Defifee Blog

2007

Found a picture from 2007. I think I was feeling bad then. I’m better now..I hope.

Nude drawing 12

I don’t really have the impression that my drawings are getting any better. I’m just tired of pencils and I’d like to use thick charcoal or something like that. I’m not interested in the details of a silhouette and single muscles. But I’m not sure..I saw someone elses drawing who manages to express much more with some pencil strokes than me with all the confused smearing. Maybe I’m just too lazy and I’m hiding my inability behind the thick and rough strokes.

Nude sketches 11

Drawing people can sometimes be frustrating. The body is built so sophisticated and you can’t see what’s going on under the skin. Of course I studied some Anatomy books but in the end it never looks the way I wanted it…If at least I’d manage to get the surface and direction lines right it would be a leap forward.

GDR movie posters

Some days ago I found these movie posters from the 1980s on ebay. The cinemas in the GDR used to show old children’s movies or fairy tale movies all the time and probably these posters were designed for this purpose and not for the film premiere.

“Das kalte Herz“/The cold heart was one of the first fairy tale movies produced in the GDR by the film studio DEFA and it’s one of my favorites. I really like this poster too and the way it merges photography, type and these little tree icons. Even today it looks modern and cold.

“Max und die 7 1/2 Jungen“/Max and the 7 1/2 boys is a film i have never seen. When I first read the poster text I thought it’s one of these socialist children’s movies about discipline, antifascism and brigades. But I read somewhere else that it is an amusing roadmovie. Maybe one day I get to watch it. I chose this poster because it’s using the standard GDR school font for the copy text.

“Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot“
/Snow-White and Rose-Red form 1979 is a wonderful and charming fairy tale movie with German and Czech actors. But the poster doesn’t quite get the movie’s atmosphere in my opinion.

“Ein Sonntagskind das manchmal spinnt“ /A Sunday Child&rdquo, I can’t remember if I watched this movie but it seems a little familiar to me. The poster title “A DEFA-film by the group Red Circle” made me a little suspicious but I guess names like these were common at that time.

Nude sketches 10

My life drawing course is over now. These are the sketches I made yesterday. I think I’ll sign up for another course. It’s not that cheap but it’s worth it. Yesterday we had the chance to take some quick sketches with changing poses. That was more fun. Normally the model keeps one pose for about 20 minutes, which is too long on my opinion.

Ulm School of Design

The Ulm School of Design (HfG) was a famous design school that followed the Bauhaus design. Founded in 1953 by Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill with the support of the USA it became well-known for the idea that form follows function and the expression “to ulm up”. The HfG was closed in 1968.

Buildings

The HfG buildings are situated far-off the center of the provincial Swabian city Ulm. It seems that the HfG never really managed to establish a relationship to the people of Ulm. The war was just over and people struggled to get comfortable in their new realities when these strange designers from all over the world appeared in Ulm just to preach the end of German kitsch and comfy arm chairs.

When I first saw the HfG buildings I just found them cold and empty. Its rooms and halls are high and light-flooded. When it was built only the cheapest material was available and students had to help during the construction work.

Interiors

The only non-angled place at the HfG was the curved bar in the cafeteria. It was the place to eat, meet and discuss. In the beginning there weren’t enough chairs for the students. Max Bill invented the Ulm stool, a kind of makeshift chair. Each student had to assemble his own stool, a practical piece of furniture for sitting, as a table or tray. Today they are sold as expensive design product

The HfG foyer today

The foyer during the 60s

the curved bar

Today the buildings are used as a day hospital for psychologically impaired people. But the city of Ulm is planning to establish a “designpark”. The HfG Archives are going to move back in there too. Right now there is not much to see inside except a suite of armchairs and a table. However the Ulmer Museum has a remarkable exhibition with HfG design displays.

Ulm stools

Exhibits at the museum

This poster is the only HfG piece I own. It was designed for the Ulmer Christmas market at around 1965 by the visual design group working with Otl Aicher. The background shows the entrance of the famous Ulmer Minster which is the tallest church in the world. At that time the market sqare around the minster was a giant parking lot.

Biro portraits

No time for my figure drawing course but endless hours of enduring the other kids’ presentations.

Marginal Group

I made a new piece of letter art called “Randgruppe” the German word for marginal or minority group. “Randgruppe” is a horrible word. Marginal groups exist on society’s edge and are not integrated. They are outsiders. Foreigners and gays used to be marginal groups of the past. Today’s marginal groups are handicapped and jobless people. Marginal groups are pushed to society’s borders, they just can’t move to the center.
On the one their otherness distinguishes them clearly from the gray mass, on the other hand they are drowned by this mass.

Web design

We had this web design project at school. Actually it was about making an accessible website for a fictional online food magazine for students and young people. Unlike the other kids I’m not really part of the audience. We had to spend a ridiculous amount of time in research about nutrition and whatever stuff…Anyway I made the site work in firefox and safari for now but if I have time ill try to get it right in ie too. I’m not sure about the grade I will get for this project yet but I don’t care much.

I’m just a beginner but web design is something I would like to spend more time on maybe the next years. Shall I really go on studying at this badly equipped university with overloaded useless schedules if I already know that I’m not going to learn what I need anymore there? Must I torture myself with Flex and Actionscript and writing pointless pages of bibliography as if we are doing serious scientific research there and not just some pixel pushing?

Maybe it’s just the local Swabian mentality of this provicial technical university where 90% of the students are guys with striped sweaters and horrible dialects. I should stop ranting and do something!

Business card

2 weeks ago I made a contribution to Andy Clarke’s business card contest. The task was to design a business card for a private detective or a “private dick”.
The best detective besides Inspector Clouseau is Douglas Adam’s “Dirk Gently”, the owner of a holistic detective agency. He solves problems and crimes by considering every possibly related detail.

So I invented a typographic business card for him. The slogan “holistic detective agency” and ”the whole solution to your problem” both contain an “o”. Its roundness is also reflecting Dirk Gently’s broad and global research strategy. For example he travels to far away countries to find the whereabouts of old ladies’ cats… I replaced the “o” with Gently’s London address.

I don’t mind that I didn’t win, my card is maybe a little too simplistic. And there were at least five really good entries some of which didn’t make it to be best either. I just wondered why there were many business cards that showed really bad typography: careless mixtures of fonts and font styles, drop shadows and what not. I thought the people who read Andy Clarke’s blog are well educated designers, even if it is about web design.