Nevertheless — Until now I couldn’t find the right time to recapitulate and sum it all up properly and in my own written words. So when Kevin Pedron from Italy lately approached me with a bunch of thoughtful questions about the project for his new magazine project called TWELFTH (a quarterly self-published magazine about football with the purpose to tell stories, let fellow designers express, using football as a common subject) I was thrilled to dive deeper into the subject again.

So here is the interview. I hope you enjoy it!

Kevin Pedron: First of all, would you mind introducing yourself, where are you at the moment and what you are up to?

My name is Hugo Hoppmann, I’m a 23-years old multidisciplinary graphic designer from the beautiful city of Cologne in Germany. I studied three years visual communication at the ECAL in Lausanne/Switzerland where I graduated this summer.
Now I’m back in my hometown working full-time as an art director for Meiré und Meiré, which feels like post-studies, but on a very professional level. We are currently working on the second issue of INTERVIEW.
Apart from this “day-job” I write and create a lot these days always trying to push my own projects further.

Since we are here to talk about football, let’s dive into the Piqto United reality. How was the team born? With which purpose?

In 2005 I founded a small t-shirt label named PIQTO (Read the whole story here).
My friends were always super supportive. All of us were wearing PIQTO pretty much to every occasion. And suddenly the name of the label became sort of a synonym for our friend-circle and in our neighborhood we were even getting called The Piqto’s …
Parallel to that (and even way before that) we always played a lot of football on a regular base. Around 2007 — after having played several tournaments and matches under the name “Baui Bolzer” — we wanted to go a step further and build a more professional identity for our very own football club. So we decided to become PIQTO UNITED. This was in spring 2008.

Today we are proud of our unbeatable team-spirit but also of the openess to new players and the support for younger team members. Apart from our regular training we are also playing in a ambitiously managed local football league called “BunteLiga”, as well as competing in all kinds of football tournaments in and around Cologne.

When did you decide to develop your diploma project around a football team? And obviously, why?

The first weeks of the final semester were quite a journey finding the right subject for the diploma project. I initially wanted to continue with my personal magazine project Better Mjstakes, making a “real” issue with ad’s and stuff …
But finally I decided to drop this idea (with the intention to revisit it in the future) as it probably would have turned out to be focused much more on my journallistic abilities than pushing my graphic design skills further. So for my last semester as a student I then tried to find a subject were I could once again dive deeper into my graphic design universe and explore and create something totally new.

Having chosen Piqto United as my subject provided a lot of freedom and allowed me to be very productive in all fields wether conceptually with the whole art direction, or practically with the whole design package including an extensive visual identity, editorial design, typography, photography, webdesign, …

And it had another important advantage: I knew that throughout the whole process of the project (working mostly in Cologne) I would always have the support of my close friends e.g. for all kinds of experiments, wether modeling or helping me out with certain action steps in the production.

The whole project was an attempt to rethink a (football) club’s identity and to improve the whole “identity experience” asking: how do you really identify within your team?
Intern according to the team-spirit in regard to the individual’s position within the group, and extern in how you and your team’s identity can “influence” your environment.

Another important thing for me always was to have a certain realness for my project. I wanted my diploma to have a true purpose also outside of the university frame. I always want my work to serve real people. And I want my work to be useful and to be used.

Could you tell us more about the steps that led to such a wide identity system?

I think I always loved the idea of a “complete package” in visual identities. I remember that since a very young age I was fascinated by the graphic consistency of brands. How everything could visually fit together. One thing that comes to mind are sub-brands of the big sport brands, creating for example special logos and typefaces for new lines or collections for certain products or players.
When everything comes from “one hand” there is a different feel to the whole experience. Everything is united. And especially in the sports frame I think that the members of a team can feel that too. They feel the importance of what they are wearing and representing.

One of the “entrance exercises” to be accepted for studying at ECAL was to create a work on the theme community. Back then in summer 2008 I presented the first logo I had created for PIQTO UNITED, which gave me also the great possibility to “close the cycle”.
So in the end of my studies it really showed quite dramatically the development and progress I have made during the past three years at college from creating one crest to building a whole visual “universe” around the subject.

