Gestalten.tv

To describe Henrik Vibskov as merely a fashion designer would be a vast understatement. As an artist, passionate musician, innovative stage designer, and head of his trendsetting eponymous fashion label he is at the vanguard of a new generation of creative multi-taskers. Gestalten.tv visited him in his Copenhagen studio for a chat about music, colors, the first comprehensive monograph of his remarkably versatile creative vision and (not) being your typical Scandinavian designer.

Aram Bartholl’s work explores the power structures, the social systems, the cultural innovations, the inner dynamics, the languages, and the products that are shaping our age. The Berlin-based artist, whose first monograph Aram Bartholl: The Speed Book is published by Gestalten, creates savvy experiments with transitions from the virtual to the physical like USB sticks embedded into walls, buildings, and curbs; giant real-life versions of Google's red map markers positioned in public spaces; and portraits generated from image search results. We met him for a Gestalten.tv interview to discuss what he refers to as his "self-created twilight zone."

When he stumbled upon Stählemühle, an old dormant mill used as schnaps distillery, former Art publisher Christoph Keller took upon the task of bringing it back to life. next to the Aqua Vitae - fruit brandies in small, high-quality batches -with his companion Alexander Stein of Black Forest Distillers he also distills Monkey 47 (named after its 47 different ingredients) through his second label Schwarzwald Dry Gin, which was awarded “Best Gin in the World” in 2011 at the International wine and Spirit Competition in London. We visited the Master Distiller to learn all about the ancient alchemical science of distilling, the most exotic and obscure fruits imaginable and to see how such a sustainable and organic operation can be achieved on a small farm with only a small amount of land, a lot of know-how and the work of four hands. 

Heavy metal is a cultural phenomenon that unites its fans across borders, generations, genders, religions, and social classes. Photographer Jörg Brüggemann traveled to Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Switzerland and the USA to shoot pictures of heavy metal fans for his Gestalten-published Metalheads:The Global Brotherhood. He told us all about the globalization of heavy metal, the fine line between being a fan and keeping the distance and headbanging women in Egypt.This latest Gestalten.tv will surely work up your appetite for our forthcoming exhibition at Gestalten Space. Accompanying the release of the book and featuring a live performance by SUN WORSHIP (black metal from Berlin) with Jörg Brüggemann in attendance, the show presents vivid images that capture the lives and passion of heavy metal fans from around the world.

Under their group moniker Numen, Industrial designers Sven Jonke, Christoph Katzler and Nikola Radeljković focus on experimental architecture and spatial installations, meanwhile concentrating on designing objects as their second alias For Use. The Croatian/Austrian collective might be best known for the huge accessible tape installations they realized in Melbourne, Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt and Belgrade so far. We met Christoph Katzler in the Belgian town of Hasselt where he talked about the evolution of their true grids from ephemeral tape to permanent net (materialized in the Net Z33), the social aspect of their work as featured in Learn for Life: New Architecture for New Learning and why hell doesn't need to be hot to give you an idea of infinity.

Gestalten.tv met a true "Type Writer" and typography expert to find out more about the "GPS for fonts." Alongside Martin Lorenz and Lupi Ascensio of TwoPoints.Net, Jan Middendorp edited Type Navigator: The Independent Foundries Handbook, the essential overview of the modern typefaces currently available and the innovative people and companies behind them. Hear him talk about the need for a substantial guide within the ever growing landscape of typography and the current popularity of typefaces and fonts within the design community.

Francesco Franchi is the art director for IL-Intelligence in Lifestyle, the monthly magazine of Il Sole 24 ORE, Italy’s leading financial daily. "Embracing new languages in journalism", Franchi is a true master of combining representation and interpretation, creating a visual form that is as graphic as it is narrative, as entertaining as it is informative. His work has been awarded on numerous occasions, including the European Design Awards and at the renowned Malofiej conference. Gestalten.tv met with him last summer in Berlin to talk about his influences, innovative storytelling and non-linear reading in today's editorial design.

