Ahh well, just see for yourself. This is random stuff, some of which is deep and some of which is not. Maybe you like the drawings and would like to wear them on a t-shirt? Then you might check out KLOTZ?
Lena Loeber is a fashion and graphic designer from Hamburg/Bremen. Characteristic for her work is the use of collage techniques to bring together found/collected objects and own images. In terms of style, Lena has a distinctive preference for what US-Americans call ‘bling’. The design I came up with for the website corresponds to these aspects. It collects Lenas work samples, doodles, some of her favourite phrases, her contact info and legal information. Depending on the context, content is displayed in the according style: While the home page contains a mixed collection of something from every category, the doodles page is layed out like a blog, and the work detail page comes along like an art gallery: Images on white walls – with textual information only being displayed when needed. Following Lena’s credo ‘easy click on anything or do not click at all’, overall site navigation is extremely reduced and adapts to the context.
For my diploma thesis, I concerned myself with the subject of associations and their aesthetical features. My aim was to build a machine that would be able to associate words and visualize the associative process formally, thereby generating an “aesthetics of assocation”. As a theoretical preparation for my machine-concept, I studied descriptions of associations in the three fields of psychoanalysis, neuroscience and surrealism, and collected my observations in a book. The concept for my machine is derivated mainly from Freud’s statements about the “Denkapparat” yet also implies connections to automatic writing and artificial intelligence.
“Die Ästhetik der Assoziation” won me the Hochschulpreis 2009 (Integriertes Design) at University of the Arts Bremen.
The traditional (est. 1984) and well-known skateshop that goes by the name of ‘ATTITUDE’, urgently needed a website to entertain their (mostly very young) customers and keep them up to date about their skate-team, the shop, etc. In 2007, they asked me and my friend Ali Böll to come up with a design. At the heart of the site we placed a weblog. As we were told by themselves, the shop-employees can’t phrase texts very well, instead they are rather talkative people. That’s why we decided to deviate from the principle that weblogs are text-based and instead came up with a blog that works exclusively with audio-commented images and videos. Actually, we tried to avoid text on the site altogether, designed self-explaining icons and integrated audio-comments wherever possible. This results in an unusual and very entertaining website. All programming was done in Django by our friend Thomas Bilk.
Philipp Sebastian is a German actor, who has been performing on stage for over 14 years. He has also appeared on TV, performs music shows, etc. In 2008, he approached me to design a website for him, letting him manage and add all the content – play dates, past performances, pictures and videos, etc. I came up with a very elegant and serious looking design, that reflects a theater-like athmosphere, using only black, white and shades of grey for the typography, putting focus on the most relevant content by placing it in a centered white box. All the site-navigation and controls are very simplistic. I did the programming in a new web framework called Django.
This website I did for Eva Grabowski, a doctor in Germany. Eva Grabowski has more than 25 years of experience in her field, a beautifully located practice and is proficient in orthodox as well as alternative medicine such as acupuncture. The website is simple, clear and informative, yet with a personal touch in text, colours and images.
I am part of ‘link’, a group of students that organise speeches and workshops with interesting artists and designers at University of the Arts, Bremen. We always make our own posters to announce upcoming events. This one I did for the screening of the Helveticafilm, which ‘link’ organised. The poster/flyer underlines the simplicity and clarity of Helvetica and was very cheap in production: It was printed on a b/w-laserprinter, the orange underlinings were done with a marker pen and a ruler. To avoid the flyers being overseen, I built stands to put them in people’s way – like the school’s hallways and toilets.
I did these illustrations for ‘ghost’ magazine. The topic of the issue is ‘memories’.
This corporate design project was an assignment in Petr van Blokland’s class at KABK, Den Haag. The company we had to design the cd for was a network of hackers that work for big companies, doing security checks and game debugging. My solution uses only basic RGB colors and focuses on website layouts, since disbug operates mainly online. As key visual elements apart from the colors, my cd uses a hairline, that represents an error in the system. The logo is set in Avenir Black, all other typography is set in Consolas.
