21st century. How are young women in particular perceived in social media, advertisement, fashion or porn industry? Our final work is kind of a modern triptych depicting goddess of internet culture. Provocative, easy, beautiful, slim, submissive, cute and on the other hand fragile. We all know that that this ideal woman doesn’t exist, but we’re taught that we should look like her, act like her and be like her.

introduction lecture jan van toorn

installation jura afanasjevs, peter buwert, robert cha, yurr rozenberg Our statements, as assigned: social media influence, the online social media structure influences our actual behaviour, print/web. With Jan Van Toorn, we struggled to find the elusive dialogical image which would communicate our

workshop 3: jan van toorn

point of view through a more democratic common process. installation (work in pregress) jura afanasjevs, peter buwert, robert cha, yurr rozenberg, jan van toorn REALise, video mariana la fuente, joe jackson, phillip tretyakov The idea behind our video was to explore the artificiality of the internet and digital world. You may feel like you are really experiencing events when watching them over the internet on a computer etc, however nothing can ever be like actual reality. We emphasised this by showing an ordinary scenario of someone on their computer, and overlaid video clips of important or exciting events, yet the person remained in this ‘slump’. We then further showcased the artificiality aspect by making these video clips cut out etc. (all things that can go wrong when reliant on technology). series of posters arthur dunster, eonju shin, priyanka singh Jan van Toorn shared with us the syntax and semantics of an image in the classical or pragmatic sense. The project studies the perceived idea of freedom on the Internet ranging from utopia (desirable) to dystopia (undesirable) from an individual and generic point of view. Working in a group of three, we brought different perspectives and experiences. The framing and juxtaposition of the images, along with placement of elements from the Internet acted as windows for the viewer to be immersed in the story. installation alberto matallana, julian wallmeroth The workshop with Jan van Toorn was focused on informing people about information on the internet. The point of view that information is biased and that there should be an alternative was the foundation of the resulting work. The shown sketches and the assemblage of different images concerning the topic illustrate a starting point regarding a solution. The concept is based on the idea of the gradually increasing control and influence over information by institutions like governments and international firms. The effect on


our lives is displayed in a dramatic way to inforce the problem and the need for an alternative. humanipulation, website valeria guevskaya, ana radovanović, julia schmid Humanipulation is a project that wants to show the tension between exchanging human qualities.
You are invited to become contemplative by entering into the compositions. We as designers are used to making “pretty things” using stereotype elements in order to express our idea. Therefore, the Humanipulation project is our attempt to provide the viewer a different experience where he or she can recognize the asymmetry of the juxtaposed semantics. http://humanipulationbreda.tumblr.com/


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martijn engelbregt

“I try to make people get out of their comfort zone, and invite them to think in another way, to think about the things they find normal.�


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how to be at ease in not knowing

If you did not attend at the workshop “How to be at ease with not knowing” you probably will never know what it was like. This is a good thing. You don’t know. Creativity starts with not knowing. Not knowing is a very precious state. Nevertheless we seem to fear everything we don’t know. We do all we can to stick to things we consider normal, safe and confident. This is the trap of human people’s mankind. We judge the things we know, we judge the things we don’t know, and somewhere in this process we loose the true value of life. The road to the design-success-graveyard seems to be tiled with copy-paste procedures. How wrong can who get. Having a good look often is found in closing the eyes properly. Please read and use this shopping list for good success in designing your brave new world: shopping list for world design domination 1 a statement about stress in your own work 2 a handfull of joy 4 as much body awareness as you can carry 5 easy and comfortable clothing 6 shoes to walk on 7 something you assume I forgot 8 one very personal secret item 9 a rule in your life which you can’t deny 10 pens, pencils or chewing gums, in very

specific colors


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The old wise man from China, Lao Tse told us: “be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. when you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.� Martijn Engelbregt The Netherlands, 2013


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discussions: about art versus design Luisa: I have a question about Art and Placebo art project. I know it’s very difficult to judge what is art and what is not art, what is health and what is not health… So how trustworthy do you think the results are that you got? Martijn: Well the interesting thing is that, I think we had 60 or 70 works, and we knew whether the maker calls them art or not. And people saw them and had to decide if they were art or not, and they came really close to what the maker thought. So, in that way, it’s not so tricky at all. Alex: But was this an art project? Martijn: Yes. Art, science and… Alex: Yes, cause then even the placebo becomes art, in the whole context. Martijn: Yeah, we also did research on how people felt before the project, during the project, and after the project. People felt more at ease during the project and really surprised that they were on another level, and asked to think about what was on the wall and what was going on. So a lot of patients came to our laboratory again and again, because they liked so much to have this other stress layer in the hospital. For me, it’s very important to do this specifically in healthcare, we make things more and more direct and easy, and every minute is being counted in money and time.

