1 Title

The portfolio of Jan Aulbach;part of the application atthe Royal Academy of Art,The Hague

(as exchange student)

3 Introduction

Hello! Thanks for reviewing my application for the Royal Academy or Art. First I want to explain why I would be happy to attend the KABKfor an exchange semester4 and afterwards I show a selection of my recent work8.

You can find more of my workon my online portfolio over at www.jan-aulbach.de and atmy visual diary / research blogwww.visu-aal.tumblr.com.

I hope to see you soon,

Jan Aulbach

4

I first came accross the Royal Academy of Art when Pawel Pokutycki did a talk and a workshop at my university in Darmstadt. I was in the first year back then and I was impressed by the take on interaction design he teaches his students, ranging from high-tech projects to analogue posters and installations. I browsed to the website of the KABK and was impressed by the diverse output of the school. Later my interests got deeper into typography and then I some-times stumbled upon the Type]Media Master study course and again I was impressed. Impressed by the internationality of the course and in love with videos of chocolate letters, and punchcutting. The visual language of the KABK site and the presented projects are contemporary, experimental, fun. This paired with the fact that it is grounded in traditional education like hand-lettering, really makes the course at The Hague so interesting for me. My university in Darmstadt is pretty much based on the edu-cational principles of the HfG Ulm and the really rational and cerebral take on graphic design makes me want to experience new approaches. I want to dive deeper in general into dutch contemporary graph-ic design and dutch design history. I will do a master course after my diploma in Darmstadt and therefore want to look closer at the design culture in the Netherlands.

Why KABK?

5 Why KABK?

7

Now, the projects.

8

Reasons & Results is a collection of opinions and statements of inde-pendent publishers from Arts and Crafts to the current self-publishing movement and results of their making. Reasons & Results explores the reason of and the urge to publish throughout centuries. By separating the contributors from their work and name, the reader does not get manipulated by the contributor‘s work, name or reputation. Each state-ment is given the same weight. So the reader can focus purely on the question: Why do they publish? The book contains a collection of 26 statements on the contribu-tors motivations on publishing with a representative catalogue of their work on the sleeve on 64 pages plus sleeve.

Reasons & ResultsPublication about motivations of self-initiated publishingDecember 2011

9 Reasons & Results

10 Reasons & Results

The typographic style of the book is subtle and concentrated on reading pleasure.

11 Reasons & Results

The sleeve of the book works as catalogue of publications realised by the contributors. The cover and the title of each publicationis shown together with the index number of the contributor, which can be looked upin the back of the book.

Original copy attached!

12 WIKI/WORKS

WIKI/WORKS was a project I created together with Fabian Beier and Alexander Lis. We planned a workshop at my university in Darmstadt with the aim to create an open information platform for contemporary graphic design, since nearly no information on graphic designers and schools is easily accesible on Wikipedia or any other concentrated plat-form. I developed the identity together with Fabian Beier and we cre-ated a series of posters, which were first set and printed and afterwards painted and lettered by hand individually. Since the workshop we or-ganised was not supervised by any tutor, the idea of taking it in our own hands was always present. So we did the posters by hand too, without the need of any budgets. The workshop took place at the 19th and 20th of January 2012. Together with the nine attendants from Darmstadt and Mainz we cre-ated the structure and parameters for the content, the technical basis and also created over 100 entries to start with. Future workshops are planned in Mainz and Augsburg to carry on with the project.

WIKI/WORKS

Conception, creation and organisation of a workshopJanuary 2012

13 WIKI/WORKS

14 WIKI/WORKS

15 WIKI/WORKS

WIKI/WORKS is live atgraphic-design-wiki.com

16 WIKI/WORKS

For all online promotion we wanted keepthe overpainting idea, without having too big files. So we adapted analogue versions digitally, which added a new aesthetic feel to the online posters.

17 WIKI/WORKS

We presented the hand-painted posters always in groups, since we were only able to print on A3. The collection on the left is about 120 ×160 cm big.

18 Reasons & Results

In the context of the After School Club #1, organised by Eike König in Offenbach, I took part in a two-days workshop with Niklaus Troxler on poster design. The theme of the course was “to divide”. We started by creating one poster (DIN A1) until noon of the first day. The rest of the time, we created new posters, by dividing the first one or one of the following posters while still covering the theme. We should reinterpret and reorganise our previous designs in all mat-ters. My first poster was a black on white illustration with text, which you will find on the next spread. The presented poster here on the right was done by overpainting that version and adding a new concept to it. I personally like the most, that you still can see the former text in the middle of the head if you look closely, even better at poster size. It re-sembles the process of the making and adds texture withouth having to add it purposely.

Troxler Poster WorkshopPoster designs from a workshop with Niklaus TroxlerApril 2012

19 Troxler Poster Workshop

20 Troxler Poster Workshop

Divided brain hemispheresCreated by isolating the brain from one draft

A draft for the first poster.“Divide et Impera” means divide and

conquer on latin.

21 Troxler Poster Workshop

“Always together we wrack our heads”This was the first final poster on which the latter were based.