I’m particularly interested, as an aspiring type designer, about the creation of the corporate typeface called PU Brueder. Why did you feel the need to create a new typeface? How relevant is PU Brueder to the entire project?

In relation to what I have said above about the complete package of a visual identity it was simply a logic thing to do and even one of the very first steps of the overall work.
The typeface was the foundation.
I wanted to create a stable, bold, and quite linear grotesk type with some sharp details.
From the beginning the numbers played a huge role as they where very present throughout the project and had to be powerful and visible for example on the back of the jerseys.

With examples in Paul Barnes’ Crepello (used on Italy and Uruguay jerseys) and Yomar Augusto’s Unity (Germany, Spain), type design finally made its way on professional football shirts. According to your opinion, how much relevance is (type) design acquiring in the world of professional football?

Naturally I was always interested in the visual language of football jersey including the typography. It was great to see that in the past years the typography took a much more professional direction with “real” type designers creating special typefaces for the occasion.

I remember for example the “Olembe” typeface by Paul Barnes for PUMA (more info here) used for most of the African teams which was inspired by the expressive bodypaints and collages of the African football fans. In the font the brush stroke texture was still visible to show the hand painted origins of the letters and numbers.
So in a way the players wore the fans inspired creations which I thought was a beautiful act. And I think that thoughtful design connects people.

The design of the jerseys was an another side of your work that really blew my mind, and probably even more important when the team is on the pitch. How did you come up with that idea? Is it allowed by regulations?

It all began when I talked with my friend Vincent Delaleu about how I could push the whole football thing further. The conversation went from gangs and brotherhoods to war paintings and metamorphoses in the plant and animal world …

Without wanting to exaggerate I still remember clearly the following night when I was still awake in my bed, my head full of thoughts and weird ideas. As usual I had to get it out of my head somehow so I turned on the light again and started writing and scribling and suddenly had this concept of multiple players forming one motif together.

My first idea was to create some kind of spooky face like here — but then I tried to come up with something more simple yet more powerful and ended up with the crosses, also considering in-match situations like freekick-walls and goal-celebrations … which eventually ended up in the whole HAKA idea.

At the presentation day in school four of my friends and players of PIQTO UNITED came down to Lausanne and we performed our self-composed and HAKA war dance live in front of the diploma jury, director Pierre Keller, my teachers, and all the other students … It was the perfect start for my follwing presentation!

(When it comes to the regulations I think the jerseys wouldn’t (yet) be allowed by the FIFA because officially every jersey has to look the same. But in our league it is no problem and we are playing every match with them.)

Did your work help the team gain anything? From popularity to self-confidence, from opponent’s respect to fan base devotion?

You named it! No – seriously, when we played the first tournament it was kind of magic. We made a team photo and went into the formation buildung three really huge crosses together for the first time … I still remember the look on the faces of the other teams!
The thing is: We also visually represented a very strong unity. We embodied a group of friends who really mean it. Who are really living it. Who will fight for the team no matter what. It was one of the best tournaments we ever played.

And of course something like that strenghtens the team-spirit and motivation. The players are literally feeling to be the part of something bigger. The core concept is to underline the importance of every single player within the big group. This is the project’s big metaphor: If someone’s missing it’s not working.

Last question, do you consider your job with the PIQTO team finished or still an evolving project?

PIQTO UNITED is an ever evolving project and we have big plans for this year. Stay tuned! Allez Piqto!

What’s the story behind the foundation of SPEX?

Everything was started with an initiative of Gerald Hündgen and Peter Bömmels. Back in the days there were a lot of fanzines, small photocopied magazines created by fans who wrote about concerts, the scene, the music. They were roughly bound together and had this specific extreme black and white aesthetics and the bad quality of images printed with a copy machine. Peter and Gerald wanted to do something like that, too. I got to know Peter in the Kurfürstenhof which was a punk bar at the time. He asked me if I wanted to take part in it.
Then we had our first meeting: Peter and Gerald, Wilfried Rütten, the photographers Bernhard Schaub and Wolfgang Burat, Clara Drechsler and a few others. Quickly it became quite clear that we didn’t want to make a fanzine but rather a real magazine. So we needed money. Everyone of us then put 50 Mark in a hat and we started working. Bernhard knew a printer in the Sauerland who printed the first number.

