me stuff

mind the lads

for those of you who were around (and those who weren’t) when we first organised ‘mind the gap’ back in october 1996, you may remember that the first (and by far the best, so far) edition featured the rat-pack of british designers from that period: ‘tomato’, ‘fuel’, my old hero ‘peter saville’, ‘the designers republic’, ‘north’ and ‘me company’, we sold all 800 tickets for the afternoon (@ legendary venue ‘paradiso’) in record time & the event still gets mentioned regularly by those who managed to get a seat in the packed hall…

two years later we returned with an all-american edition featuring (the then relatively unknown) ‘stefan sagmeister’, ‘gary koepke’, the under-rated ‘martin venezsky’, ‘alexei tylevich’ and ‘robert wong’

then in 1999 we turned our attention to the world of film-making and specifically ‘found footage’ with an eclectic line-up of directors and vj’s including ‘wim van der aar’, artist ‘gerald van der kaap’, ‘jay rosenblatt’ and underground US duo ‘stefan avalos’ & ‘lance weiler’

the fourth edition (was it 2001?) attempted to tackle the (often troubled) relationship between designers and architects, with ‘maarten roos’, ‘hani rashid’, ‘marc & nicole maurer’, ‘ole scheeren’ and ‘kas oosterhuis’ and finally in 2005 we invited an old hero of ours ‘pierre bernard’ who had just been awarded the prestigious ‘erasmus prize’, plus his own guests from berlin ‘anschlaege’, another old hero ‘gerard hadders’, young artist ‘jonas stal’ and mister ‘anton beeke’ who kindly acted as moderator for the day

anyway that’s enough nostalgia for now, the good news is that we’re reuniting! after fifteen years, the original team is back together and we have some really exciting plans for a new event, possibly in late 2011 and maybe not just in amsterdam… it’s too early to say anything more yet but if you are interested, we’ve started a twitter feed, so why not follow us and keep posted on the news as it unfolds during the coming months… the most important figures we hoped to invite have already said ‘yes’ and we’re all really looking forward to seeing the plan come together, the previous five events were all completely sold-out in no time… more news soon, maybe…

incidentally the original ‘mind the gap’ team is as follows:
former partners jacques koeweiden and paul postma, art director/designer kim mannes abbott, online creative and writer marcel vosse and finally me, after fifteen years we are all (amazingly) still friends…

oddly there is very little information to be found online (or offline) about ‘mind the gap’ except a terrible website which i am not going to share, we really need to get a decent website made, if anybody would like to offer their help let me know…

m / 12-01-2011 09:22 - tags: ,  

thoughts on ‘tactile’ (first posted in ‘news’ 29-10-10)

i have been asked to submit some work for the upcoming issue of ‘idn magazine’ and do a short interview on tactile illustration via email, it’s always a little difficult to get a feeling on what they are wanting to say on the subject doing it all via mail but however here’s a short excerpt of the questions they asked me and my spontaneous reactions, i thought it might be worth sharing…

IdN: What is your view towards Tactile Illustration?

The term ‘tactile illustration’ has become something of a trend in the past few years and a quick look around on the web shows that many people have started playing with ‘tactility’ in their work. Trends in graphic design tend to be a bit ‘transient’, especially now that the internet provides easy access for everyone, on the other hand the move towards ‘tactile’ design is, I believe, more than just a quick trend that will pass… precisely because of the technology you mention in your next question.

Tactile illustration is not a new phenomenon of course, if you look at the Bauhaus, Russian constructivism or people like ‘Piet Zwart’ in the 30’s for example it’s always been around. The field of graphic design has always been subject to fashion and the times we live in.

Some of the people who have inspired me personally in this type of work are Piet Zwart, UK designer Vaughn Oliver (in the late 80’s), Stefan Sagmeister, Marian Bantjes, Julien Valée, Studio Dumbar, Isidro Ferrer and UK photographer Dominic Davies.

IdN: Do you think somewhat the growth of technology increases peoples’ appreciation towards tactile / crafted design? How do you see the effect these two have towards each other?