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At the same time, communication between people, some awareness is getting less and less. So I think it’s important to have time plus money for other layers, because in hospitals people are only dealing with their illness, not dealing with their health. Actually, that’s what most of us don’t do. When you feel ok, you don’t worry, you don’t think about it. We only start thinking about our health when it’s not good. And when you have an illness you want to become the same as you were before as soon as possible, and because you don’t know how to get there by yourself, you start asking for help from the people around you. But specialists don’t always know what to do, because they just try to give an answer to your question: “Can you make me as soon as possible like I was before?” design chameleon Alex: Martijn, it feels like you’re going undercover with your skills in graphic design. You can create questions… So as a graphic designer you can be like a chameleon, you can change the way you approach it. Do you know what I mean? Martijn: Yes. Alex: Do you have any thoughts about that? Martijn: Yeah, yeah, I have many thoughts about that. Because in one way it’s also… it’s faking all


martijn engelbregt, alex gustavson, luísa vieira

the time. And for me faking is not directly a positive word. And in a way you make fun of people also. But at the same time, I make people aware of what these graphic design skills can do, how easy it is to trust a form. So I also show people how they can become more aware of the value they give to these kinds of forms and designs. Um, basically I think it’s just about offering an alternative system; this system looks a lot like the system we’re used to, but just a little bit different. And this little difference, you can be angry at it or you can laugh about it or you can be very neutral to it. But I try to make people get out of their comfort zone, and invite them to think in another way, to think about the things they find normal. And it’s nice that… well yesterday people were asking me how did I get this institute into my project. And I said, well just by inventing it. And by inventing this institute, I was able to get other institutes to help me. So it’s very strange how it works with all these king of rules in our head: “You can trust him because he has an institute besides him.” Alex: So it seems that you can hide between the graphics and gain entrance to other areas that you couldn’t enter otherwise. Martijn: Yes—being aware of our audience and communicating. Steven: If you weren’t a graphic

designer or an artist, would you be a philosopher or a psychologist? Martijn: Well when I wanted to go to art school, I was not sure that I would be accepted. And my father didn’t want me to go abroad for a year, so he said “you have to study! And in case you will not be accepted to art school, you will have to find something else.” I didn’t know what to do so I did a lot of tests about what to become. And finally the result was that I had to go study “Cultural Anthropologies of Non-Western Cultures”. But then I was accepted so I don’t know. But still… I think that my work, it’s altogether about the connection of the individual versus the group and the other way around. So what kind of responsibilities do we have, do I have towards you and you have towards me. Because everybody is an individual and part of many different groups and sometimes we have a lot of different hats to choose from. So when you’re with your parents, you’re obviously different than when you go to the train station and buy a ticket, when you go with your friends to a disco, or when you go talk to the police after you’ve passed a red light. So every time you make choices on how to behave, every time you’re aware of how other people make choices on how to behave. And it’s really like… here today we had how many levels? We have me, we have people


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that are organizing the workshop, they’re also part of a team, we have everybody here, we have people helping the organizers… So there are all these different layers already in this small group of people. And also we’re trained to deal with this. So the way you communicate, if you become aware of it, I think it’s what you [Alex] were also mentioning, in graphic design. You want to be aware of your audience, of what they know and what they don’t know, so you can be somewhere in the middle. If you do something they know, nobody’s gonna see it at all, but if you do something they don’t know at all, they will not see it either because they’re gonna think it’s not for them. They just try to avoid it. So in order to communicate, first we have to get attention. It has to be common and uncommon at the same time. And especially if you want to change how people behave, and you want people to get in a certain position and they don’t know how to behave, this is very difficult. As soon as I ask you to do something, you try to think about the history and how people have dealt with this situation. So maybe in the history of the situation something happened that you don’t like, so you will probably do the opposite. If I ask you to raise your hands [everybody raises hands]… So if you just do what other people do because they do it, it can also be

