Graphic Matters 2

Graphic Matters is a biennial graphic design festival in Breda that shows how designers can shape and influence people’s perspective on current issues.

The 2019 theme was Information Superpower. From visual statistics to interactive data visualization; designers use their super powers to make the world transparent. Automatically generated graphs and bar charts are no longer sufficient. Designers, together with programmers, journalists and researchers, develop new ways of imagining complex situations, mountains of data and complicated systems.

Photography by: Edwin Wiekens/ Rosa Meininger / Almichael Fraay

Contagious!

Contagious! in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave shows an intriguing balance between health and real risk and between social exclusion and empathy. How did we deal with epidemics such as plague and smallpox in the past? What insights do historical epidemics offer for the present and the future?

This exhibit was designed before the Corona outbreak. In the original design, the common thread was the outbreak of an as yet unknown disease X and you were guided through the exhibition on the basis of this disease. Unfortunately, this was overtaken by reality and a lot had to be adjusted to content and design last minute. Visual language that we deliberately used before the pandemic has been given a completely different context during the duration of the exhibition.

Laboratory Rembrandt

In the exhibition Laboratory Rembrandt; Rembrandt’s technique unraveled, visitors step into the shoes of the scientists. Think about the dilemmas of researchers and conservators. All this in the place where Rembrandt created his artworks almost 400 years ago at the Rembrandt House museum.

Rembrandt’s former studio was specially transformed into a laboratory-like setting, in which the new insights and secrets of the master are revealed step by step. The Rembrandt Laboratory is not an exhibition where you just look, it is an exhibition where you really have to work! This exhibition is for everyone, young visitors from the age of 6 receive a special clipboard with a research kit. On the basis of questions and assignments you will investigate the exhibition yourself.

Additional photos by Billie-Jo Krul

The Ghosts of Sunday Morning

Design Museum Den Bosch together with guest curator Glenn Adamson are paying tribute to the expert advisers at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC, now known as Sundaymorning@ekwc) with the exhibition The Ghosts of Sunday Morning. For fifty years now, the EKWC has brought together knowledge, design and imagination in the field of ceramics. Thirty key works from the EKWC’s history have been reinterpreted and executed in white clay, creating an exceptionally beautiful and ghostly spectacle, in which past and present overlap.

The ghostly white pieces are displayed on perspex stands filled with slowly moving clouds of smoke. As visitors move around the exhibition, the stands slowly light up, and the experience is completed by an enigmatic soundscape formed by the delicately tinkling sound of clay cooling down after firing in the kiln.

Seriously Funny

Sharp, groundbreaking or lighthearted? What are you allowed to joke about in satire? Where is the limit of the joke? In the exhibition Seriously Funny at the Institute of Sound and Vision, you will discover how satire makes you laugh, while exposing serious subjects, and why satire is so important.

Satire also gives a bit of friction. And Seriously Funny does not only gives friction figuratively but also literally because the walls are made of sandpaper. Through interactive elements and viewing fragments, objects and cartoons, the visitor discovers where his own satire boundaries lie. There are stools that turn out to be weighing scales, video screens that require you to put your head in a trash can, you can record your own satirical speech from the throne, test how quickly you are stepped on your toes, what your aftertaste is on this exhibition and your neatly completed visitor survey immediately get passed through the shredder. Let’s see what your sense of humor is about 😉

Additional photos by Jorrit Lousberg

Risk of Explosion!

The attack on the Amsterdam Registry Office, 1943.

The exhibition in the Resistance Museum focuses on the social-psychological aspects of this spectacular act, which took place 75 years ago. The visitors can sympathise with the considerations and discussions of the six artists and gain insight into their backgrounds, motives, how they proceeded and what ultimately went wrong.

The exhibition consists of 12 rooms that you have to visit one by one. Because of the 3D audio tour and the beautiful illustrations and animations on walls and ceilings you have the feeling that you are in the mids of the story. Gradually there is no way back and you experience the same dilemmas as the attackers. You can decide on these dilemmas through an interactive component in the exhibition.

Trapped in Suburbia award

Silver | European Design Awards

Magical Miniatures

Step into the wonderful world of medieval miniatures full of color, fantastic creatures, animals, figurines and flowers. In this exhibition at the museum Catharijneconvent we let the visitor experience that the Middle Ages were not as dark as most people expect. The colourful existence in the broadest sense of the word predominates in this exhibition.

We introduce the visitors to the craft by giving them the opportunity to make their own miniatures. At various places in the exhibition there were workplaces where was explained how to make the edge decorations, the miniatures, but also the calligraphic writing. You could also experience the Middle Ages instead of just admiring. Like smelling a medieval book, browsing through a xxl miniature, or playing with a digital blow-up and digital books.

