DOEI

Because blogspot deleted almost every picture on this blog you´re welcome to follow me on

www.christianbenecke.tumblr.com

follow my final exam project on

www.rotzkopf.com

See you there!

ROTZKOPF X MURAL

60 x 75 cm, acryl 

4E JAARS EXPO // TETEM II

30 x 30 cm, pen on paper

Rotzkopf:

"It is time to make a decision in the color formation. As this project should have its' focus only on typography and as letters are in fact nothing more than flats in different shapes, it seems best to mainly use black and white. Straight, clear and certain. B/W shall be part of Rotzkopfs Corporate Identity."

More candy? →→→ tumblr.

WESSELERBRONX

In the southern part of Enschede there is district called Wesselerbrink. For its' 17.000 inhabitants it is relatively small - the houses, built in the 1960s have all the same architecture, block after block. In October 2014 they started renovating the whole district by breaking down the houses and building new ones. Now almost all of the old houses are still standing, but empty. The sphere, especially on a cloudy, grey sunrise is really impressive. At one point there is a playground that has this smiling sculpture in the middle. I photographed it one time with and without a flash.

KURWA // MIDNIGHT RANDOMNESS

The last days we had a friend staying over, that had been on exchange at AKI the last year. Today she went back to Poland and as I had an unexpected creative boost last night I made this illustration for her. It is 13 x 18 cm (marker on paper), and describes the pure randomness you get when you start drawing without thinking in advance.

ROTZKOPF

Rotzkopf [rɔtskɔpf] engl. “snodhead“ is a typographic experiment. The aim of the experiment is to create heaps of visual variations of the word ‘rotzkopf‘ itself, mainly analogue. 

The project started with a coincidental letter press print in 2013, where most of the letter stamps have been missing - so the word 'rotzkopf' seemed to be only possible letter combination. 

Recently I am as well busy setting up a web shop to buy the results of the experiment and a broad assortment of rare products. It will be online in 2015.

I will post a few results on this blogspot every now and then, but I will mainly use facebook and tumblr for documenting the project.

4SHORE // TEE SHIRT

4SHORE, a Graphic Design company based in Kenya, East Africa, that is founded by my mate David and his sister Larissa Hanegraaf, asked me to make an illustration for their magnificent tee shirt project. For every shirt, all made out of 100% organic cotton, they plant one tree. The illustration itself is 27 x 27cm, pen on paper. I am curious how its gonna look like on the shirt!

You can find more info about 4SHORE here.

EXCHANGE REPORT

In addition to my exchange at ArtEZ-Arnhem I fabricated a report of 60 pages, hand bound, with a silkscreen printed cover. The book, describing my experiences and projects, is to be shown to fellow students that are about to decide where to apply for their exchange. 
Size 150 x 240 mm.

HANDS ON: WORKSHOP // 2D

In the 2D part of the Hands On Workshop it is all about cutting, copying, pasting and drawing. From 5-minute-tasks to 3-hour-tasks, the aim is to work quick and intuitive.

Besides a few collages and drawings I also combined two pairs of vinyls by making a collage from their covers, laser cutting them in half and glueing the halts back together. I actually didn't expect that you're still able to listen to the record.

GASOLIN - GØR DET NOGET // GANZ LEIS' ERKLINGT MUSIK

40 JAAR WIM KAN MET GORRY AAN ZIJN ZIJDE // BAND FÜR AFRIKA

HANDS ON: WORKSHOP // 3D

I am recently following a workshop called hands on, offered at the AKI for third and fourth year students. It contains a 2D and a 3D part. The purpose of the workshop is to get more spontaneously in the choice of material and medium. Each of the workshops is once a week, where people get short-time tasks to be finished at the end of each session. Being busy with my bachelor thesis at the same time I enjoy these little break-outs of producing some stuff in a few hours, especially in a team.
At the latest session of the 3D course we built a construction of bamboo sticks connected with threads and hung it above the stairway in our academy.

HET KROT

AKI

A portrait of my academy, the AKI, to be printed on cups. 
24 x 9 cm, pen on paper

GDA-READER // EROSIE

The Graphic Design Arnhem Reader is a collection of art-related articles, carefully selected and redesigned by students of ArtEZ-Arnhem; 16 pages per person.
My chosen article, originally edited by Draw A Line Magazine
http://www.drawaline.de/blogs/artists/10093301-erosie , is about Jeroen Heeman, better known as Erosie. It depicts his way of working and his artistic development. Starting with pure graffiti and street art he now also works as an illustrator and graphic designer.