American artist Mark Jenkins's urban (and rural) interventions are street-smart—in the truest sense of the word. Jenkins creates and sets free a colorful cast of characters by way of clear tape casts: the homeless, kids, vagrants, polar bears, and horses (to name but a few) all take their place in the wild, wild urban space, while interacting with the surrounding buildings and public places that provide the context and set the stage. Positioning them around the world, Jenkins’ sculptures have made their way around the world in cities throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Disturbing, humorous, and enigmatic in equal measures, Mark Jenkins enlists his hyper-realistic sculptures into the service of, for example, Greenpeace, as well as for exhibitions, performances, art galleries, and workshops. We met the Washington, DC-based Jenkins in Berlin, where he was contributing to a dance theatre piece.

House Industries has been producing their premier league retro design and their true love…Fonts! Fonts! Fonts! since 1993. House Industries’ lead letterer Ken Barber recently visited us in Berlin to give a workshop at our Gestalten Space, which explored the creative process of hand-lettering and the application of illustrative letterforms in contemporary graphic design. We took this chance to interview him on Gestalten.tv where he talks about the necessity of specialization and the fine lines between lettering, typography, and font design.

Headed by Prem Krishnamurthy, Adam Michaels, and Rob Giampietro, Project Projects is one of the most interesting design studios in practice today. Acclaimed for their conceptual and content-driven approach to visual form, the studio works with a highly-focused set of clients, including, among others, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Project Projects produces work across a wide range of media: from artist books, catalogs, and institutional identity systems to websites, exhibition design, signage, and infrastructure projects. Learn more about the three principals' principles in our latest Gestalten.tv interview, which took place in their studio in NYC.

When it comes to unorthodox, yet hugely successful ways of producing and distributing cutting-edge furniture and product designs, look no further than a former Philips ceramic factory in Eindhoven. Here, Dutch design star Piet Hein Eek has brought a vision into being, a vision that encompasses social responsibility, efficiency, and sustainability to everyone's advantage: his own, as well as that of his business partners, employees, and clients.  Graduating from the Design Academy Eindhoven and creating a pioneering cupboard made from scrap wood as early as 1990, the equally humorous, relaxed, yet hard-working Eek is surely at his creative peak these days. Learn all about his unique creative design universe in Gestalten.tv's latest interview feature.

Recurring themes in Joep van Lieshout's (Atelier van Lieshout) work are the organization of the world, power structures, economy, revolution and new tribal organization, autarky, and the classical themes of life and death. Or, to quote Joep himself: "You can say a lot of things about the apocalypse, but it certainly is not boring."  We met the sculptor, who recently worked on a stage design for the esteemed Bayreuth Festival, in his Rotterdam workshop where he was busy addressing the history of farming in his inimitable artistic way. 

Typographer, graphic designer, researcher, and writer Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès is the founder of the Khatt Foundation, Center for Arabic Typography, which is dedicated to advancing design research and typography in the Middle East, North Africa, and their diaspora. We met the Amsterdam-based expert for bilingual typographic research and design—whose project Typographic Matchmaking in the City is featured in Gestalten's Arabesque 2: Graphic Design from the Arab World and Persia—to talk about the relationships between Arab and Latin typography, typography and architecture, as well as the visual musicality of calligraphy.

With its more than 20-year history, the media artists and designers, software developers, media technicians and engineers, communication and product designers, scientists, and project managers at ART+COM continue to play a central role in defining the international forefront of spatial media communication. We met Head of Design and Chairman Professor Joachim Sauter to learn more about the past, present, and future of the digital (r)evolution which ART+COM helped to set off, shape, and keep alive working for—amongst others—BMW, Esprit, and Deutsche Bank, as well as exhibiting at museums including the Centre Pompidou and the Shanghai Art Museum, along with the Venice Biennale.

The Berlin-based artist Sarah Illenberger has developed a very unique and strong visual language, conveying even the most abstract and complex content into vivid, humorous, and concise visual forms without ever forcing a meaning on them. For her meticulously-crafted work—including commissions for Vanity Fair, Time, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wallpaper*, and Nike—she mostly uses simple materials and household items such as paper, food, textiles, and wood.  Learn more about how Sarah Illenberger's analog handicraft and creative eye reveal the true essence of things through her first Gestalten-published monograph and the latest Gestalten.tv Interview, which took place in her studio in Berlin.