22 Troxler Poster Workshop

23 Troxler Poster Workshop

24

I attended a course on typeface design by Dan Reynolds. The idea of Ladywell is basically a Grotesque that could have been written with a broad pen. Ladywell is my first take on typeface design and I learned how hard it is to create a proper consequent and balanced typeface. The strictness of the angle was often reduced in favour of readabilty. At the moment I am still adding numerals and glyphs and opti-mizing the balance within the typeface. If created the attached specimen poster to show the current status of the work. The attached leaflet shows some example text, the interim glyphs pallet, sketches and diagrams. It was designed rough and printed cheap, since the font is not finished. So a finished specimen would have been inappropriate.

LadywellTypeface design December 2011 to current

25 Ladywell

26 Ladywell

27 Ladywell

28 Ladywell

29 Ladywell

In recent years there has been controversy over Lewisham

Council s decision to close the Ladywell Swimming Pool and

sports Centre to build a school. Many local residents feel

that a school is not needed in this part of Lewisham, that it

will increase already high levels of congestion and that

closing the pool many years before building a new one will

deprive the area of healthy leisure facilities. This con-troversy led to the area electing Green Party councillors

to all of its three council ward seats, although all three

were lost to Labour and although, in turn, one of Labours

councillors has since resigned, forcing a byelection. The

Labour candidate again beat the Greens into second place.

Original leaflet attached!

30

DARUM is the independent magazine of the students of the faculty of design of my university. The project was founded by Fabian Wohlfahrt and me. In the first step, we created a bold but subtle identity and an on-line portal, where all students of our faculty could submit study related or personal projects to publish them. We created a tool that brought more awareness to the students; what their fellow students work on, what positions one can find in the work of the university and of course appreciation of the work. To promote the new portal, we designed and produced several flyers, posters and leaflets to motivate our fellow students to upload their work. The portal was highly accepted by the students. In January we released the first printed publication of DARUM, a small reader with three design-cricitcal texts. The reader also contains a representation of each of the projects that was uploaded to that date. The texts are accompanied by references to our faculty library, to en-courage the students to visit it and to gain knowledge of their field of work. At the moment we gathered bigger “staff ” and are planning the first big magazine publication in collaboratoin with our local newspaper printing house

DARUM Magazine

Concept, design and editing of a magazine and blogOctober 2011 to current

31 DARUM Magazine

32 DARUM Magazine

Original copies attached!

33 DARUM Magazine

darum-magazin.de

darum-magazin.de

FUCKDANCELET‘S DESIGN!

34

For an exhibition in Aschaffenburg in March, I did a range of experi-ments with black and white painted posters. I tried different styles of lettering. For me this kind of work was again more intuitive opposed to the quite clear typographic focused works I did in the past year. Some posters stand alone, but for the exhibition I also wrote a poem an presented the posters in row as a text. I learned that this kind of lettering on bigger formats with bigger pens and brushes was really fun for me and opens up a lot of new pos-sibilities by layering and overpainting and reusing failed attempts. The poster on the right says “delirium of joy”.

Poster LetteringsExperiments with language and lettering in paintFebruary 2012

35 Poster Letterings

36 Poster Letterings

37 Poster Letterings

The posters show a poem written for the exhibition and were presented together.

38 Poster Letterings

39 Poster Letterings

40

The project is about the text “The Art of Controversy” by Arthur Scho-penhauer. The text is about techniques and strategies to be right in a discussion, without beeing actually right. He shows 38 rhethorical strat-agems to win a discussion and explains his concept of Eristic Dialectic. My pamphlet covers the text on the Eristic Dialectic the intro-duction to the stratagems. But for each chapter and several passages I added notes, interrupted the text, added “corrections” and my “own two cents” into the text. All passages written by me are set 90° flipped and in a bigger size. Also I corrected the Old Greek terms Schopenhauer often uses with appropriate modern English terms. The 38 strategements themeselve were transformed to cue cards for practice for people who “aren’t so intellectual skilled” to read the whole text of Schopenhauer. Of course the whole project is based on a staging to a complete wiseacre which I try to reflect by all means in conception and produc-tion of the pamphlet.

The Art of Controversy/ A Manual for Wiseacres

Prediploma project on a text of SchopenhauerJune 2011

41 The Art of Controversy

42 The Art of Controversy

43 The Art of Controversy

Original copy attached!

44

The lowercase “a” is problably one the most drawn letters by me and by other designers. In June 2011 I started collecting drafts and digitalising some of them from time to time as an excercice in drawing letters. The project was meant as an excercise in drawing letters but also in how to rebuild them digitally in Illustrator. I created a status-quo collection of a selection of the digitalized letters with 60 lowecase a’s. A copy of the current collection is attached.

a diaryLetter drawing excercise June 2011 to current

45 a diary

46 a diary

The book has 128 pages with dimensionsof 140× 215 mm

47 a diary

48 a diary

49 a diary

Current status attached!

50

I started VISU–AAL sometime last year to have a place for all ideas, sketches and projects that have no place in my portfolio. It is a better place for them than my harddrive. I collect everything from lettering sketches, photographs, design drafts to digital experiments. Please have a visit!

VISU–AALExperiments in visual languageNovember 2011 to current

51 VISU–AAL

52 VISU–AAL

Visit visu-aal.tumblr.com

53 VISU–AAL

54 Colophon

Thanks for getting through all of it!

All works shown by Jan Aulbach www.jan-aulbach.de

Copyright 2011–2012

AddressJan Aulbach Kahlertstraße 2364293 DarmstadtGermany

Typefaces Minion Pro, Grotesque MT, Ladywell

Dimensions150×240 mm

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