Publication meeting Werkplaats Typografie
To graduate from the DAI, we need to have produced three things;
- A website
- A thesis
- A publication
The first of these two are fairly self-explanitory, but it is the third which is a bit different. The idea is that we work in collaboration with a student from the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, a sister school of the DAI which offers a masters programme in graphic design and typography. We have a small budget (about €1000) each to produce and print a publication (book(let), poster, etc) which should be about our work as artists. Of course, it remains open what form this will take, but the idea is certainly that the publication become something of a work in itself, rather than simply a catalogue.
We have had several meetings about this earlier, but today was our first visit to the Werkplaats. We would present our work to the designers, they would do likewise, and then the working collaborations would be arranged. I have to admit that I found the whole experience quite stressful, like a job interview or application process that lasts a whole bloody day. The idea is that after everybody had shown their work, we would all list our preferred partners with a first, second, and third choice, and hopefully this would match up fairly neatly. My biggest and most paranoid fear was of course that nobody would want to work with me at all, or only somebody whose work I could not stand, but in the end it turned out to be pretty OK; I was paired with a woman from Brazil named Cecilia who was in fact my first choice to work with. I hope she will find it not too difficult working with me!
This whole horrible process took most of the day, after which time we had a discussion about how we would proceed with working together; I have very little experience of collaboration, and thought it was important to say so. What I find the most difficult is knowing where the boundaries lie between my remit and hers. For example, I am supposed to supply the content while the designer takes care of the, well, design. Since I myself have a background in design before I became involved in visual art, and since I always love to get involved in every detail of the things I am making, this is very weird for me. I do very much hope though that it works out.
