Summer Workshops

What the requirements are for a successful poster design is an on-going theme of discussion. A poster is a large 2-dimensional surface with a fascinating illusion of space and perspective. It must arouse interest and curiosity, its message must be understandable in a matter of seconds and from a distance. Its appearance should be equally fascinating and informative. The design has to correspond to many different factors: an overarching concept, an existing corporate identity, recognizability, legibility, originality and artistic expression. There are countless design options – which is the right one? How do you reach the desired target audience? What influence do the design process and the printing technique have on the content of the message and the aesthetics of the poster? Do graphic designers and the beholder in the street understand the term design quality to mean the same thing? Does the printed poster meet the desired requirements or does the information require a form of communication that makes the use of digital media (time-based media) useful?
In the “Poster Design” workshop, we pursue approaches that lead to precise and aesthetically pleasing poster design. We will experimentally test various ideas in drafts and refine, analyze, question and condense them into a final poster.
In the online workshop, we focus on the digitally presented, animated poster. If the workshop takes place physically at the Basel School of Design, the focus will be on the design of a printed large format poster.

Leander Eisenmann was born in a village near Lucerne. He left school in order to study design at the School of Design Lucerne and later at the School of Design Basel, where he received his degree in Graphic Design in 1991. He then moved to Germany to work at the Siemens Design Center and after that for Rolf Mueller in Munich. After four years he returned to Zurich to study in the Advanced Class for Fine Arts and received his degree from the School of Design Zurich. At the same time, he began teaching at the School of Design Basel and opened his own design studio in Zurich. In 2002 he received a stipend for a guest year at the “Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben” in Berlin. In 2003 he was guest lecturer for print and book design in the department for Graphic Design of the School of Design Lucerne. Since 2002, Leander Eisenmann has been teaching in the department for Visual Communication in the area of “Imagery” at the Academy of Art and Design Basel. He has received numerous national and international awards. www.leandereisenmann.ch

Visual Communication is at the center of conceiving images for daily life. They influence our perception of the world by creating emotive imagery for communication, informational design or scientific visualizations. Especially in today’s world of global communication channels, we need to know more about how images are perceived in order to create and disseminate them consciously and conscientiously. This field of Design Research focuses on the acquisition of knowledge in the wide field of iconic phenomena. Academic disciplines such as Art History, Linguistics, Psychology and Anthropology have described the need for a scientific approach to images. Most academic centers focus on research questions with a theoretical methodology. In contrast, the approach of “Practice-led Iconic Research* ” is focusing on the generation of knowledge through a practice based methodology. The workshop “Inquiry by Design” introduces participants to the practice based issues of iconic research in the area of Visual Communication. At the beginning, the workshop focuses on the formulation of an iconic research question and a practical methodology of exploration and inquiry by design. During the week participants create a portfolio of images, which explore a design strategy in finding exemplary visual answers. The workshop is for designers or educators who are involved in the practice of communication design and the reflection upon visual communication for today’s world.

*Renner M., et al. : Practice-led Iconic Research, Visible Language, the journal of visual communication research, 51.3/52.1. Dezember 2017/April 2018, Cincinnati.

Michael Renner, 1961, experienced the digital revolution first-hand when he went to work for Apple Computer Inc. and The Understanding Business in California in 1986, just after completing his diploma as Graphic Designer at the Basel School of Design. Research and reflection upon the meaning of images in the context of digital tools became the central theme of Renner’s practical and theoretical design activities. Since 1990, he has his own design Studio in Basel with corporate and cultural clients. He started teaching in 1990 in the Visual Communication Institute at the Basel School of Design (HGK FHNW) with an emphasis on Information Design, Interaction Design and Design Research. In 1999 he was named chairman of the institute. From 2005 until 2013 he was member of “eikones”, the Swiss National Center of Competence in Iconic Research and the European research network “What Images Do”. His approach to develop research activities in the field of design is based on the aim to further develop existing competencies of image creation. With this approach of gaining knowledge through the creation of images the design process becomes the central research theme and a methodology at the same time. He has lectured and taught workshops in Europe and abroad. Renner is visiting Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at the Politecnico di Milano. He is member of the advisory board of Visible Language and of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).

