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The last project of my journey: A book.

Together with Kasper-Florio and Bänziger Hug, two great Swiss design studios, we succeeded in making a book in one week! The book tells the story of the Swiss attitude. It is about the rules, the precision, the grid, the abstraction, the restriction and also about breaking all of them.

I also want to thank Bureau Collective for the amusing times and their creative input!

Now I’ll be working on my end project by making another book and some more projects. I’ll post the updates and results here soon!

A short first post about the next place I’m going to work.

Kasper and Florio are the people from the studio where I will work this week. Together we will do a Swiss-related project. I already met them today and we talked about the famous Swiss style. From this conversation an idea has arisen.
By chance I also met Bureau Collective because their studio is located just across the hallway!

Later this week I’m also meeting the designer and programmer from Bänziger Hug.

Warsaw is a great city! A lot of things are going on here. I discovered very fascinating things about the Polish people and culture in Warsaw but of course also plenty about the graphic design.

Polish graphic designers have a lot of graphic cultural heritage, like poster designs but also typography. And I felt that the graphic designers that I met have a strong position towards this heritage. Some of them are tired of those old designs and others are getting inspired by those designs.

This summary is the basis for the poster project I did with Noviki. We put this kind of contrast into the poster. We were also inspired by the Polish movie heritage and added some elements from it to the poster.
The project isn’t just a poster, it’s more than that. It is a combination of three posters. The first one is a moving poster. Inside the poster you can see the story we want to tell. The second one is a printed poster and the third one is a poster that you can download. The posters aren’t really meant to stand as a single poster, they can though, but they need each other to tell the full story. This is a thing that ‘the streets told us’ as you can see here. This whole project is maybe a way of showing that they are thinking a lot about their heritage.

Download

You can also see the poster with sound here: Vimeo

The other project I did in Warsaw was with Powazne Studio.
The first time we met, we talked a lot about typography and the city. And there is a lot to tell about those subjects! Warsaw is a city that isn’t really structured well. You can easily get lost while looking for a museum.

For example: try to look for the start and the end of Pańska:

Another thing that you see a lot in the streets are that really nice, poor Polish typography. You can see plenty of examples of it here.

Those two ‘problematics’ are used in the project in the form of a website. Visit it and enjoy getting lost in Warsaw while trying to see the nice typography!

↠ TripInWarsaw

Warszawa or Warsaw, the capital of Poland and a really interesting city with a lot of graphic designers.

The Polish design scene is still relatively young and you can clearly distinguish each generation. — Edgar Bak, Warsaw, Poland

Today I met Marcin and Kate from Noviki. They showed me their work and told me interesting stories about the Polish Graphic Design. For example how there has been a really strong poster design culture that can best be seen in the designs of Henryk Tomaszewski or why it has been evolving into the kind of movement it is right now.

Tomorrow morning we will be talking about a project that we will do this week and to get more into the Polish Graphic Design, by coincidence there is an exhibition about Henryk Tomaszewski at Zacheta Gallery, we will be visiting!

Later this week I’m planning to meet the people of Powazne Studio.

This week was a really, really interesting week. I didn’t know a lot about Copenhagen or Denmark and the Danish people. Nor did I have any idea about Danish Graphic Design. But I met some nice graphic designers here and they told me a lot about the Danish graphic design scene. You will read it all in the book that I will make but for now I can tell you about the projects I did in Copenhagen.

The first graphic designer I did a project with was Jeppe Pendrup. I asked Jeppe what was typical Danish Graphic Design or perhaps if there was something that was quite specific for Denmark. He couldn’t give me a straightforward answer and maybe it isn’t possible. But a thing that came back a lot was the product and furniture design. So, that was the start of something. We tried to find a bridge between the famous and iconic design from Denmark and the not typical Danish graphic design. After that Jeppe told me that they were influenced a lot by other cultures, like the Dutch or Swiss style. To combine all that, we put all the elements of the story together and made a quite interesting but strange poster:

The second project I did was with Eller Med A, two women who also really couldn’t point me to the typical Danish style elements except for the focus on the details and the minimalism. So what is more minimal than paper? We tried to see what the paper as material is telling us:

Another week, another place.
After a week doing some research and initiating two projects in Leipzig, I went to Berlin for two days. But within those two days, I tried to get the maximum out of it. The first day was a walking day. I looked for posters and other graphic design in the streets. What was remarkable was that typography was quite prominent. Even the less designed posters were quite good and neat.

The second day I went to some bookshops and met Thomas Le Bas, a graphic designer from New Zealand, living in Berlin.

After this short visit to Berlin, I left for Copenhagen, where I am now.

So this week I will do some research about design in Denmark with Eller Med A and Jeppe Pendrup Jorgensen. I already visited the city and I think it will be very interesting. I’ll keep you updated.

After a week enjoying Leipzig a lot, these are the things I did.

First, Leipzig is great! It has everything you need. It is a big city but it is not overcrowded. You feel that the city is alive. It is looking for new things without forgetting its past.