The NRC national newspaper came out with a praising review, 5 out of 5 stars. Visitors graded the exhibition with a 9.

Additional photos by Billie-Jo Krul

Hebbes!

Museum Gouda was one of the few museums in the world to take the first steps towards liberating their historic collections as 3D scans for all to view. Hebbes! (Gotcha) is a space within the museum dedicated to presenting the now digitalised collection.

A display inside the room allows the visitor to select an item from the collection. Then using a small cube the visitor can rotate the scanned item to view it in 360° on a large 3D holographic screen.

Auto Play

This interactive installation part of Graphic Design Festival Breda 2015 is a series of Sound Posters that respond to passing movement. Displayed in the 3sec.gallery, an exhibition space along the entrance of a parking garage, the viewer can have only three seconds to drive past and view the posters.

Each of the twenty-five posters react to passing cars, cyclists and pedestrians producing individual sound bites that when heard together form a composition. In collaboration with Koen Herfst (drummer to Armin van Buuren among others) this installation forms an experimental interplay between analogue and digital, picture and sound.

XXS Dutch Design

Stamp design is a very rich tradition in Dutch design so much so stamps are seen as miniature works of art. They cover all kinds of subjects and tell all sorts of stories. They capture the world on a tiny piece of paper. In XXS Dutch Design visitors step into this world immersing themselves in a sea of 1,200 larger than life stamps.

The exhibition showed the stamp design process with the work of Dick Bruna, Irma Boom, de Designpolitie, Rineke Dijkstra, Joost Swarte, Anton Corbijn and Studio Job. The latest royal stamp was also presented for the first time with the exhibition being opened by King Willem Alexander himself.

Additional photos by Fred Ernst

Trapped in Suburbia award

Silver | European Design Awards
Silver | International Design Awards

On The Road – Travelling with the Photographer

How can photography be experienced in a new way? On The Road – Travelling with the Photographer marks the first in a series of exhibitions showcasing the National Archive’s photography collection of over 14 million images. The selection is a journey through history showing the prominence of travel in the development of photography.

Since this is the first in a series of exhibitions, the entire structural design is a modular system that can be easily deconstructed and rebuilt in different layouts for future exhibits. In addition we’ve designed a unique hanging system that is flexibel, safe, 80% faster and does not damage the walls.

Additional photos by Anne Reitsma

Silent Helpers – 100 Years of Cordaid

This travelling exhibition shows that you need not be a Mandela to be a good person. Doing something good for others can be simple and may not always obvious or even recognised. Cordaid believes there exists a silent helper in everyone. Within homes live silent helpers and behind each door is an interesting story to tell.

The exhibition is made up of four parts:

The Status Quo

Cordaid see sharing as the easiest way to help others. Using red balls, visitors of the exhibition can answer the question “Wat deel jij?” (What do you share?). During the exhibition their answers contribute to a growing interactive infographic.

Meet the Silent Helpers

Behind every door the story of a silent helper is told through video and print.

The History of Cordaid

On the outside of the houses the visitor can read about the 100 years of Cordaid.

I Want to Share This With You

An analogue version of the ditwilikmetjedelen.nl website, this wall shares many stories of silent helpers and as more stories are published online the wall grows with it.

Silent Helpers – 100 Years of Cordaid travelled throughout the Netherlands and to make this an easy and efficient process each element of the construction fits the size of a standard palette. Meaning the complete exhibition can be quickly condensed into one lorry.

Weer Toekomst!

This travelling exhibition presents the story of refugee integration through the photographs of Ahmet Polat, Dutch photography laureate of 2015. The exhibition travels throughout the Netherlands to various venues including museums and universities, consequently the design is formed from a collection of installations able to adapt to the different environments. The various panels present photos, written stories and recorded interviews of each refugee.

An important part of the exhibition is the calendar wall. Each calendar represents one year in the life of a refugee while staying in the Netherlands. The sheets of each calendar can be torn off and taken home to create a do-it-yourself exhibition.   

Polat followed several students of UAF, the Foundation for Refugee Students who support highly skilled refugees in the Netherlands by helping with their study and transferring their existing qualifications into acknowledged Dutch ones. The photographs and accompanying stories capture the process of integration for these various individuals and document their new future in the Netherlands.

The name Weer Toekomst sheds a positive light on the new futures for these individuals, especially when ‘future’ can be an uncertainty for refugees.

Cover! – 85 Years of VPRO Gids Covers

Cover! marks 85 years of VPRO Gids, the television guide of Dutch broadcast station VPRO. This particular broadcast station has played a crucial part in Dutch design history with the guide being a focal point.