Yes i do, technology is a great thing, computers and the web have helped propel graphic design & communication forward at an amazing speed, the number of people making high quality work all over the planet, right now just surprises me sometimes. But at the same time, the computer has also become our worst enemy…

………………………..

the full interview can read in the january-february issue (v18n1) of idn magazine released early next year, keep an eye on the website for more details…

m / 30-11-2010 22:16 - tags: , ,  

new work (first posted on the 19th of october)

shown below is the first in the new series of posters i am developing for my latest client: het muziektheater amsterdam (the amsterdam music theater) or ‘HMA’ in short

a tough gig this one, the identity (designed by agency ‘koeweiden postma’ last year) with it’s outspoken custom typeface was a ‘given’, and the brief was to redesign the posters… my main starting point is the fact that HMA only does approx. four productions a year and therefore doesn’t have much ‘exposure on the streets’, with so little ‘air’ time it is very important that the posters create a coherent look and help to establish the identity in the public’s mind… the solution was to create a strong and highly recognisable format (the red border & black band) as a means of binding the various productions (ballet and opera) together in a harmonious way…

the two image areas above and below can be used to mix images or use various crops and details from the same image to create a dynamic form and to give a ‘flavour’ of the show… i further chose to ‘tone down’ the custom typography which i felt was perhaps a bit too ‘loud’ in it’s expressiveness, plus using a narrower palette of fonts and tidying up the layout by placing the information all within the black band and dropping the amount of information shown, the average viewer will usually grant a poster on the streets less than 3 seconds viewing time… so too much in-depth information is pointless…

i felt that the identity’s own colour scheme (black & red) needed to be used more explicitly in the posters and it aims to reflect the dark ‘theatrical feeling’ of other channels such as the recently designed website by ‘fabrique’, i will be developing several other projects for them in the coming year as well as continuing to roll out the posters for the upcoming productions, shown here are also a number of the sketches made in the initial stages of the design

the red border in the final design has even been made slightly larger than i first intended, as it is a very important element in the whole ‘look & feel’, it is perhaps even the principle housestyle element, at least for the posters, the imagery is usually provided by the production companies themselves and it is therefore very ‘tricky’ to rely on good quality pictures as a main focus for the design, hence the dominant red border…

m / 19-10-2010 10:38 - tags: ,  

twenty percent (first published in ‘news’ 19th august)

the dutch design association (BNO) has published a report entitled design effectiveness made together with the netherlands ministry of economic affairs, most important conclusions worth a quick mention: products (and organisations) that have received a lot of attention to design (experience and functional) perform on average 20% better than those that don’t, not a fact that would surprise most designers i know or those clients that understand the importance of design, those clients that yet don’t are probably not very likely to change their attitude towards design based on this figure, i would guess…


the second noteworthy fact is that products (or services) where designers have been given a relatively large amount of freedom during the design process, tend to be much more effective and perform better than those where the client keeps a tight rein on development, again not a real surprise to me and my colleagues… clients please read this report, keeping complete overall control doesn’t lead to a better result… honest

it’s time that somebody wrote a paper on the intangible effects and benefit of good design not just the financial one… i mean, just look where accruing more money has got the world in the last few years

the english version can be downloaded here

m / 19-08-2010 18:15 - tags: ,  

give me…

for those who didn’t already know: ‘me studio’ started out as a duo (that’s where the name comes from martin & erik) the office has since changed location four times (and is due to move once again in october this year probably) we’ve worked for some fascinating clients and won numerous awards in the past few years, we’ve also had equally as much fun making all of the other less celebrated projects too… we’ve seen some amazing work from fellow designers & creative minds all over the world, which we like to share on a daily basis with everyone… graphic design is still the best job i could ever think of…

the ‘me blog’ recently underwent a pretty structural face-lift at the back-end (and will have another one in the coming months), the number of ‘unique page views’ is growing daily, we’ve received visitors here at the office from tokyo, denmark, london, italy, france and many many more from such faraway places as vietnam, chili, poland, china, kazachstan everyday via the blog… (thank you) i am also now blogging for ‘fontanel’ on a regular basis, sharing some inspiration in dutch too and the number of people who contact me with interesting stuff and invites to get my work published in books etc. is amazing

the point of all of this rambling is that we’ve got a birthday to celebrate, the time stamp on this post (8-8-8) marks our fifth anniversary as a company, i say ‘we’ because although i am the only person who sits in the office everyday ‘me studio’ is the result of a large network of fine people around me and talented artists i get to work with everyday, thank you all very much, if you feel like leaving a comment or even criticism here below, be my guest, here’s to the next five… cheers!

m / 08-08-2010 20:08 - tags: , ,  
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