What about the name?

This was quite a long journey. Peter wanted a rather pragmatic title, I wanted something short. We then decided on SPEX — Musik zur Zeit. SPEX comes from spectacles – there was also was a band called X-Ray-Spex at the time.

How was the process designing a SPEX issue back in those days?

There has so much changed technologically the last 30 years that you could write a book about it …
Well, we prepared artworks of every page. Everything which was to be published in the magazine had to be set and drawn and produced reprographically. Then it was glued on carton to get photographed. The pictures were made separately, rastered and then copied onto film. This was a very exhausting and expensive process.
Only the costs for the textsetting made 20% of the overall expenses. The lithography was expensive too, colour was not affordable. Back in the days a four-colour print in A4 was ca. 400 DM, so around 800 EUR. A cover with special font, logo etc. would cost you from 1000 DM. Of course all this had a huge impact on the design. A lot of things you wanted to design were just not affordable. At the same time the design was on a whole different level — simply because everything was so expensive. Only with the introduction of cheaper photo-set-machines you could layout more liberately.

How did a typical workday look like?

The work was structured totally different then today. Everything had to be made by hand. The production of the magazine with 48 pages took 10–12 days. I remember that the last five days we worked 16 hours and shortly before the deadline of the artworks last changes had to be made.
The procedure: at first you read the texts and looked at the pictures. Regarding the length of the text you could count the height of the set (amount of lines). Then you made a first layout sketch, a rough layout. Then the text would be drawn out, properties of font size, set width, bold and italic fonts — all that would be written in the manuscript so that the typesetter had the right properties.
A messenger brought all this stuff to the typesetter. The photos were marked too (size, crop, …). The next day the entire set came as a huge “flag” from the typesetter and had to be corrected and eventually be given away again. Regarding the little amount of intern memory of the set-machines, only the lines were corrected were the mistake was. These were to be replaced in the artwork again.

Are you looking back happily on the 80s? How was that time?

Beautiful and scary. It was exciting to try out new things. Everything was great fun but you had money problems and everything had to stay on a low level. It took another 2–3 years until everything became more professional.
Additionally I opened my own studio in 1983 and had additional commissions. It then evolved slowly. In the middle of the 80s there was a technical evolution with better machines for the typing, fax-machines, repro-cameras, copy-machines with zoom function. We were one of the firsts to have bought a DTP station. The Apple with a printer and scanner costed 60.000 Mark but it would be amortized in six months. I still have an early Macintosh at home with a 20 MB harddrive and 512 KB RAM.

In the 80s Cologne apparently became the mecca of the contemporary art, design and the music scene. How was the energy in the city? How was it really?

In the beginning of the 80s the scene was rather small and straightforward. There were ca. ten meeting points where you could meet everyone. Out of this melting pot there were formed interesting constellations. When you were there in the centre … but it was exciting and had a great energy so that were always new people coming in and the whole grew further. It was a thrilling time when Cologne was suddenly mutating to an art metropole.

How was it like — also in regard to today — to publish your own magazine? The good sides, the bad sides?

Looking back I have to admit that it we were lucky that we could make it so long. Of course this is also due to the 80s and the difficult circumstances back then. And there wasn’t so much competition, also because of the fact that is was hard to make money with a magazine.

How did you manage it financially?

We worked partly without being paid or for a very small fee. Today I wouldn’t publish a printed magazine anymore but only in the internet. It’s senseless to pay for paper. What’s going to stay important: to deliver good content visually. For this design is important. But design with weak content is just embarrasing.

How old have you been when you founded the SPEX? And how did you came to do it? What did you do before that?