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very uncomfortable. Because you just do it because other people do it and you might feel like you mistrust yourself; you do something that you don’t want to do. So it’s very important to always stick to yourself and know where you are. You have to be aware of what happens when I ask a question, it’s not that important if you do it or not, but what happens inside you.


martijn engelbregt, alex gustavson, luĂ­sa vieira


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sylvana d’angelo with federica ricci and natsumi satoh


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sylvana d’angelo with federica ricci and natsumi satoh


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federica aruta with emmy van thiel and thomas bevelander student


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dictionary

A small dictionary on how to be at ease with the unknown based on a three day workshop by Martijn Engelbregt. raar That’s the first word Martijn Engelbrecht said as a kid. Raar means strange. Everything around him was raar. As a starter he showed his projects, explained his ways of thinking and – most importantly – reactions from the audience. Martijn’s work is really inspirational – especially in relation to Commonomy – because it stays so close to the audience. Their reactions and participations make a big part of the work. Then he showed us pictures of dead animals on the streets. birds, mice, a cat, a snake and more. Raar. Thereafter we were having lunch. Very raar. books Martijn took with him books that make you think. Sources, material and inspiration he wanted to share with us. tao te ching One page for everybody. A gift from Martijn. Some nice wisdom to think about during the workshop (and afterwards) and to include it in your project(s) if you like.

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(un)comfortable Getting comfortable while not really being comfortable. We did little exercises to put ourselves and others in unknown, uncomfortable positions. Sounds raar, doesn’t it? Well actually it isn’t. It’s one big lesson we got out of the workshop. This is directly related to… (un)known “The less you know the more you know.” And this is actually quite true if you really think about it. The trick is not to be afraid of the unknown so you won’t block yourself and stay open for all possible forms of inspiration during your design process. a mint Take it and let it melt in your mouth. During this melting process you try to avoid thinking. Every time a thought crosses your mind you put a dot an a sheet of paper and count them afterwards by connecting them. 67 dots for me in total – “I have to make a dot now” – “oh no, I’m just thinking about having to make a dot” – “oh no, now I’m thinking again” – “That makes 4” – “…” – “…” – “…” lotus This was one of our yoga exercises. We did it as a group, standing in a


emmy van thiel

circle with both feet on the ground. We started every day with a couple of those exercises to wake up our bodies – to prepare ourselves for the day and to be comfortable to face the unknown.

talking for 30 minutes you’ll end up telling a lot of personal things, points of view towards design, and you get to know each other quite good in a short period of time. That’s a good starter for a collaboration.

ease A beautiful word with even more beautiful translations. Some translations according to the dictionary: 1. freedom from labor, pain, or physical annoyance 2. freedom from concern, anxiety, or solicitude 3. freedom from difficulty or great effort 4. freedom from financial need 5. freedom from stiffness, constraint, or formality Next to the woman’s voice in the meditation-session we did, it’s also a word Martijn used quite often. Getting at ease with the unknown to open up yourself for inspiration. That’s what this workshop was about. That’s what we did.

guide That’s the keyword of the final project I did together with Thomas and Federica. As said, each of us had to talk for 30 minutes – non stop. During our 30 minute talk and – walk, the ‘talker’ was not allowed to chose which direction the trio took, the other two decided this. In the meanwhile the ‘guiders’ decided on one word to summarize the quite personal story of the ‘talker’. Back in ‘het huis voor beeldcultuur’ each talker held up a marker above his/her head, while the other two wrote the word by moving the surface (paper). The end result was some nice typography, which you will never be able to do while you are in control of the writing yourself. This is a reflection on the 30 minute walk and – talk. The holder of the pen then explained why he/she thought the word suited him/her. That’s a surprising way of self reflection and a good exercise to get at ease with the unknown.