About the project:

1. “A walk through a library” — When I met David Voss I asked him to try to stylize the German design. Together we thought about a project which could show that in some way. To make some results, we needed material. And what is the best way to discover some (local) culture: walk around in a library (of the HGB Leipzig) and look for material. We took pictures of what we found with a smartphone. After that, we printed the pictures and tried to look for something specific, maybe something representative for the German or Leipziger design. With this selection, compositions on spreads were made. Those spreads were photographed again with the smartphone. After that, we printed those spreads and we decided on the composition of the book in order to tell our story. Finally, we printed the book/zine twice.

2. “T-shirts” — Project with Laetitia Gorsy. On an evening this week, I met Laetitia, a French girl, living in Leipzig. I was wondering why she wanted to leave France and live here. She told me her story and that gave us the idea to make something out of it:
The t-shirts are meant to be like the connection when people meet. We each made one t-shirt and together we made the third. The t-shirts can be swapped around, giving another result and that is the same when people meet.

After a week in busy Frankfurt, I arrived in Leipzig, a quite easygoing city at first sight. I like it!

(<-click on it, it’s a gif)

This week I will work with David Voss, born and raised in Leipzig. Together we will try to find some of the German cultural heritage in Graphic Design.

Later today, I will meet Laetitia Gorsy, a French graphic designer living in Leipzig. Very curious what we can do together and what she can tell me about the differences between German and French Graphic Design.

It was a very interesting and mainly a really inspirational week in Frankfurt.
I met the wonderful Alexander Lis and the Designbüro Frankfurt (which includes Tim Heiler and Katja Baumann). They are just great people and very focused and structured.

Together we made this poster, which includes the following line that explains all:
“The answer is 42. Or 1.5 and 1.6. And about structured thinking and decisions.
It is a collaboration between The Graphic Nomad and Designbüro Frankfurt”

It will be printed in gold, in A0 format.

The other things I did in Frankfurt you can see on the Images page: here

Alex, Tim and Katja, thank you very much for this week and for the meat! Hope to see you really soon!

Hi Frankfurt!

Yesterday evening I arrived in Frankfurt. And today I’m meeting Alexander Lis from Designbüro Frankfurt. Very curious what I will or could do in this big city.

What a week! I love ‘Den Haag’! What a wonderful city and lovable people.

Since Today, Jonathan and Gwenda are two amazing people. They are also very interesting graphic designers with a nice poetic vision and a lot of creative ideas. Thank you so much for the week!

Together we made the social (interaction) tool ‘Where we meet’. The concept is to make a sort of graphic story based on the cards. In that way you can get to know new people in a very short time. This card set was silkscreened at the Grafische Werkplaats. And also thank you Koos Breen for the film! Here are some photos. If you want a set, don’t hesitate to contact me!

On Thursday I was invited to the app release of Perloo, a ‘game’ developed by Perceptor, another design studio based in The Hague. On the release there was a performance of the people who made the soundtrack Ella Empress & The Layers of Reality, some nice ‘experimental’ music, which is also a reason to download the app.

The Hague, thank you very much! And also you…

Jonathan from Since Today installed a Livestream so you can see how the conceptual project we are working on evolves. More on the project later.

Since yesterday I’ve been working with Jonathan and Gwenda of Since Today.

Yesterday I gave a guest lecture at KABK.
This was the assignment I gave them:
1. Search for graphic design(ers) of your culture in books in the library
2. Find some style elements that are typical in your graphic culture
3. Find a way to present the style elements you found in a short (1-2min) video
4. Upload on Youtube

The reason why they need to make a video of it is to make a vision for vi.sions.tv, a project Jonathan is doing.

And today we are collaborating to make a silkscreened project. And of course doing some work for the studio as I promised!

The results after one week of work:

I collaborated with the two ladies of Team Thursday and together we made 10 recto-verso risographs. The concept of this project is based on style elements of the Dutch and the Belgian design. Team Thursday made a list with elements they saw as typical Belgian and I made one which described the typical Dutch elements. Afterwards we swapped the lists and made a design based on those lists. These are the results:

At Studio Joran Koster I used another ‘printing technique’. For his project Ideas of Jugaad, I made pamphlets which were laser-cut on fruit crates. The aim of those pamphlets is to let people know that there is also a possibility of Jugaad in Rotterdam. Therefore I used clichés to attract the attention of the Dutch people so they would read the message and would go to the website to find out what Jugaad is about:

Today I’m having fun with Team Thursday!

We are designing ‘something’ that clears out the cultural differences between The Netherlands and Belgium.

In Rotterdam I will do a project with those three ‘ingredients’:

– Typical expressions of Rotterdam

– The modern architecture you see when walking through the city streets

– The idea(s) of Jugaad (including laser cutting thanks to: Stadslab Rotterdam)

Studio Joran Koster is located at a place called ‘De Blaak’. This very large street is located near the Willem de Kooning Academy. But the place is best known for the Cube Houses.
As a fan of the cube and lines I really like it here. 🙂

The Cube Houses

Cube houses (Dutch: Kubuswoningen) are a set of innovative houses built in Rotterdam and Helmond in the Netherlands, designed by architect Piet Blom and based on the concept of “living as an urban roof”: high density housing with sufficient space on the ground level. Blom tilted the cube of a conventional house 45 degrees, and rested it upon a hexagon-shaped pylon. His design represents a village within a city, where each house represents a tree, and all the houses together, a forest.
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

And thanks to Non Arkaraprasertkul we can have a look at the interior of those houses:

Second stop in this nomadic journey: Joran Koster

Planning of this week: Jugaad

Together with Benoît Bodhuin, I paid tribute to Pierre Faucheux, a French typographer and graphic designer who created several works and also did ‘l’écartelage’.