I was 22 years old and had just finished my civil service. I began studying architecture. While doing the civil service I worked for a magazine which was published by the Jugendfilmclub in Cologne and which presented films for young people. So I already had a certain experience in editorial work. But I still was an amateur. My brother was a trained typesetter and we sometimes collaborated — he showed me the most important technical stuff.

What are your favourite musicians and LP’s from back in the days?

Fehlfarben — Es geht voran
Gang Of Four — Entertainment
Also: Clash, ABC, Siouxsie, Neubauten etc. …

Thank you!

Hello Carolin, Hello Michiel — please tell us about your background and how Pelican Video came to life. (And what is the story behind the name?)

Pelikaanstraat is the road where we are living and where we also started working in the beginning. It’s the mainstreet of the diamond business in Antwerp and located between the Hasidic Jew and the Maghreb neighborhood. The street therefore got a multifaceted vibe and charisma, you can feel the glamour of the old days. The diamond trade is giving this district a sophisticated but at the same time dreary and dubious aura. Our apartment, too, was full of (empty) safes wired with old alarm systems when we moved in. This inspires …

How did the connection with the Design Department in Düsseldorf come up?

A friend of us told Gabriele Orsech about our work and hence initiated our first video workshop. And the students liked it. In our videos we try in to get a lot from very little; and this is what we want to convey the students. It’s your own commitment and creativity that counts and not the technical means.
After that we participated in the multidisciplinary exhibition “Vom gehen in viele Richtungen” [About going in many directions] in the KIT, which was curated by Gabriele Orsech and Bernd Ruzicska. It’s a beautiful, diverse and prolific relationship.

BERNHARD WILLHELM SS05 from pelican video.

What do you like about teaching? And: what part of your studies did you enjoy/gave you the most when your were at university yourself?

At the moment we are teaching both together and separately in all sorts of assignments.
When you are younger you don’t have so many possibilities of approaches for a separation between life and work. After you graduate “real” life starts and you realize that there are so many alternatives of doing something, even in a specific field. The older we get the more we enjoy to transmit our very personla knowledge, to share visions and to confront it with a generation that grew up under different circumstances.

In which why does fashion and architecture nurturing your video works — and vice versa?

Fashion, architecture, art … these are all forms of communication and a categorisation is irrelevant. In the meantime we have the impression that we are more like a part of a general artistic wave than a singular case. We are meeting more and more young artists, musician, designers, who are moving unbiased between different fields and who are not questioning if they respect the codes of their own discipline or not, or to which category they belong. To be interdisciplinary has become an implicitness by now.

What is the story behind the Pilot video? Was this really the first one you did? What did you like particularly in the process and the result that you decided to continue?

It was really the very first video that we did. Actually it was even before we founded our label and a school work by Carolin during her additional year of mixed media art in Ghent. Again; it takes lots of naivety and curiousity to create a home-made blue screen video in daylight! Perfection is unimportant; what’s important is a strong will and as much soul as possible to tell a story.

PILOT from pelican video.

“The basic intention of Pelican Video is to challenge the unknown and to experiment with the possibilities of new media, rather than develop one certain idea or style — […] Although the productions are often commissioned, the duo never allows the purpose of the videos to override or suppress the artistic expression.”

Does this mean your concept can be described by function follows form? How do you find the right balance between purpose and style?

In a way you are right; it sometimes happens that we find something visually interesting and one day we find a way to adapt it to a project

I nevertheless noticed one characteristic element in your video works which could been as sort of a recurring style: the mirroring of images which creates beautiful kaleidoscopic-like effects. What fascinates you on this method?

To be honest we don’t really like using the mirroring effect too much; we find it a very easy, predictable and over-used effect; perfect symmetry is always impressive and the human mind understands it as beautiful. For us it just comes to life when there is something additional going on, like for example the clumsy imperfections of Bernhard Willhelm relativating it at the same time.

What tools do you use? And can you tell us more about the process of a typical (?) video production of yours?

We always look for new tools, thats the challenge! We are getting bored very easily and want to avoid stagnation and complacency.

WHAT WAS WOW from pelican video.

Your work often drifts into slightly abstract, surrealistic, or science fiction worlds. What are important influences for you?