30 minutes of talking While walking. Walking around in Breda for 2 hours in total. In groups of 3 we walked and talked, Thomas and Federica were my group members. Each and every one of us talked for 30 minutes – non stop – without being interrupted by the others. If you have to keep on

happy food Together, outside in the Reigerstraat, a nice small and old street in Breda, in front of ‘het huis voor beeldcultuur’. Three big tables put together filled with


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all the ingredients you need for a good lunch. A lunch in direct contact with the community, with Breda.

to make direct contact to the ground and to be able to creep like a cat if you wish to.

a pink wire That was my gift to everybody. They had to be transformed into a bracelet and worn – at least – up until the end of the workshop. It is a bracelet to avoid stress, because stress does not exist until you create it yourself. So it is a bracelet with a task. The task was to avoid negative thinking – which, in my opinion causes stress – by putting the bracelet on the other wrist with every negative thought that pops up in your mind. And of course the real task is to change it as less often as possible and to be honest with yourself. Only then it truly works.

sacks Of laptops and smartphones. In the middle of the table. It makes a funny sight and it’s just so good to avoid them for a day. To really breathe, live and work at the place where you are, the here and now – to, again, open up your mind for creative thinking.

item A very secret and personal one. Each and everyone of us brought one. Told about it and shared it with the rest of the group. In order to be honest and open. By sharing such a personal thing we where able to get to know each other so well in only three days. Sorry, I am not going to share them with you now. €50,- for your shoes That’s what the sign said – exactly on the place where our shoes once were – next to the entrance. How is it possible? Well, we weren’t wearing shoes during the workshop, so good

dancing On Blondee – Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit. Music which reminds me of the workshop. Martijn played it a lot and we danced to relax. heaps of fun That’s my three word description of the workshop. Fun because of the assignments, fun because of the plays people did, fun because everybody felt completely at ease with the world around him/her, fun because we had a great time. the message If you are at ease with the unknown, at ease with things around you and fully relaxed, you open up yourself for inspiration and for creativity. At the end you help yourself and your creative process. Emmy van Thiel The Netherlands, Breda 27 August 2013


emmy van thiel


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oana clițan with selina meurer, christian schlager and steven twigge


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oana clițan with selina meurer, christian schlager and steven twigge student


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alex gustavson with luĂ­sa vieira and jurgen wiegeraad


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presentation small assignment during the workshop presentation one of the assignments during the workshop: the participants had to put others in situations of ‘not knowing‘. presentation, placebos for art martijn engelbregt presentations sylvana d’angelo, federica ricci, natsumi satoh Pushing boundaries is a personal experience that can lead to a wonderful creative break through. The trick is to engage the audience as well as challenge yourself. By assembling 3 dimensional paper works made from nude images of myself, taken by myself on my cell phone, I confronted the un-comfortable reality behind sexualizing myself. After a night in a public space I found the boxes still where I had left them leaving me to further explore how to engage an honest public reaction.

lecture, bouncing ballpit martijn engelbregt

performance federica aruta, emmy van thiel, thomas bevelander workshop, quality time collective oana clițan, selina meurer, christian schlager, steven twigge Inspired by Martijn Engelbregt’s work and the workshop’s theme ‘How to be at ease with not knowing’, our group started thinking about the role of technology and smart phones in our lives: the constant need to check your messages, the stress when your battery is running low. So the question arose: how to give people the chance to have a few minutes of quality time and relaxation, by themselves or

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with others, without worrying about phone calls, incoming emails, WhatsApp conversations. We came up with the concept of the Quality Time Collective, which gives people the opportunity to have a few minutes of (dis)connection. A stand was set up in front of the House of Visual Culture in Breda, we we created an identity for ourselves with a logo (but no uniforms) and some posters as advertisement and the team set out on the street and invited people to have a free cup of coffee, water, lemonade or cookies. They had to fill in a form and choose what they wanted to drink or eat, if they wanted to have lunch alone or have a conversation with someone, they could also get a photo as a postcard! But there was one catch: they had to hand in their mobile phones for the duration of the quality time session, in order to not be disturbed and have a moment truly for themselves. In the short time the stand was outside, we had quite a few people that were eager to renounce to their phones and have a casual conversation with a stranger over a cup of coffee. Already with the first visitor, Steven was managing three WhatsApp conversations! Of course, much more passers-by telling that ‘I don’t have time for quality time!’, but overall, we considered it a very successful first step, that could function in very different settings. forms, quality time collective oana clițan, selina meurer, christian schlager, steven twigge performance goldfish alex gustavson, luísa vieira, jurgen wiegeraad Trying to be at ease with the uncomfortable or awckward situations pushed Alex, Jurgen and me to perform on stage. We made a presentation about this little thing called “Goldfish” and how it helps you to stay in the moment. Goldfish consists of a set of helmets and a downloadable mobile app that manipulates your perception of time; once it is on, it will repeat the last 10 seconds until someone orders it to stop. It seems to be useful for work-outs, production lines and people with concentration problems. Upgrades will include alternate-future sequence and antianti-matter catalyst. It was tons of fun!


