Flamboyant and intelligent design is the order of the day with this Leipzig Art Academy System Design student who displays a highly impressive competence across editorial, poster and book design.
How would you describe your practice?
I'm a graphic designer (currently still a student) and work on my own projects, as well as commissioned work. My clients are often friends or friends of friends. Leipzig is small like that and because the graphic design department is the only design department at the Art Academy, where I study, I mostly work with artists.
At the moment my ‘strategy’ (if you could call it that) is to get as many jobs as possible, to learn as quickly as possible, as much as possible. I like to work on a couple of projects simultaneously and jump back and forth between them. This way if I get stuck on one, I can switch to the other and come back later with an open mind. I like to approach tasks intuitively and am a firm believer that the first idea is the best.
You study on the System Design course in Leipzig, could you tell us something of what this course is like?
The System Design class is one of four specialised classes of the graphic design department at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. The others are illustration, type design and typography. While illustration and type design really focus on one specific area of graphic design, the two other classes go about it in a more general way. Of course it depends on who is teaching the class too. At the Academy of Visual Arts we still have this old tradition of a German Academy: after two years of basic studies (more interdisciplinary), you then have only one teacher for the next three to four years until you get your degree.
The name of the System Design class came from Ruedi Baur. It is a bit misleading because it used to mean the design of sign systems, but the class has been re-interpreted since then by different professors.
From 2011 to 2014 I had Oliver Klimpel as a professor and during this time we did a mixture of commissioned work and hybrid projects, which demanded a more artistic point of view (for example, exhibitions). Everything is very content driven here; we have no courses on editorial design or advertising or typography. Instead our topics have titles like ‘Alternate Futures’ or ‘The Visual Event’. Now the Dutch designer Maureen Mooren is my professor, so things are different again but still very inspiring.
Tell us about a professional project you've worked on.
In 2012, I co-designed the catalogue of the project Kunststudentinnen und Kunststudenten stellen aus, with three other friends (Lysanne Bellemare, Ann Richter and Daniel Wittner). The design of the catalogue was for a country-wide competition that is announced every two years: each of the twenty-four German art schools send two students (their ‘best’) to take part in an exhibition at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, with the possibility to win a few prizes. The catalogue is distributed to gallerists, to give them an overview of interesting, upcoming young artists.
The catalogues from prior years did exactly that. Instead of doing the same, we asked ourselves: what should a book, or can a book do, in order to have some long term added value. Its purpose shouldn’t just be to depict pieces of art – a website can do this just as well (if not even better) – nor to fulfil the ‘book as an object’ fetish.
It was our goal to represent all German art schools (not only the selected artists), as well as give insights on being an artist, or what it means to teach art. We made informational graphics about the twenty-four art schools (in the style of old atlases) and designed collages of quotes from funny or philosophical (or both) texts on the topic of ‘being an artist’. We were also interested in where the artists were from and which architectural style the buildings have where these artists were studying and what this might have to say about their art.
You help to design a magazine called Edit; is publishing design where you see yourself working in the future?
Definitely. Since 2014 I have been the designer of Edit, a magazine of young literature, alongside David Voss. It’s great fun developing a concept for a magazine, as it stays in effect for some time but also allows you the liberty to adapt it to the special mood of each issue. I also increasingly enjoy finding artists to feature in each issue, making sure their style suits the content of that particular edition. Book design is very big in Leipzig, this is an influence I can’t forget.
What are you working on now and what's next?
I finished the design of the current issue of Edit two weeks ago. I have also recently designed the visual identity for an artist exchange between Marseille and Leipzig, called Venice Beach Galaxy X Gold. Right now I’m working on a practical project for my diploma. I’ve already written my thesis on idleness in the films of Jean-Luc Godard and now I’m developing my research on the topic for a design project. After I complete my diploma in July, I have plans to start my own graphic design business with a good friend.
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