This exhibition at the Museum of the Image in Breda was a tribute to this magnificent series of publications. The VPRO were one of the early commissioners of talented designers and artists to design their covers.

Medieval basement

The redesign of this medieval exhibit in Museum Gouda focused on capturing the imagination and curiosity children had when entering but also making it exciting and informative. Translating all the information into UV illustrations means that to the naked eye nothing is visible. Only with the use of a UV torch can the visitor explore the space and discover facts and stories about the equipment hidden all over the floor. Shining a light on the dark history of the middle ages. Thus placing the visitor in the mindset of this curious, imaginative child and forcing them to search around.

Trapped in Suburbia award

Gold | European Design Awards
Silver | International Design Awards

Jaap Drupsteen – Designer | Explorer

To celebrate fifty-years as a practicing designer, Museum Hilversum held a retrospective exhibition on the work of Jaap Drupsteen. The exhibition showcases Jaap Drupsteen fruitful career and divides this into three sections.

The top floor presents his early audiovisual design (VPRO, Hadimassa etc) and printed objects (money, passport etc). Being a designer for screen, Drupsteen naturally starts working on black, hence the visitor enters a completely black space displaying only video work. After this the visitors moves to white – print work. Also on show are the original title rolls, all made by hand, inspiring a scrolling intro wall.

Since the exhibition features a large amount of video work a special audio system, the Sennheiser guidePORT, is used.  With the headphones on the user walks towards a screen or into a particular area and the audio is automatically heard. This prevents multiple audio tracks clashing and turning the exhibition space into musical chaos.

The Music Theatre is the second floor and displays many of Drupsteen’s theatre productions he created specifically for television. To create these unusual and inventive productions he became revolutionary in his use of chroma keying – the blue/green screen effect. To demonstrate this the visitor can experience live chroma keying by standing in a blue screen area and magically being positioned into one of Drupsteen’s works.

The lower floor presents his most recent work through two large scale projections. These are audiovisual compositions created for DJ and orchestral visuals and use a software developed by Drupsteen himself to achieve a perfect sync between image and sound.

Graphic Happiness – 100 Years of Dutch Graphic Design

Graphic Happiness consists of a publication, traveling exhibition and educational programme covering 100 years of Dutch graphic design. Travelling through China the exhibition showed work of over 60 designers highlighting their love of design.

A key part of the exhibition is the ball pit, which symbolises that the Netherlands lies below sea level. Due to the historic struggle with water, the Dutch had to be extremely inventive for hundreds of centuries. They had to design their environment in order to survive. From this necessity comes the Dutch theory that everything can be designed and forms the base to the distinctive, playful and clear Dutch design that is world-renowned. Each blue ball shows a portrait of a legendary Dutch designer or one of their designs so you can literally dive into Dutch design history.

The exhibition shows the work of over 60 designers and shows their love and passion for graphic design. Design is what makes these designers happy. It also bring the two countries, China and the Netherlands together, in an exchange of design knowledge and culture.

Based on the Chinese symbol of ‘double happiness’ and the Dutch flag (red, white and blue) the logo symbolises the two countries uniting in design. The logo is divided and produced as three different straps, which hold together the exhibition furniture and bind the publication. The logo is literally and metaphorically the binding factor in the whole design.

The flat pack furniture construction in combination with the strap fixtures provided an easily assembled solution for a travelling exhibit.

Trapped in Suburbia award
2x Silver | International Design Awards
Brons | International Design Awards
Bronze | Hiiibrand Design Award

Grafisch Geluk

Grafisch Geluk (Graphic Happiness) presents 100 years of Dutch graphic design. It showcases the work of Wim Crouwel, Dick Bruna, Anthon Beeke, Otto Treuman and many more. The exhibition looks into designers trying to find happiness in their work, in graphic design.

Outside of design many people search for happiness in Las Vegas. The city has become synonymous with the idea. Inspired by the signs of Las Vegas the complete exhibition signage system is made from light boxes, turning the space into a dazzling display of iconic work and literally illuminating design history.

All the signage is black and white not to conflict with the vast array of colourful work on show.

Trapped in Suburbia award

Silver | International Design Awards

Design it Yourself

Design It Yourself is an interactive exhibition at the former Graphic Design museum in Breda. In the exhibition both children and adults are challenged to work as designers by the use of large moving blocks. There are different elements for them to design such as: a magazine cover, a stop motion animation, a T-shirt or an icon.

Trapped in Suburbia award

Silver | International Design Awards
Finalist | European Design Awards