group talk on written materials martijn engelbregt Overview of the books Martijn brought for the workshop


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workshop 5: petr van blokland


petr van blokland

“handling this time management is crucial for designers, if you never did it, then you will always run out of time.�


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petr van blokland


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petr van blokland and participants


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student


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petr van blokland and all participants


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anežka minaříková, eonju shin


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presentation petr van blokland

design game petr van blokland explaining the score.

design game yurr rozenberg working on an assignment

design game one of the assignments

typecooker sketches

typecooker anežka minaříková, sketches

typecooker eonju shin, sketches

presentation, sketches petr van blokland

workshop 5: petr van blokland



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daniel gross, joris maltha

“you are never quite alone or autonomous in the choices you make. there are always others like you.�


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joris maltha


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daniel gross, joris maltha

autonomy (you are not alone)

In city centre of Arnhem – where we have our studio – there is only one Mc Donalds Restaurant. If you buy a medium milkshake (maybe you feel like vanilla flavour today) and drink it on your way to the station, you will have finished it at about three quarters of the way. What to do with your cup? You dispose of it in the nearest trash can. When you get near to the next trash can you notice it is already quite full. As you squeeze your empty cup through the opening, you realise that it is full of medium sized Mc Donalds cups. You are not alone. You are never quite alone or autonomous in the choices you make. There are always others like you. People who wear the same brand or like the same music. People who attend the same school And wear the same brand And like the same music. But don’t you have your private thoughts? Your secrets? Your own DNA? In our workshop we will sorted it out once and for all. Working in teams of two, the participants were asked to organise the entire group in two ways: Showing why they are exactly the same / Showing why they are completely un-alike. Each team will presented two posters showing these organisation principles. Daniel Gross, Joris Maltha The Netherlands, 2013


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joris maltha


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federica aruta with joe jackson


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federica aruta with joe jackson student


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robert cha with steven twigge


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robert cha with steven twigge student


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lera guievskaya with julia schmidt student


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daniel gross with joris maltha


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larissa monteiro with phillip tretyakov peter buwert with mariana la fuente


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peter buwert with mariana la fuente student


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emeline brulĂŠ with alexandra tkachenko


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sylvana d’angelo with logan kelly


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natsumi satoh with mariette twilt


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natsumi satoh & mariette twilt student


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introduction lecture joris maltha, daniel gross

group guidance joris maltha guiding the participants for the project of joe jackson and federica ricci group performance photo joe jackson, federica ricci The concept behind the Catalogtree posters was that as designers we could be classified as the same, yet there are so many different avenues we will individually go down. Hence; ‘we are the same’ = Open Set 2013 bags over our heads to symbolise that, and ‘we are not the same’ = bags off to reveal personal identity as well as changes in position after we asked the question ‘who is the better designer’ (if you thought you were better than the designer next to you, you would move a square away) group performance photo steven twigge, robert cha As a group of individuals we all have our own health fingerprint. These can be based on a common set of parameters or variables. As individuals within a group these parameters can provide a shared connection.The initial ordering of the individual images has been done by destinctive sex (F/M) and then sorted within that category by number of common items. Within the category the images are then sorted by year of birth. Once the individual profiles had been identified, the common sequencing began. Starting off as a linear group sorted by year of birth. Then a common line of shared issues was created with singular issues on both ends. Finally, a group was formed based on further inquiry among the participants to find the most common health issue. This resulted in two major network groups with more separate individuals connected at the fringes. posters lera guievskaya, julia schmidt We wanted to approach the question by showing the social behavior of the group: What happens if a group arranges itself. And what

