Epic graphic
design

LOGBOOK SSC

Client: Grand Theatre Groningen
Services: Visual Identity, Interactive & Web, Print
Design: Studio Lennarts & De Bruijn

STEP 1

Lennarts & De Bruijn developed a brand-new visual identity for Grand Theatre which is accessible, recognizable, distinctive, counter-threaded, flexible, diverse, and simple. Grand Theatre is a theater/ stage that works together with different artists, actors, theater groups, festivals and it is a place where all these people can show their talents.

3 design/art projects

Lennarts & de Bruijn designed this new corporate identity for Grand Theatre in Groningen. Studio Lennarts & de Bruijn is a creative studio that has existed since 2015. They make visual identities, campaigns, branding, websites, art direction, books, animations, copywriting, videos, merchandise, exhibitions, illustrations, and so on. The agency is located in The Hague.

The stage functions as a central point in everything Grand Theatre does and stands for, so they made it the identity’s fundament as well. they have translated this in an abstract way, with the rectangle representing the stage and the oval as the spotlight. Surely the spotlight refers to the theatre, but in a metaphorical way, it also represents GTG’s capability and ambition to increase the presence and visibility of (performing) artists.

THE IDEA BEHIND THE VISUAL IDENTITY

This design for Grand Theatre should make people curious and attracts people to buy a ticket for a show or collaborate with them. The design makes Grand Theatre look unique and it makes it a design that you can easily recognize. This ensures that people do not easily forget the theater and when they come across a poster on the street, for example, they will quickly recognize it as a poster of Grand Theatre. So the target group is, therefore, the persons who want to go to a performance or who love art and would like to see it and also the artists themselves and the people who may want to work with them.

WHAT DO I SEE IN THIS PROJECT FROM THE PRACTICES

This design is made for commercial purposes, so to promote the theater and make it recognizable. So it was important in this project to do good research on the target group to get them to the theater. I also think that the work also looks quite autonomous. You do not immediately recognize what it is and you start to ask yourself what the design exactly represents.

DESIGN FUNCTIONS

Client: Mojo/Down The Rabbit Hole
Services: Visual Identity
Design: Merijn hos
Animation: Jurriaan Hos
Custom typeface: Bas Koopmans & Merijn Hos

Merijn Hos is an Illustrator, Visual Artist, and occasional Art Director based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He graduated in 2004 with a BFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in Utrecht.

Jurriaan Hos (His brother) Graduated in 2005 with a BAT in Interaction Design from the HKU, School of Visual Arts Utrecht.
In their collaboration, Merijn makes illustrations/art and Jurriaan makes the animations.

They're working since 2014 together for Down The Rabbit Hole and the design changes every year. However, there are always a number of elements that return, so that it remains recognizable as Down The Rabbit Hole. In these works, Merijn says the goal is “to translate the feel of my illustration and artwork into real life objects and situations.

Merijn has a diverse and ever-changing portfolio. He works with illustration, different styles, and aesthetics. He likes to get out of his comfort zone and discover new things and therefore likes to go in different directions. Because he has experimented a lot in recent years, he came to an old photocopier from the 1980s and started creating grains and gradients with this machine. Feeding his distinctive color palettes into it, the finished products have a beautiful warmth to them.

HIS WORK

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

The purpose of the design for down the rabbit hole is to give them their own identity and individuality. As a result, people will recognize the festival as Down The Rabbit Hole. The design represents what the festival is like and what they want to project. It is a colorful psychedelic design and because it comes to life through the animations, it represents a different world. Down The Rabbit Hole wants to attract young people who want to spend a weekend in a colorful place with their favorite music. Because the design is brought back throughout the festival, as you can see in the picture of the balls, the world they created as a promotion also keeps coming back in the festival itself.

WHAT DO I SEE IN THIS PROJECT FROM THE PRACTICES

Merijn is an autonomous artist himself. He experiments tries new things over and over and his works raise more questions than answers. He mainly makes things that he likes and finds experimentation very important. I also think the work for down the rabbit hole is very autonomous, but is ultimately also used for commercial purposes. I really like how he brings his designs to life together with his brother and how his work is also used as decor for the festival.

STEP 2

Merijn Hos - Down The Rabbit Hole

I chose the work of Merijn Hos because I admire his way of working. In the work that he now creates, he has searched for his own style by experimenting a lot. Because he stays by himself, he chooses or gets customers where he can go his own way, because these people have chosen him because they think his work is cool and because he only works for customers he supports.

I personally love festivals and music a lot and I think it would be cool to make something for a festival. The way in which all elements of Merijn's work return to the festival in 3D objects, film, clothing, etc. I also like to work with animation and I find it fascinating to see how your design comes to life.

I find it very inspiring how Merijn started with autonomous work and how he now gets commercial projects from this. I'm still looking for what I find beautiful and interesting to make, so the way he works and how he is, makes me think. In my own work, I would like to see how I could combine autonomous work with commercial work.

STEP 3

Merijn Hos

Merijn Hos is an Illustrator, Visual Artist, and occasional Art Director based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He graduated in 2004 with a BFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in Utrecht.

Merijn has a diverse and ever-changing portfolio. He works with illustration, different styles, and aesthetics. He likes to get out of his comfort zone and discover new things and therefore likes to go in different directions. Because he has experimented a lot in recent years, he came to an old photocopier from the 1980s and started creating grains and gradients with this machine. Feeding his distinctive color palettes into it, the finished products have a beautiful warmth to them.

AUTONOMOUS WORK

COMMERCIAL WORK

GRAND THEATRE

DOWN
THE
RABBIT
HOLE

Merijn: "My roots are in Twente, which is in the eastern part of the Netherlands. This is where I grew up skateboarding and doing graffiti in the mid 90s. Skateboarding especially played a big role in me becoming a creative person. Living in an area where there were only a handful of skateboarders and having few skate spots made us a close and innovative group of youngsters. We were outsiders that lived in our own world. It was a beautiful time in my life. My parents always stimulated my creative ambitions and took my younger brothers and I to a lot of museums as kids and we loved it.