We were inspired by his design and made our own interpretation of it. We also incorporated the French decorative culture in the poster, which is represented by the fonts (Marianne & Zigzag), designed by Benoît.

Digital print poster 600 x 840 mm on cyclus offset 170g.

Poster sketch

Using:

Marianne

and

Zigzag

Both typefaces by Benoît Bodhuin

The beginning of the life as a Graphic Nomad:

Lille, France

bb-bureau.fr
type & graphic design

It couldn’t start better.

• Today: La Chandeleur 😀
• Tomorrow: e-Artsup

Visualizing the thesis part of the master project The Graphic Nomad:
(Re)searching the cultural heritage in graphic design.

Visit the overview: Graphical Entity

Cultural globalization, a phenomenon by which the experience of everyday life, as influenced by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, reflects a standardization of cultural expressions around the world. Propelled by the efficiency or appeal of wireless communications, electronic commerce, popular culture, and international travel, globalization has been seen as a trend toward homogeneity that will eventually make human experience everywhere essentially the same. This appears, however, to be an overstatement of the phenomenon. Although homogenizing influences do indeed exist, they are far from creating anything akin to a single world culture.

www.britannica.com

As I’m getting further into this subject, I found Zygmunt Bauman. This Polish sociologist wrote a very interesting theoretical book about how today’s society changes.

In his book, Liquid Modernity, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a ‘heavy’ and ‘solid’, hardware-focused modernity to a ‘light’ and ‘liquid’, software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition. The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history.

Read the book: pdf

Does a country still have a graphical identity?

France

Switzerland

Germany

Holland

…

Founded thoughts: Christian Etter

“I am lucky. I was born in Switzerland, where I learned how you should design. Now I live and work in different countries, I speak different languages, and my friends come from different parts of the world. One family. I am very lucky.

Then I think, how come design always looks the same, feels the same? I meet international designers and I can’t see any difference between their work and mine. Even though they come from across the globe, the cultural variety seems to be watered down. Things like the Internet, international exhibitions, low cost airlines and the domination of the English language have opened the door to the whole world.

Is it really the whole world or just what is adaptable with western standards? Is it necessary? Or maybe, do I have to know other cultures’ identities in order to understand mine?

I don’t know.”

Did some rewriting and rethinking (which is kind of normal in a creative process) about the project.

I, maybe because of being overbusy or not :), read this: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/?_r=0 (thanks Cox & Grusenmeyer for that, visit them!) and look at the wonderful illustration in the article by Brecht Vandenbroucke). A quick Google Translate of the update:

Hello.

I ‘m Mathieu Cieters and follow the master year graphic design at the School of Arts ( KASK ) , Ghent ( Belgium ) .

As a master project I’d ‘ a graphic nomad ‘ .

More specifically the project that I ‘m looking for studios , designers , collectives ( …) I where to ( art) projects can contribute .
The goal is , with the idea of ​​the nomad, to live and learn depending on the work .
Incidentally this gives me the opportunity to explore cultural . Various influences and approaches in the design and ( any remaining ? )  differences

The master project aims to which not only the studios , designers , collectives or art projects for whom or which has helped , will be covered , a book, but also where the influences and approaches and the possible cultural differences within the graphic subculture will be on the basis of a personal travelogue of a passionate and curious person . documented

Why I send .
Is it possible to effectively come by in the period between February 3 and April 20, 2014 to work on an (ongoing ) project and thus to live , to attain as this project and the book
Very much like an answer .
With Regards,

Mathieu Cieters – the graphic nomad

PS . follow : http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Graphic-Nomad/123894591114187
or @ thegraphicnomad

Detailed information on https://mathieucieters.com/thegraphicnomad/about

— I’m sorry for that 🙂

A project isn’t just perfect if you don’t have a back-up plan.

In case I could not stay with the people who I’m going to work with, I need a backup plan. In that case I can count on the thousands of people on CouchSurfing.com.
But… I am not so familiar with this project so I had to gain some information. For that I arranged some informational meetings using CouchSurfing.com.
Last week I met some people who were willing to give me a lot of information: what to do on CouchSurfing, what not to do, how you can save time searching for a couch while you are busy working, how the CouchSurfing community works, etc.

So Patrick, Elise and Ben, I thank you all very much for the information you gave me! I really hope we can end up seeing each other after I travelled around as The Graphic Nomad and complete my project.

To see my profile, click here

Updated portfolio website.

Visit: mathieucieters.com

Start of the website ‘The Graphic Nomad’.