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happens if the group is arranged by us. So we didn’t show the group as individuals and found out what they have in common, but showed the group as a mass, as an artistic set-up of our experiment. For this we marked the floor with two different-sized squares and created a set of rules as a programme that is able to compare and demonstrate the differences. The Rules: Code 1 – Self Organize: 1. Come together within the bigger square. 2. Feel free to bring drinks or snacks. We want you to stay together inside the square for about 10 minutes. 3. If the picture is done, please stay, enjoy your coffee, have a conversation, whatever! But don’t cross the lines of the bigger square! Also don’t put something down outside the lines of the bigger square. 4. Enjoy your break until we ask you to do something. Code 2 – Delegate: 1. Arrange yourself in order of your height in the smaller square. 2. Look directly into the camera. 3. Don’t talk. Don’t laugh. 4. Stay until we thank you. lecture daniel gross, joris maltha posters presentation phillip tretyakov, larissa monteiro To organize the data of 16 participants we made some questionnaires with random and at the same time, personal questions to get more information from them. So with that, we created a system of hierarchy to organize all the data. posters peter buwert, mariana la fuente Working with Mariana on the Catalogtree workshop, the success of our project was in finding a way to tell two completely different stories by showing different angles on the same image. posters emeline brulé, alexandra tkachenko The goal of this workshop was to organise our group of students in two posters. One of them showing why we are completely the same, the other why we are completely unalike. We all came from different backgrounds and places to join this workshop, around the same proposal.


Aiming to represent those spatial links, we decided to map orientation and distance— distance influencing the angle of each participant shot. poster sylvana d’angelo & logan kelly baloon project mariette twilte, natsumi satoh That we are all different is quite visual: just look at our faces, clothes or behavior. But how to show that deep inside we all are programmed the same? Getting into this Catalogtree assignment was a bit like solving a rubik’s cube: once you fix one side you mess up the other. After some conceptual struggles we realized we should give everyone an individual task. Something that people would handle all different but results in the same thing. And what is more fun than blowing up balloons and smash them... It appears that it’s simply impossible to smash a balloon with your eyes open. We haven proven it: deep inside we are just herd animals, following our basic instinct.


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open set conference


marleen stikker

“we have to redefine economy, we have to rethink the concept of sharing.�


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vlad butucariu, irina shapiro

open set conference

The summer school was closed on 31 August with a short conference aiming to touch on aspects of the theme that were not covered during the workshops and to offer an environment for debate between the three guest lecturers and the audience, all moderated by design critic Max Bruinsma. The opening lecture of the Open Set Conference was given by a graphic designer and head of the design department of the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam Annelys de Vet. The audience, made up of not just participants but also the broad public, assisted in bringing forth a meticulous selection of definitions and examples of autonomy. Seen as one of the core ingredients of the theme, De Vet’s analysis gave a sense of completion to the spectrum of ideas. The second lecture by president and co-founder of Waag Society Marleen Stikker emphasized the importance of redefining the current economy and rethinking the concept of sharing. Her key assertion was that while the concept of open source is becoming more and more popular, there are many fields besides technology that should appropriate the same principles. During the last day conference a writer and psychogeographer Wilfried Hou Je Bek shared the principles of his work and how some behaviors can be predicted based on the study of patterns. These principles can be appropriated by designers as well and used in the development of projects that serve or involve the public.


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annelys de vet


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marleen stikker


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wilfried hou je bek, max bruinsma, annelys de vet, marleen stikker


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open set final review


max bruinsma, dennis elbers, annelys de vet


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lecture marleen stikker

lecture annelys de vet

debates moderated  by max bruinsma final presentation feedback – max bruinsma, dennis elbers and annelys de vet

open set conference



open set 2013 graphic design summer school catalogue commonomy colophon content editors Vlad Butucariu and Irina Shapiro designers Irina Shapiro with Oana Clitan and Adrian Borderie preface copyeditor Janine Armin open set partners Graphic Design Festival Breda Huis Voor Beeld Cultuur Stimuleringsfonds Voor de Creatieve Industrie Slanted Magazine

We would like to thank to all people involved in the project for supporting and making Open Set 2013 come to life: Max Bruinsma, Dennis Elbers, Simone Dresens, Laetitia Beurel, Adrian Borderie, Oana Clitan, Sofia Evans, Emmy van Thiel, Luisa Vieira. Copyright Š 2013 Studio Squash. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any form. contact www.openset.nl apply@openset.nl



open set 216

19.08 – 31.08.2013

dutch graphic design summer school catalogue


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