After a few attempts at “normal” schools, I knew I needed to go to art school. Next to being into graffiti, I was working on paintings in my bedroom influenced by German expressionism. My parents took us to a show of Der Blaue Reiter of Wassily Kandinsky and friends. I was hooked on that for a small period. I tried to make my own versions within that style, I did the same with Egon Schiele and Jean Michel Basquiat, who were my favourite artists as a teenager. That stuff got me into the Utrecht School of Arts. I wanted to study Fine Arts but my mother told me that I would be better off with illustration because that way I could make a decent living after I graduated. In the end it took me six years to graduate instead of four. I was studying fine arts within the illustration course and that wasn’t really a match.

I think that attitude is pretty significant for what I do today. I got out of art school in 2004 and immediately started working on commissioned work that suited me well. I created a situation somehow in which clients ask me for what I do best then I create artwork that is somewhere between art and design. I feel comfortable in that twilight zone. I’m approaching art spaces in a similar way, I look at the space and think of it as a blank canvas on which I’m going to present my project. Beforehand I think carefully about how everything should look and feel and try to create a perfect experience."

http://minigalerie.nl/interview-merijn-hos/

He gets a lot of inspiration from music. He loves a lot of genres and every genre fits a time of the day. When he feels nostalgic he listens to Bon Iver, James Blake, Blood Orange that kind of stuff. He likes Mac DeMarco, lots of other indie bands too. When he needs energy he plays new hip hop stuff like Travis Scott or 90s hip hop. He also likes Frank Ocean a lot. He love to go out dancing all night on good electronic music from time to time. Late at night, he might listen to things like Joep Beving. The artist that he loves the most at the moment is MorMor. His sound and lyrics are off the hook.

Over the last year he has also been looking a lot at photography, especially to learn about light which is key when working with live action film. Film is something he is really interested in at the moment.

What inspires him most is life in general. Everything he sees, feel and experience. That’s the core of everything he does

http://minigalerie.nl/interview-merijn-hos/

INSPIRATION

HOW HE BECAME AN ARTIST

MY FUTURE

I would like to create my own style in the future. I think it would be cool if people come to me and want to work with me because they like my style. For this. I have to experiment a lot and find out what gives me the most joy. For now, my interests are mainly in music and the creative culture sector, such as festivals, theaters, concert halls, etc. I think it would be very cool to be able to do something as a graphic designer in this sector.

Before I can achieve this, I think I have to dare a little more and be less modest. I'm often so afraid of doing something wrong that I no longer enjoy making it. Before I want to get that far I just have to do things and not think too much. I should try to enjoy what I do and not be too hard on myself.
In the future I would also like to work with other people on projects. I think I don't like working on a project all by myself and it gives me more energy to do this with someone else.

I also think I should let go of my computer more often and experiment more often with other things outside my computer. I have always been very interested in film, light installations, animation (visuals), music, and photography and I think I want to do more with this to combine with my graphic work.

INTO
THE
GREAT
WIDE
OPEN

Client: Into the great wide open
Services: Festival campaign 2019
Design: Bas Koopmans
Partner: Data design studio CLEVER°FRANKE

The design of into the great wide open is based on data and it's a leading theme in the campaign.

Bas about the idea: "A visit to Vlieland is largely influenced by weather conditions. The island is emotionally a different place in any weather. Is the sun shining or is the rain tapping on the tent? Can we sit outside during the boat trip or blow from the deck? All of these conditions affect how we feel. They are measurable and predictable again by collecting that data. This gave rise to the idea of ​​having the weather data also influence the visual language and artwork of the campaign. Not emotionally, but literally 1-to-1. ”

The campaign is aimed at the people who come to the festival and therefore also to the island. The island itself is an important element of the festival and therefore it's an important element to include in the campaign. I think it's a very cool idea this was done through the weather forecasts of the island during the festival. They also looked at today's society. We are consciously and unconsciously surrounded and influenced all day long by that data. And by using data in the campaign, this fits well with today's times.

WHAT DO I SEE IN THIS PROJECT FROM THE PRACTICES

During the commercial practice, we looked a lot at the future and how you as a designer can influence this. I think it's cool that they also looked at what's going on in the world in this campaign and that they used this technique to create the campaign. From the commercial practice, I see this in this project.

CAMPAIGN

The data comes from Rijkswaterstaat. Throughout the day, they measure the conditions in various places in the Netherlands with sensors and can calculate the situation on Vlieland using smart calculation models. Using this data, they have developed smart software with which this data could be translated into picture elements. That system is fed by the graphic shapes and colors.

Then all those shapes and colors were linked to specific elements and they determined rules on how they should behave over the design. The temperature on the island determines the intensity of the colors, the sun determines the size and shape of the circle, the wind speed determines how thick the beam is and the wind direction at which angle it is. Ebb and flow control the triangle again and the water level and wave height affect the oval. And then there is rain. But they haven't had much of it this year on Vlieland.

The exciting thing about this process was that they knew the basic ingredients in advance, but depended on the conditions on the island for the final image. The heat records of the past few weeks have created a much redder and warmer picture than they expected in advance. If it had rained all summer, it would have been a completely different picture.

Into The Great Wide Open is a festival on Vlieland. Music is central, but it is mainly the context that makes the festival its own. Surrounded by nature on perhaps the most beautiful Wadden Island in the Netherlands. Surprising programming, visual arts, film, challenging children's activities and sufficient peace and space to enjoy it optimally.

IDEA BEHIND THE CAMPAIGN