The Visual Communication Institute HGK, Basel offers workshops for students, educators and graphic designers.
The workshops afford insight into topical themes in Visual Communication in a study program reflecting the rich tradition of the Basel School of Design. Practical exercises with a high level of professionalism form the core of the workshops focus. Reflection as well as contextual knowledge will be conveyed by way of input sessions, allowing participants’ work to be judged within a contemporary, future-oriented, context relevant to professional practice.
The trinational Rhine river valley is a unique cultural environment with easy access to France and Germany, and to sites such as the Vitra Design Museum (G), the Isenheimer Alter (F) or Ronchamp (F). In Basel the Fondation Beyeler, Tinguely Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Schaulager and the Museum of Contemporary Art are world renown. Besides its museums Basel offers a rich mixture of cultural events. During the four weeks, lectures and input sessions by the faculty and with designers from outside the university will accompany the workshops’ program, as well as field trips.
The curriculum of the Master course is influenced by the tradition of Swiss Graphic Design and the current academic perspective and standards of the Visual Communication Institute / The Basel School of Design at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design.
You will be given the opportunity to be at the cutting edge of discourse concerning image theory and design-oriented research as well as media technology. Through project oriented design work you will deepen your process-oriented design skills, and enhance your analytical competence in image theory and the media sciences.
Furthermore, the program is offering you a variety of opportunities, such as international internships, studying in a rich foreign cultural environment, and an international group of students and professors, who are involved in the current discussions of the internationally oriented design practice and its issues of design research.
Workshops 2018 June 25 – July 20:
What the requirements are for a successful poster design is an on-going theme of discussion. It must be readable from far away and close-up, attract curiosity, be informative and communicate an idea. A poster is a large 2-dimensional surface with a fascinating illusion of space and perspective. Its design, depending on the content has to comply with many factors such as the concept, an existing corporate identity, recognizability, readability originality, and of course artistic expression. But, how can a poster function under all these demands? What is design quality? What demands are put on the designer? Does the informational content, on the one hand, and the medium of print, on the other hand, require a different approach to finding design solutions? How many design possibilities are there and which is the right one? How do you achieve an optimal result? Can the design process in turn have an influence on the content message? In the workshop we will analyze and question the approaches necessary for a dynamic, contextually correct and aesthetically successful poster design. We will analyze our working processes and, maybe you will even surprise yourself by the results!
Visual Communication and Media Design are 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, we need to know more about how images are perceived in order to use them consciously and conscientiously. Design Research focuses on the acquisition of knowledge in the wide field of iconic phenomenon.
Academic disciplines such as Art History, Linguistics, Psychology and Computer Sciences have described the need for a scientific approach to images. Most academic centers focus on research questions with a theoretical methodology. In contrast, the workshop «Inquiry by Design» introduces participants to the relevant issues of iconic research and design research in the areas of Visual Communication and Media Design.
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 illustrate a design strategy in finding exemplary visual answers. The workshop is for designers or educators who are involved in visual communication imagery for today’s world.
Imagine you are walking down a street and stop to observe a poster. At the first moment you "take in" the poster in its totality. After, your eyes begin to explore, studying the two dimensional space, the text-image relationships and the symbolic meaning of the content and design. Now, imagine experiencing the poster over time, as a moving image! It would be a completely different experience, as you are led and directed by the designer's decision as to what is seen first, then next and next and next! One after another the images evolve into a "story". Both poster design and time-based design work by knowledge of the concepts behind the construction of each dimension. This workshop explores the fundamental properties of motion perception, designing in time, image mixing, rhythm and how this affects design composition. Letterform, word, image and sound is the material of the workshop.
Instead of using motion software programs, we have created our own tools for a fluid and "playful" interaction between analogue and digital design. This both intuitive and intentional design process is a tool in itself with which you can use and build upon. As digitally enhanced surroundings continue to grow, the design of time has become an essential skill of creative design.
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 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 has been working 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 wellknown 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.
Poster Design
Type Design
Institute of Visual Communication
Visual communication is a tool of knowledge generation in its own right. Visualizations make things perceptible, imaginable and graspable.