Definitely science fiction movies. Donnie Darko is Carolin’s favorite, Michiel loves them all!

I’m fascinated about how effective you are in creating a certain atmosphere with the help of just one “simple” visual effect combined with a specific sound. Speaking of the latter: how and where do you find your audio material?

Michiel is a DJ, so all the material is there… but we feel more and more like creating the sounds ourselves or in collaborations with musicians; apart from the legal issues it can add a strength to a piece.

What important advice/lesson/experience do you wish you would have learned earlier in life? What is one advice you would give your younger self?

Never underestimate the craft! Ideas are important, but realizing them is the real power.

What are your plans for the future regarding both life and work?

Focus and doing everything at the same time!

Thank you.

Update: Here is the PDF of the final pages!

There is no real reason for me to go away anyway. I think you will hardly find a city that is more calm, comfortable, and where the people are so nice. And I think in our profession you need a refugium, a hideaway. I’m pretty often on the road, I’m traveling a lot at the moment. When I would have to come back from a stressful trip to a stressful city again — this would be too much. It’s important for me to come back to a place where I can rest.

Besides I can effortlessly go to the countryside, to the mountains, to the lakes. At the beginning I was a little worried if it would not be difficult to attract young people to come here … but at the moment we are even getting a lot of requests from abroad. And we start working more with international clients — then it is also great if you have native english speaking people in your team too. Anyway: I did not stay in Munich because of clients. At the beginning I did not even have any here!

Where does the fascination for your profession come from actually? Why are you doing graphic design?

Actually I never aimed to be a graphic designer. My father was an advertising and fashion photographer back in those days where the art directors still came to presentations with scribbles … I drew and illustrated a lot when I was younger. I wanted to be an artist — but I guess I just didn’t have the guts for that!

Then came the time where Apple released the Classic II and I started studying and partly learned to design on the computer directly. At the same time I still learned setting hot type in school … this was an exciting mixture. But I have to admit that in the beginning I thought that my profession was shit and no fun at all …

Then I worked quite some time in advertising which I found totally boring too. And so I started to do own projects along the way; the Gomma collaborations for instance (I’m working with them for 11 years now I think).

These personal projects, as SMAL PAZE, really helped me getting over my normal day job. We made many flyers, drew a lot, bombed a lot of trains … this helped me too. In those days I just went to work to make money … and actually only from the first Jetzt magazine on it started to give me pleasure …

But I never wanted to be a graphic designer. Funnily, what we are doing right now — besides the graphic design projects — like all the stuff for Audi which are more like installations which aims in a totally different direction. This is a bit more like what I wanted to do originally …

Besides all the magazines and books that you are regularly designing on tight schedules you seem to have tons of other projects at the same time — how do you deal with working on multiple jobs in parallel?

Well, I’m used to design weekly magazines since 1999 with the Jetzt magazine. This was a hardcore job when you were coming freshly out of the advertisement business. You know, normally as graphic designer you have weeks and months to think about a concept. I relaunched the Jetzt magazine but after the first issues I thought: now it’s over … and then they already came with the next stories! The first months were so stressful I think I really made bad magazines.

Then I learned to think parallel. I realized that when you want to work like me you don’t have terminated projects; one book, one magazine, one LP cover … your whole profession is a process. You have to create a certain style, you have to create a methodology, how to produce ideas, you have to build yourself a huge network … and with all this in mind you have to constantly kick out ideas.

Every week we are doing Die Zeit, Die Zeit Magazin, Weltkunst, Weltwoche Stil … plus seven projects e.g. for the Staatsoper, Audi … all at the same time. And I am still the one who designs everything at the first place.

So you are a designing art director … I understand the term mostly as being someone who has a great roster of creative individuals, and who then picks and collaborates with the ones who match the project best …

Exactly. Well, in the beginning I’m starting with the graphic designer part … typography, paper, all things haptic. How do I want to present the content? how can I translate my language into the clients needs?
Afterwards, maybe like a good craftsman and his tools, or like a painter with his colours, I’m checking which photographer, which illustrator would work the best for the project. But to create a new look, a new language — this only works in collaboration with a good mixture of other people.