In a type-course at KABK, Den Haag, we were to design a poster with a given typeface every week, in about three hours time each. For these posters, we had to use our own design-policy that we made in the first lesson of the course.My policy is to use a big black shape on coloured ground, a figure and Dutch poetry. Since I don’t speak Dutch very well, there are some funny mistakes, which make the posters even better (my teachers said that).
Gaia is a triptic that I made at KABK, Den Haag in Michel Hoogervorst’s class. It is about nature, collecting and humour. The triptic consists of a fox mask I made out of a fur jacket, found objects with drawn-on faces and an accompanying sketchbook that documents the idea-world of the work and provides an entry to understanding.
This is a cover for a manual about type technology which I designed at KABK, Den Haag. It’s a woodprinted 5.25″ floppy disk with an original label-sticker that came with the floppies when they were sold back in 198x. The title of the manual is typed on the label with a typewriter.
braak is a figure i made with paper, paint and wallpaper glue. It was a short assignment at KABK, Den Haag with the goal to make something overwhelming. I used the overwhelming effect of relative size by placing braak in a very small toilet, glued to the wall from top to bottom (about 3 meters high). (Somebody liked him and glued a heart on braak).
The Bremer Freimarkt is the biggest funfair in Northern Germany, and one of the oldest in the whole country. In 2007, the organizers called for new corporate designs. I was working for Büro 7 at the time, who participated in the pitch. For the logo, I used the traditional expression ‘Ischa Freimaak!’, which is Low German for ‘It’s Freimarkt’ and expresses both the fun and the traditional aspect of the Freimarkt. I designed a set of associated icons that visualize typical aspects of the Freimarkt and communicate: Fun, fun, fun. They also have a 1960s feeling that highlights the tradition once again. All of the icons and the logo can be set in five different bright and joyful colours. Fontwise I decided to go with Underware’s Bello. Finally I designed two very different posters to show how the CD could be used.
‘Mobile Fankurve’ was a collaborative project of Highschool Bremen and University of the Arts Bremen that took part during the soccer world cup 2006: 15 design- and architecture-students created a friendly counterpart to FIFA’s public viewing areas. A colourful convoy that brings football into the German province – a blue flowertruck as the screen, an orange stand for the fans, a VW-bus pulling a yellow bartrailer with lots of sausages and beer, and a green caravan that serves as a mobile office. The team covered the events and experiences live and on the road via the mobilefankurve-website and a videopodcast.
The project won the ADC junior award in 2006.
This very simple website is the web-home of Leipzig-based indie-rock band »Napoleon«. All information is on a single page that uses only HTML and CSS. The unusual good photographs give the site a touch of style, that corresponds with the image of the band. (As of end 2007, Napoleon have split up, and the website is down.)
I made this website together with two friends for a musician we liked, who had no money and no music label. We used found objects and our hands to create a collage, which we then made interactively explorable using only HTML, CSS and Java-Script. The browser window displays only a section of the whole collage – the user can drag around and explore the many tiny details and secrets.
A click on the menu items »contact«, »info« etc. lets the page jump to the part of the collage with the according information.
In cooperation with an elementary school, I made several illustrated worksheets for the Maths-class (first to third grade). Our course met the class-teacher every month to get feedback on how the children responded to our worksheets. Step by step, we improved our work and learned about good pedagogics.
This is the website of my t-shirt label »KLOTZ«. I made the concept, design and programming with my friend Johannes Ellmer in 2003 – and did small face-liftings and improvements over the years. Still the looks and interface of the site have been so successful that they have remained widely the same.
I made this series of postcards as a homework for an application in Communication Design in Weimar/Germany. The task was to design postcards for your hometown. As I was living on the island of Amrum/Germany at the time, I figured a way to say positive things about Amrum on nine postcards.
The homework was very well received.