Letterforms are captivating. They help create stories and pictures in your mind when you read. Through letterforms we access and retrieve important information at any time. And, we experience the world differently through them. Letterforms can function extremely small and enormously large. With letterforms texts are type set and pictures “painted”. Typographic characters have a rich and various spectrum of forms. In past centuries letterforms were a part of major art movements; later, in the 19th Century they became more fashionable and stylistic, in the 20th Century they became more systematic! And what is new in this Century? The workshop will explain and show that it is in the detail of each letterform that its character lies. Our concentration in the workshop will focus on a number of type signs with regard to a concept based on the optical rules of the three basic shapes in Latin type (circle, square, triangle), the different stroke and curve directions and their terminals. The interaction of drawing by hand and further development on the computer allows for a differentiated, and perhaps new, awareness and appreciation for type forms.

Prof. Philipp Stamm, 1966, was trained as a typographer before he began his studies at the Basel School of Design in Typographic Design and Visual Communication. His thesis project dealt with the theme “The Extension of the Latin Alphabet for the German Language”. It has been published in the “Swiss Typographic Magazine” 1/1997 et al. The type design work was exhibited in 2000 at the “Künstlerhaus” in Vienna and 2004 at the “Museum für Gestaltung” in Zurich. In 2001 he designed the font “Gutzwiller” for a private bank in Switzerland. Since 2000 Philipp Stamm is lecturer in Typography, Type Design and Corporate Design at the HGK in Basel. Apart from his teaching activity, he worked eight years on a documentation of the complete typographic work of Adrian Frutiger. Over a two-year period he conducted interviews and discussions with the well-known Swiss type designer. In 2008 the comprehensive Monograph of Adrian Frutiger’s Type Design was published in German, English and French – Heidrun Osterer, Philipp Stamm: “Adrian Frutiger – Typefaces: The Complete Works”. The second edition, revised and expanded with a index, was published in 2014 by www.birkhauser.ch.

As graphic designers embraced the computer decades ago, the mouse became an extension of their hand and a tool to enable creativity in the digital domain. Since the early 2000s, frameworks have made programming accessible to artists and designers, a method commonly referred to as Creative Coding. With this method one can design in a generative way, where everything is modified by parameters and can be influenced by audio, data or interactive inputs. With a few lines of code, step by step instructions known as an algorithm, you can send graphic forms into motion, animate type and create immersive compositions in 3D space. A few more lines of code, for an interface, and you’re developing custom tools for generating new designs. We’ll use the most approachable of these frameworks, p5.js, to bring beginners up and running within the first day. Regardless of your coding experience, we’ll combine these skills with The Basel School of Design’s unique understanding of visual form in movement, which has been developed since the pioneering Film + Design course. Whether this workshop takes place online or physically, we’ll learn within a self-made environment, P5LIVE, enabling live and collaborative coding to greatly facilitate both learning situations. Together we’ll explore algorithmic possibilities of design, as code launches us beyond territory previously established by the mouse.

Ted Davis is an American artist and designer based in Basel, Switzerland, where he is an interaction design lecturer within the Visual Communication Institute at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW. He holds a BA from California State University Chico and an MFA/ MAS from UIC/HGK International Master of Design in Basel. He was design lead for a Swiss National Science Foundation funded project on visual search and interfacing the future of image databases. He’s been an artist in residence of the robotic enabled Kunstbibliothek (Art Library) in Sitterwerk, visualizing years of tracked book location data and most recently a contributor of an audio/visual generative artwork for the Immersive Lab in ZHdK’s Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology. His teachings focus on design and image making through programming new and newer media, along with embracing the error and glitch while questioning the ideal and mimetic conditions digital media is asked to encompass. Well versed in both web development and motion based textual/visual programming languages, he empowers students to take the computer’s capabilities beyond ready-made packages for design. www.teddavis.org

Gregory Vines has taught classes in the Visual Communication Institute, HGK/FHNW in Time Based Media and Imagery. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1953 like many other children in the USA he started a series of drawings directly on the TV screen (Winky Dink and You Show). His first 8mm film was made for the experimental design class taught by Muriel Cooper at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. He received his BFA in 1968 and went on to work for publishing companies in Boston. In the early 70s he studied in the Advanced Class for Graphic Design at the then Kunstgewerbeschule Basel and began teaching in 1976 in the KGS and beginning in 1978 in the class for “Animation Graphics/Film+Design”. He was a part of the faculty that started the first HFG program in Basel and was head of the Advanced Class for Graphic Design between 1988 and 1990. He has lectured and given workshops in 2D and 4D Design in and outside of Europe.

FHNW Academy of Art and Design
Institute of Visual Communication
Freilager-Platz 1
Postfach

CH-4002 Basel

FHNW Academy of Art and Design
Institute of Visual Communication

Freilager-Platz 1, Hochhaus: D 5.03
4142 Münchenstein b. Basel

T +41 61 228 41 11
F +41 61 228 42 89
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