This is one thing that I find fascinating about the profession: having a huge network knowing many different people from all over the globe …

… And it’s very helpful, too. Yesterday for example my friend Kostas Murkudis came by at the studio and we talked about several things for example about our idea to build special rain capes out of 3M reflector foil — and on his way out of the studio he says to me: why do I not design them? And I was like: “Of course you do so … feel free!”
The result is that Kostas Murkudis is now designing rain capes for the Staatsoper!

… Sweet!

And the bigger your network the broader and vaster the connections. But you have to know how to use this connections and be wide awake all the time. Your skill to create these connections is what’s demanded today.

And this anecdote with Kostas shows how it can work out beautifully getting in touch with other professions and artistic directions …

Exactly. At the moment we are doing also a lot of filming and installations — one of the newest is a fully chromed 60’s gas station (→) for which we took the master from the road and rebuilt it in Miami. At the same time we are currently doing all together funny linocuts for the Staatsorchester … this is what I like about our profession: everything is possible.

Many people are limiting themselves to certain areas, specializing themselves. I’m rather specializing on my taste and what I’m interested in. I’m not specializing on a certain kind of client or a style. I think style always arises or unfolds itself all alone.

When you look at our works, you see that they are all different but at the same time they seem to be related to each other. You can only achieve this by having a strong specific character, expression … and when you are having fun with what you are doing!
(The other way to have a recognizable design is, to respect corporate design restricitions. Then everything has to be left-aligned, a certain font, sizes … then it looks all the same in the end too.)

It’s simply another work approach. But as you said, a good art director is also a good communicator. It’s important that people can trust you but that you also have the ability to brief people — that’s important because often you cannot be present at every shooting or look the illustrator constantly over the shoulder. We are not preparing stuff for shootings etc. — we are not like agencys drawing scribbles or composing mood-boards. I’m talking as long as it takes until the person knows what I want. Otherwise it would cost too much time. I mean, we have probably ten shootings every week only for the Zeit Magazin. And to prepare every one of them with mood-boards … this would be insane.

How do you stay on top of all the things you have to do? I find it oftentimes useful to focus completely, cutting everything else off and trying to concentrate on one project only …

… well, I’m really doing everthing at the same time. (Laughs) — It wouldn’t make sense otherwise … I’m getting calls from downstairs to check a poster before it goes off to the printer, then someone comes to me to talk about a colour problem, then I get a call from Max Borka because we are currently doing a book for Martha Herford about a turkish design exhibition, too — and at the same time while we are talking — I have 12 different layouts of the Zeit Magazin opened up in front of me. I can’t take myself the time to just do one thing … then there is a client calling me, then there is my mum calling me, then I have to plan the weekend for my kids, then my girlfriend is coming home … no way. (Laughs)

But all this is simply a question of concentration. I’m concentrated but I have adapted another way of focusing.

How are the roles defined in your studio? Can you tell us more precisely of how you work with your team?

It’s me who starts designing every project. Then I always pick someone in the bureau — you know it from back in the days — with whom I then continue to work. Everyone is bringing in their influence, we talk a lot together — and at some point I’m giving the project completely away. After some work phases we are getting together again discussing the next steps. Then, when it comes to the production phase, we are working side by side again.

Let’s jump to the more specific questions: Can you describe the intention behind the little reference images/thumbnails in the issues of Human Globaler Zufall? They are quite banal …

… mostly they are totally banal! Actually it’s a rule that the pictures have no real relation to the meaning of the text, but to the solarized meaning of every single word. We thought this is kind of a experiment anyway and it’s dealing with chance, coincidence … and because you are as a designer always searching how to get and attract people to read the text, we had the idea of the marginal columns so that you are always having an extra bracket if you don’t want to read the long main text. Somewhere along the way I had the idea to put in little images because I found it nice but it was difficult as they would need a caption. Then one day was sitting on the problem again and thought it was way more funny if the images would just be trashy pictures from the internet … there are examples like “fast mann” (nearly man) and we put in a picture of Angela Merkel … like all kinds of stupid jokes (Laughs) … or some words just half-used …

… like Erdgeschoss where you just used “geschoss” (fast object) in order to put in a shiny Lamborghini.

