What was German Graphic Design?
In 2010, I participated in the university project »Was war deutsches Grafik-Design« as a research assistant. With a group effort we built a database containing around 200 style-defining designers, who worked and work in Germany in the past sixty years.
An interactive ›research table‹ allowed an analytic access to the collected amount of data. The designers’ work and journey through life could be interrelated and visualised. The project was meant to lay the foundation of a ›Visual History‹ of German graphic design and was exhibited in the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.
Was war deutsches Grafik-Design?—research table.
Contributing with our extensive research, we assistants have been part of a project that provided a quantitive as well as qualitative overview over the graphic history of our country. By learning so much about the cultural identity of our native home, I started to wonder in what way my own design could be considered ›German‹—a question with a definite answer still to find.
The result also revealed the value of the seemingly monotonous repetition of gathering information, proving to me that pursuing information design had been the right choice. My objective to deliver substantial work roots in this field of design and expands even to my expressive and narrative pieces.
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study / University of the Arts Berlin / 2010
project board / Severin Wucher, Kilian Krug, Markus Lerner
assistance / Cathleen Gettkandt, Ferdinand Ulrich, Manja Schiemann, Mara Hellmann, Patrick Funk, Wanda Proft