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

der schmierfink

five cans, ten minutes, 270 x 350 cm

procrastination

daily drawings on black board, enamel marker, 30 x 40 cm

squash typeface

My task is quite simple: Get a tool and use it for a graphic purpose. 

In a thrift shop nearby I found that old wooden squash racket which is already a beauty by itself. The strings form an interesting grid where its' interspace can be seen as pixels, perfectly convenient to create images or animations. As my focus is on typography for this semester I chose to create a typeface and name it squash.

squash has two versions which differ in the scatter of the pixels. Version one uses every possible pixel, version two skips one pixel and more or less forms a package of four rectangles and treats it as one.

The second version came up before the first one, which is smoother and more elegant. In between I made a stop motion animation consisting of about 2000 frames which are manually edited. The sound comes from an extract of a squash game recording where I filtered out the ball hits and adjusted them to fit the movement of the letters.

The typeface will be available to download as a ttf file on my blog by the end of the semester.

BERLIN

Last week I was on a trip to Berlin with a few friends, visited some great exhibitions (among others Ai Weiweis' "Evidence") and just enjoyed the time together; a great place to dive away from every-day-life. Finally I really didn't want to leave, which inspired me to make a poster. The background is made from copies of the last train ticket I bought in Berlin - and as you always need to stamp the ticket before taking the train, I made the letters with a stamp, enlarged them and finally rasterized everything for the silk screen.

The text is a quote from the childrens book "Pünktchen und Anton", written in 1930 by Erich Kästner. The story takes place in Berlin and the citation means something like "Pünktchen, Come on! - But I can't! - Why not? - Beacause I'm so happy right now!"

silkscreen print, 50 x 70 cm

data place // aan de slag

In my project Data Place I focussed on the typography on Arnhem's weekly market. To get myself into it I improved my hand lettering and redesigned a market sign. After going through every single market stand and analyzing its signs I came to know that there is basically one guy walking around the market every now and then to write signs for the sellers on the spot, Henry van der Horst. His idea of working seems to be perfectly adjusted to the markets conditions. People don't need to order the plates and wait for them - instead they tell him directly what their offers are and within minutes they got their signs ready. 
But I have another idea how this could be simplified. Why not letting people make their signs on their own with a generally customized, market orientated stencil kit? 
My job for the upcoming weeks is to analyze the markets corporate identity, think about a solution how I can summarize all 'typefaces' that are given into a single one - and finally translate it to a stencil version that will be laser cut from plastic, wood or metal.

acrylic paint on wood, 30 x 30 cm

organics // #2

image sections of a wall painting
spray paint,  ~ 200 x 400 cm

procrastination

Taking 3 minutes to create an animation.

stickers available!

5 silkscreens of the series Our Planets as stickers, 7.5 x 10 cm, 100 pcs.

in case of interest, feel free to mail me!

duivelshuis arnhem

Referring to my project Data Place I copied an old photo of the Devils House at the market square in Arnhem into one I took a few days ago. Although it wasn't possible for me to capture it from the very same angle like the early photographer - there is a fence now and he probably used a different lens anyway- I quite enjoy the result.