Yes, and all this was not only funny but nice a nice way to create an additional narration!

How did you sell it to the client?

I said we are doing it. I said that nobody else did that before and that it is fun and worth a test. When they looked at it I didn’t really had to convince them anyway … they checked it, laughed, and had directly some fresh ideas themselves.

After the last day of production it was always good fun for everyone to make up some more of them … and even the editors-in-chief helped us search images because they enjoyed it so much!

Let’s talk about the Zeit Magazin — what does the process look like?

Well, I always have to start quite quickly and I just finished the issue 49 of the Zeit Magazin in advance …

When is it coming out? Next week?

Thursday in one week. Tomorrow, saturday and sunday will be printed, monday it’s shipped to Die Zeit, then it will be inserted in the newspaper when this one is printed on wednesday.

Wow.

I’m permanently in contact with the journalists, I’m always having a plan with the image stories to discuss everything with the image editor. I’m telling him which photographers shoot which story and how it will be done. Then the finished pictures are getting send to me. In the ideal case it is ok, if not we have to reshoot. Finally I’m editing the images e.g. which one for the cover, which one will to be fullpage, the whole rhythm etc.
Then everthing is send to the graphic department (of Zeit Magazin) where they start a rough layout, sending it back to me — if I like it it’s done — if not I’m rebuilding it myself. This is the procedure for nearly every project.

Right now, for example, I’m redesigning the layout of the Zeit Magazin — we are analysing it … there won’t be groundbreaking changes, maybe you won’t even notice it in the beginning. Maybe if you put a older issue next to it. In this case we had quite some different font sizes and other experiments and now we are reducing all this again so that everything becomes a bit clearer and calmer again. Maybe next time I’m redesigning everything again.

Well, there is no moment where I’m relaxing because it is a weekly magazine. It’s a steady work … what do you like, what do you dislike? You have to question everything, constantly. You have to be critical. Spot things. And not be sad if something is shit but saying: ok, that doesn’t work and go on.

I worked with many designers who could barely let go their layouts to the final printing. They were too perfectionistic — here a change, there a change — but the thing is: unless it is not printed you don’t know how it will really turn out! You know, when it’s in the right format, the right paper … then it mostly looks different than on your screen or your own print-outs. Always different.
And then you know what a magazine rhythm is, or how a magazine becomes exciting or not. And these are processes that we activate here.

I’m interested in your relation to pop culture …
You are a lot on Facebook, aren’t you?

Yes, but Facebook has become a serious work tool for me …

… to get new influences?

No, chatting! (Laughs)

Seriously: with photographers, illustrators … before I’m sending emails back and fort, or call … calling is not often sufficient enough. And it distracts me. Chatting on the contrary I find easy. Then I can really describe what I want to say, and send links, references directly … it’s a faster tool.

Pop culture doesn’t interest me because we already have a lot to do with it in our projects. For example with the music labels or clubs we are working for. It’s kind of a diffcult subject for us because we are a bit too close to it. But the external influences are coming in constantly.

What comes to my mind are e.g. these showreels that I always loved … regarding the works presented they were kind of informal, loose, funny …

Because our work is already serious enough. I mean, also, when you look at our website … it’s … funny. Most of the projects we are doing — like Weltwoche or Die Zeit — are serious objects.

So for the presentation of your works it’s all about the contrast …

First and foremost I think that it is simply very boring to flick through jpg’s of a magazine on the internet — we want to make a little more fun to look at it! And I think that having fun is the most important thing.

What I find interesting with the showreels is that it is always some kind of a document of time. You can remember which music was playing in the bureau at that time, what the atmosphere was … and then you see the work that came out of it.

When we recently showed a film like this in Gent we became a montrous applause because the people knew directly: that’s it! That’s how they feel! That’s how they work!