"I think that's part of my concept - developing things through small steps."

Reflecting this way of working, my version of the article develops itself from page to page. The first ones are sprayed and painted on a wall, then handwritten with a marker, continued with MARKIT, a font I made a few weeks ago for a market place project, until it ends up with News Gothic MT.

ROTZKOPF // BAGS

A letter press print I made some time ago brought me to print a few bags.
The size is about 32 x 40 cm, handprinted with silkscreen.
Prize: 10EUR + delivery
You can order via emailing to emailadressevonchris@gmail.com.

NEW: for more info please go to www.rotzkopf.tumblr.com

111 STRATEGIES // LP

Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies came back in another assignment of a different course. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created the Oblique Strategies in 1975, a deck of cards designed to help them break creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking. They then published the cards and made that system available to a wide audience.
My job was to find a new medium for the strategies and make it a personal project.
First of all, I sorted out the tips that are not relevant for graphic purpose (as the original strategies are made for both, graphic designers and musicians) and ended up with a rep digit of 111. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt chose a deck of cards as a medium to keep the randomness of getting a tip.

I thought: Why not picking a vinyl record as a new medium? I recorded the strategies, spread them randomly over the 12 minutes of recording time with a pauze of 5 seconds in-between the sentences. I sent my file to Dr.Dub, a recording service in Austria, to press a vinyl of my file. By putting the needle on a random spot of the vinyl you get a random strategy.

The creative process in general could be comparable with a labyrinth. You walk in one direction and suddenly you notice that this might not be the good one, so you turn around and repeat this process until you got your way out. With all the boundaries of an assignment represented as walls.

111 strategies offering an aphorism intended to help you as an artist or designer break creative blocks.  Put the needle on any random spot of the record and receive an advice that might loosen your thinking barrier. Keep the system running.

MARKIT

In connection to the project Data Place, where I focussed on the typography of Arnhems' weekly market. After analyzing the markets corporate identity I translated all given typefaces into one by writing with a marker, scanning it and vectorizing the letters. With a fontmaking program I adjusted the spacing between letters and words. Now, that I have a typeable font, it gives me more opportunities to bring the 'data' of the market into a different context.
The typeface only involves big letters in a regular and an italic version.

I lasercut all the letters and numbers in 3 different sizes and created a toolkit to make it possible for marktworkers to easily make signs on their own. A usual stencil has those lines in it to for example keep the middle piece of an O in place, which gives it an unnaturally stabile look. As I didn't want that effect I decided to make positive, single letter stencils meant to be traced with a standard 2mm marker.
The signs like + and /, are forming one stencil, 60 x 40cm, with three different pointsizes on.
The product should be called MARKIT.
The letters of one size come separately packed in cotton bags, handy for taking only parts with you. Besides the signs-stencil, the package includes some testing sheets and four MolotowOne4All markers in different colors. The ink of the makers grip on any material, if wood, metal, plastic, paper and dry within seconds.

I enjoy the twisting fact that stencils have the common purpose of manually getting a letter on a surface as straight and 'clean' as possible, whereas my stencil kit does exactly the opposite; it's got the intension to make the sign look naturally hand painted, as if it would have been painted with single big markers.

As said before, I found it interesting to bring the typo in another context.
I have been working on a magazine article about Erosie, where I used the font in a page to page fading from handwritten typography to News Gothic. More details and the full project post above.

squashface

digital collage using the grid of a squash racket

EROSIE - Outside the Graffiti Circle

I´m busy redesigning a magazine article about Jeroen Heeman, better known as 'EROSIE', a dutch street artist, illustrator and graphic designer. Reflecting his way of working, the article will develop itself from page to page. Starting with the first ones on the wall, the typography and the layout will finally become computerized.

"I think that's part of my concept - developing things through small steps" - Erosie

squash racket silkscreen

In addition to the digital misuse of my squash racket, where I used the grid of the racket to create a typeface, I also ill-used it in an analogue way.
I turned it into a silk screen and exposed it while the strings where still on the racket to get a nice grid print on the paper.

This gives me the possibility to create different shades of grey by turning the racket in a 45° angle and printing over the same paper a second time. This is basically the same principle the old masters like Rembrandt and Dürer used in their etchings and wood cuts. The more lines on one spot, the darker it gets. I tried this technique on a big paper sheet as my method is quite a rough one, not easy to control.
I decided to paint/print a portrait of Jahangir Khan, 'worlds best squash player' from the 70s.

silk screen painting, 120 x 150 cm