Inflight program launch 2012

Inflight Artist Run Initiative program design in collaboration with artist Nicola Smith.

Pierre Henry live in Tasmania and France

 

A drawing inspired by a live concert from last night. I listened to it in Hobart, the artist – Pierre Henry, played in Paris, France.

201x / 12

2011 is almost over, a few days left. Someone just asked me ‘How has your year been?’ and I decided to answer via my blog. It started with a move of my studio from North-Hobart-single-room to Goodwood-warehouse-shared-space. I had been looking to share with other designers for years and finally found a great bunch of people inclusive affordable rent and ace coffee machine!

It was a year of exhibitions (in Alice Springs, Adelaide and Hobart), writing grants, receiving a design fellowship by Arts Tasmania (yay!), heaps of gardening and landscaping, type experimentation, graphic designing and teaching. One highlight was certainly the art-workshops I facilitated around climate change with Tasmanian students. I’m always amazed by the imagination of 10-year olds.

I’m really looking forward to travel to France next year to participate in a design workshop and am very grateful to Arts Tasmania for receiving the fellowship which allows me to go there. On the way I plan to visit a typography conference in Berlin or London to further my typography studies (and nerding away)

2011 involved challenges and learnings and jumping in a few deep ends. I managed to float in some but mostly swim. Hopefully challenges never stop, but wouldn’t mind if some would be a tiny bit easier. Thanks.

font carving

not really in stone, but with my tablet, ink-less pen onto a light-screen. Sharing my process with you…thought it looks quite pretty. That’s where my mind is – currently wrapped around a new display font.

Sharing Stories

Sharing of stories or exchange beyond words where all ways of communicating and listening so that hearts are touched is embodied.

This invitation to a lecture at the Alice Springs Hospital can also be used as a poster. The concept focuses on health and conversations in a cross-cultural environment, evolving around the vast distances and rough landscape of the Central Desert regions.

The symbol on the top left was developed for this research project. It was inspired by the Yeperenye (caterpillar) dreaming/story, the double-helix as well as verbal exchange of stories.

Visions for Tasmanias future

The Map of a Dream of the Future workshops are up and running again. After two successful workshop weeks in Bicheno and Woodbridge last year, the Taroona High School is host of an after-school program in 2011. The creative writing and art workshops around climate change and Tasmania in 2090 are again facilitated and designed by artists Heidi Douglas and Nadine Kessler. The weekly activities and info related to the workshops can be found on the modof blog. We are very excited and enjoy working with the students who have fantastic ideas around transport, food and water, migration and shelter in 2090. Some of the students work will be exhibited at the Sustainable Living Expo in Hobart on November 5+6 and all the workshop outcomes will be shown at Taroona High School later in November.

d-word and harp

© Nadine Kessler

Music and death play an important role in life. Loosing a close person in an accident or to a an illness, both can be found in music – memory and comfort.

Musician Peter Roberts is the only Thanatologist here in Australia. He plays the harp for people facing the end of their lives. The instrument has, according to studies, a significant influence for the patients’ well-being and produces a calming effect.

This inspired me to design a poster. The golden colour scheme represents honour. The hand drawn shape reflecting our individual lives. The round golden circle represents a defined place of where we all go.

In the Western World we don’t talk much about death and yet many people I  met on my travels have experienced loosing a loved person. I hope with my poster to inspire people to share their personal experience about death, accept it as much as birth as part of our lives.

Schriftanatomie übersetzt / Type-anatomy translated

Switching quite regularly between German and English it can be helpful to have the right terms handy. Especially when it comes to type design. In addition a visual example is in development. Until then:

Endstrich, Endung – terminal

Querbalken – cross stroke or cross bar (t, f)

Bauch – bowl (a, p)

Fähnchen, Tropfen – ear (g)

Schlinge – bowl (g)

Scheitel – apex (A, M)

Schenkel – vertex

Punze – counter, eye (o, p)

Achselfläche – shoulder

Querbalken – link

Fuss – leg (k, R)

Traces of Otl Aicher in Tasmania

The first thing that popped in my eyes when we moved to small town Moonah in the south of this island was a corrugated iron covered community gym hall with pictograms on it. The colours of white and red were most likely chosen to go with the Coca Cola signage.

What a delight for a typographers eye! Since I was very familiar with Otl Aichers pictograms he designed for the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, I had the suspicion they might have been copied here. Or to say it in a correct English way – these gym-pictos were deeply inspired by and show a strong relationship to Otl Aichers designs.

/// left: original Otl Aicher pictograms designed in 1972 for the Olympic Games in Munich ///right: Moonah pictograms – Volleyball and Basketball below (flipped original design)

 

It is certainly a great source of inspiration and probably one of the most beautiful pictos ever designed for the Olympic Games. The Moonah pictos were showing some weather damage. Especially all the round ‘heads’ were shrunk to half size, giving them a rather bowl shaped look. I hope rather than replacing them the town council will re-store the signs!

Public Art @ Albuera Primary

It’s always magical to see hand-illustrations, computerized into vector graphics and eventually laser cut and assembled into a real size artwork. The Albuera Primary School entry-window facade artwork was a collaboration with Tasmanian artist Jonathan Partridge. It contains over twenty individual panels, which combined form a gigantic cell structured leaf over several storeys.

The lady at the school reception went outside after we had a chat. She had a good look at it and approved the artwork with a smile and a nod.