So it’s not really about presenting the works … and our website is not for attracting possible clients. I don’t want to inspire clients but young people who someday write to me for asking if they can work with me. Internet should be entertaining and attract people.

Do you still have role models, idols … ?

Of course, everyone has role models. I mean, they come from all different directions. Sometimes I’m fascinated by young designers … most of the time I’m inspired by photographers, artists, architects … people that don’t have anything to do with our profession directly.

This is a good motivation making your own great projects. In the end we are all profiting when we have a bunch of good designers here in germany. If there would only be 3-5 daring designers in this country, there wouldn’t almost be any chance to convince people to dare anything. Competition is important. There is already enough boring design around.

My friend Johannes asked me to contribute to his fanzine project he’s currently doing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in the beautiful city of Amsterdam covering the great subject of … «Health vs. Graphic Design» — here are my awkward (?) answers …

How do you keep in shape?
I go for a run in the woods and the streets as often as I can. Just breathing (↓) wholeheartly and deeply can move mountains … In the morning and throughout the working day I’m doing my own fitness programm with push-ups, some shadow boxing and all kinds of little exercises with or without my bokken (木刀; wooden Aikido sword).

Breathe.

Breathing can transform your life.

If you feel stressed out and overwhelmed, breathe. It will calm you and release the tensions.

If you are worried about something coming up, or caught up in something that already happened, breathe. It will bring you back to the present.

If you are discouraged and have forgotten your purpose in life, breathe. It will remind you about how precious life is, and that each breath in this life is a gift you need to appreciate. Make the most of this gift.

If you have too many tasks to do, or are scattered during your workday, breathe. It will help bring you into focus, to concentrate on the most important task you need to be focusing on right now.

If you are spending time with someone you love, breathe. It will allow you to be present with that person, rather than thinking about work or other things you need to do.

If you are exercising, breathe. It will help you enjoy the exercise, and therefore stick with it for longer.

If you are moving too fast, breathe. It will remind you to slow down, and enjoy life more.

So breathe. And enjoy each moment of this life. They’re too fleeting and few to waste.

(by Leo Babauta)

How many hours do you usually sleep? Do you get to reach the healthy sleeping
hours between 9pm and midnight?
I’m an early riser trying to get a healthy dose of sleep of 7-8 hours.
But oftentimes my sleeping habits are getting quite strange and I work until 3 am and get up at 6:30 again. This unhealthy rythm only works with a bunch of good siestas and little power naps once in a while!
I recently read a brilliant book by Frank Berbach called Kreativität aushalten — Psychologie für Designer — which sort of «woke me up» and stopped me from continuing all my strange sleep experiments pushing my need-of-sleep to the limits …
At the moment I’m just trying to get a good dose of sleep for having the right amount of positive energy to produce great work and stay healthy at the same time. Recommended!

How much water do you drink during the day?
How much coffee do you drink during a day?
I drink one 1,5l bottle of water every day. Plus some espressi and a lot of tea in all forms and colours!

What is your guilty food pleasure?
Too much beer and red wine. If that counts. Apart from that I eat pretty much everything and oftentimes I don’t really care what exactly I’m eating as long as I get some substance and vitamins.

Do you think that the typographer’s back suffers less with the change from
setting hot-type by hand to desktop publishing?
I don’t think so. Everybody is sitting too much in front of the machine nowadays and not only the back suffers. We need to do more pauses, more streching, more breathing, more serious play!

Do you already prepare for having to work – like most self-employers – at old age?
“Give me Love and Work, just the two”  … I’m ready for everything and I’m looking forward to it.

Did you ever work out before or after an art gallery opening – in order to handle
the upcoming amount of provided alcoholic drinks and snacks?
No, but I do like to relax before “important” events with some workout for body and soul …

What do you think about a brown-colored oiled strong biceps of 40 centimeters
diameter?
First I think wtf? — then I reminisce about the great Ronnie Coleman —
… yeah buddy! lightweight baby!

Did you ever think about changing profession because of the possibility to work
more on the move?
Well, for me the modern graphic designer is a jack-of-all-trades — and this includes fitness, too!
And in any way I’m never not moving.