Academic byproducts - Illustration and illustrated typography

Some half finished stuff from last semester. Didn't use these illustration and the illustrated typography in the end of an exercise (which had to do with tea).

Series of bookcovers for Karen Blixen - Illustration

Another exercise for my illustration class in J-town.
If you read the title of this post you already know everything. Only one thing I could add: the sentence on the lower right side of the cover is always the first sentence of the book. So you start reading the book without opening it actually.

Initial Letters - Illustration

Here we go. Anotehr exercise from my exchange semester. We got texts and had to do Initials. It was very interesting to play around with hebrew typography. It is much easier to perceive those letters as a simple shape for me.

"I" for the text from a childrens' book.

"S" for an article in a fashion magazine.

"Mem" for the murder ballad "Edward Edward".

Map for the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem - Illustration

This is a conceptual illustrated map for the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem. In ths zoo can be found most of the animals that are mentioned in the bible, but there are also other animals (such as lemurs).
The brief was to choose a group of 5-10 different animals and unite them in a conceptual map. I chose animals that are good climbers. The climbing is a metaphor for searching god, for trying to reach him. The animals are trying to go "heavenwards", so in the direction of god, because of that also the title of the map.
The map contains several quotations from the Quran, the Thora and the Bible that deal with reaching god to underline my concept.

All in all it is an ironic statement on my experience during my exchange semester in Jerusalem. Most of the people are guided by religious ideas and ideals, god is a really central part of their lives. There is something like an omnipresence of religion in Jerusalem which I tried to represent with this map for the Biblical Zoo (and of course it is not by chance that the BIBLICAL Zoo is in Jerusalem).

Experimenting with photography - Painting with light

Here some photos I took during my exchange semester. They are all taken with an old Nikon D100; it's one exposure and I didn't use photoshop (only the cropping).
I like the result, because I got a picture with really dynamic and static elements. The photos seem to be somewhere between reality and virtuality.

Making Fette Fraktur my own

This is actually the result of an exercise of my type and illustration class. We should choose a font and work on it, so that it beomes something of ourselfes. I chose Fette Fraktur from Wagner. I tried to give the letters a more dynamic an calligraphistic character. Works not bad I would say. With some exercise I can use it maybe to create handdrawn titles and stuff.
The big words are my interpretations of the font, the small ones are the original version.

Hello Rembrandt!

Drawing a Rembrandt portrait can be fun.

Give me a pencil and you get a squirrel

During my exchange semester here in Bezalel I rediscovered my passion for drawing. Actually I am doing much more stuff that starts from a sketch or hand drawing than I was doing in my university at home I think. Maybe there we are working way too much only with our pcs. But most of the people here have a different approach to do things. They rarely use their electronic friend or at least not as much as people do back home. That is my impression at least. Great for me to get faced with such a different work approach. I would say it helps me a lot to get a new point of view on my work.

Calligraphy and stuff

So, it is a long time ago since I last posted something, hope this will change in the near future now.
Here are some "calligraphic sketches. I really love doing such stuff, trying to improve a lot in it. Further it is some kind of contemplative work, I forget the time when doing it and it relaxes me.
On the first picture you can see the tools I used: ink and an ice cream stick. Simple but effective. That are letters from the hebrew alphabet by the way in that picture :)

Maybe I can do a whole Poster with that technique, we'll see, but I am already looking forward to that. Or at least some oter kind of more serious work, not kust contextless sketches.

Bill Joy - Why the future doesn't need us

One of the must-read-essays from my point of view is Bill Joys "Why the future doesn't need us". The title sounds already distopic and the text reflects this depressed atmosphere too (almost mostly).
Read it here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
Bill Joy reports some outlooks on our future as human beings; what are possible outomes, how much do we have influence on it?
Are we even aware of what is awaiting us or are we just living in our pink fluffy soap bubble?
Should we try to get back in our pasts, is it already too late?

The darker the night, the brighter you shine - typographic poster

Hey there!
Today I was thinking a little bit about a research on freemasony and such stuff I recently did. I discovered a quite esoteric world but with a few interesting aspects. I was surprised to find out that one of the main concepts of the freemasons is to "work the rough stone". The raw stone is you, your person, your character and the goal is some kind of self improvement. But the metaphore goes on: When the stones are in shape they are used to build the "temple of humanity".

This idea of self improvement with humanistic background is quite exemplary I would say.

So and this work is a non totally rational result of enlightment + mystic and esoteric stuff + idea of self improvement + a little pessimistic world view. Maybe the text should be: "The darker the night, the brighter you can shine." But was not so convinced about that.

Hommage to Elias Canetti

Little experiment with an older illustration I once made for the book about massmanipulation. Elias Canetti is maybe "only" an autor and not a philosopher, but has written really interesting things about the behaviour of the masses (really important: Masse und Macht). Read it if you got some time.

Probably some other older illustrations will follow, Noam Chomsky for example.

Fontstruct - Pixelfont

Ist eigentlich als Übung für den Typografiekurs entstanden.

Hier downloaden: http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/466139

Westen und Osten

Die bunte Welt des Jazz

Heuer hatte ich die Möglichkeit das grafische Konzept für das Jazzfestival Südtirol Alto Adige zu entwickeln, dazu auch noch eine Logoanimation. Es ist die 29te Ausgabe des größten Jazzfestivals in Südtirol.
Generiert habe ich die Grafik mit Scriptographer und die Animation mit After Effects erstellt.

Hier gibt's mehr: http://www.suedtiroljazzfestival.com/jazzfestival-presse/presse.php?id=100

Random old stuff

Beim Aufräumen gefunden...

Salone del mobile 2011

Wird dann wohl auch im Salone ausgestellt :)

Spaghetti Vespa Typography
a very Italian poster exhibition

Milano, Bovisa
14.04
18.30 Uhr


Infos unter: http://www.spaghetti-vespa-typography.it/

Vanitas

Wann ist endlich...

Kleine Hedonisten

Spass am Illustrieren :D Detailliertere Version kommt hoffentlich später noch.