What a brutally beautiful, mind-blowing year …
I want to thank everyone for having been part of my journey — let’s have an even greater 2011!
Happy new decade!
Yours truly
Hugo
Win over negative
Breath deeply
Don’t live in fear; accept the new
Enjoy the process
Be present
Make better mistakes
A personal manifesto for the new decade … to be continued.
Here is a quick overview on three of my projects I’m working on at the moment:
Project No. 1
Better Mjstakes Volume II — Mike Meiré vs. Hugo Hoppmann; one interview at a time
The first new magazine of the two upcoming issues will contain a visual (typographic) translation of the two-hour discussion I had with German art director, artist, designer, architect, photographer, curator, editor and facilitator Mike Meiré which took place in the atelier of his Cologne-based Factory in summer 2010.
Regarding the quantity of the text I was mainly working out a structure at first (chapters, rhythm, hierarchies) followed by focusing on readability. How to make the mass of text attractive to read? Easily accessible and sexy?
The graphical approach is rather classical without losing the ‘spirit’ of our idea, our publication, our movement.
Radicalness and Dringlichkeit.
Spreading the content, the message is of great importance for me. I want everybody to read it. There is a whole universe of references, names, terms created within and around our conversation. The reader shall experience the whole atmosphere supported by lots of background information, insights, (personal) commentary and statements.
Project No. 2
Better Mjstakes Volume III — A self-reflexion in the medium or:
Everything you always wanted to know about sex magazines but were too afraid to ask
The third volume of Better Mjstakes explores, analyses and presents ten outstanding magazines, ranging e.g. from the first 1980′s issues of SPEX, over to Sang Bleu, 032c, ZEIT Magazin, or the Hot Gun Journal …
Every discovery is accompanied by interviews I made with the creators; art directors, designers, publishers … some of those have already been pre-published: Kai von Rabenau of mono.kultur, Veronica Ditting of Fantastic Man, or Emmanuel Crivelli of Dorade …
→ Both of the upcoming projects are still in the spirit of the Manifesto:
[...] Graphic Design these days is mostly documented without bigger aspiration or depth, which (if anything) banalises a proper discussion. For this reason we aim to provide the – in our eyes – lacking insight into the thoughts and approaches of modern graphic designers, building a ground for discussion and challenging the exchange.
The name ‘Better Mjstakes’ reflects our philosophy and purpose: to just start making something; really enter a profound relationship with our beloved subject. And on top of it all: not fearing the mistakes that line our path of enlightment.
Project No. 3
La Mémoire — ‘On Attitude’
I’m working extensively on a theoretic work on ‘attitude’ which will be part of my diploma in 2011,
supervised by the brilliant André Vladimir Heiz — more info soon.
—
If you are interested in the process and the progress of these projects stay tuned as I’m going to publish more updates the next days and weeks!
Yours,
H
This is how magazines work, as part of the image economy; they influence expectations of lifestyles in general. But your relationship to magazines seems very much reflected in the magazine itself. So being an editor might almost be an experimental way of dealing with this relationship between life and image?
It has always been the basic idea of Re-Magazine, to describe life from a personal perspective, to include trivial information within a bigger idea. To find a language that is part of things and not intellectually hovering above things. I’ve read Foucault and I also smoke Marlboro Medium; they are part of the same reality, at least my own. I’m interested in these kinds of relationships. I like to re-contextualize trivial information to the point where it becomes meaningful again. In Re-Magazine you find information that you don’t find anywhere else or at least not in any other magazine. That’s something that isn’t discussed very much in the publicity we had with Re-Magazine, although 75 percent of the time we invest goes into the text and not into the art direction or design. The thing with Re-Magazine is that you have to read the whole text to get the picture or at least get all the layers within the story. It’s very analog, very old fashioned in a way, but I like that it’s harsh and takes effort to get into.
Your relationship with magazines seems to be a difficult one; you really like the fashion format, but you are at the same time very aware of its critical status and the impossibility of fundamental changes. The magazine seems more an inquiry, an empirical situation.
I try to incorporate that difficulty into the magazine. I used to be a designer, now a designer/editor/publisher/art director/manager. It’s always a circumstance of how to bring these things together. I feel a bit schizophrenic; I never know exactly where I am. It’s an arbitrary way of working, almost an artist’s position, to make things that are not solved yet.
—
With my two main projects at the moment (I will publish the current status of them tomorrow) it’s sort of the same situation: I’m not only the designer who gets the material, creates and ships, but the author, editor, art director and publisher, too. Of course this was my own choice, or rather due to my ‘bug’ to always want to combine different projects — which is the reason why my two main projects this semester are going to be two new issues of my ‘personal’ magazine. I’ll keep you updated on all that … stay tuned my friends.
Drawing by Mia Hofner
I started this blog in spring 2009 some weeks before the second semester at ECAL in Lausanne where I’m now studying visual communication in the third year. At the beginning I used the blog mainly as a tool to communicate my new experiences and the process of my progress with friends and family back in my hometown of Cologne. Eventually everything became bigger and the whole experiment grew organically into an important output and a platform for my thoughts on a variety of subjects, background information on projects, and new ideas.
Moreover this blog was born out of a second necessity: I was simply missing a honest reflexion of someone of my age in the ‘creative business’ providing not only some random material with no substance but sharing more profound background information with honesty and attitude. I was sick of all the cluttered portfolio blogs and I searched for a fresh approach, more transparency, more process, realness, failures and success stories …
Writing helps me tremendously to structure my thoughts and get clearer vision of my position. So I see my work here as a practice and I want to encourage people to be more active in sharing their ideas and ideals.
Follow me on the journey if you are interested — or better — get inspired share the love and do your own thing!
Yours
Hugo
—
This was a text from the new Why? section (find the link on the right top) which shall state my point of view and communicate the ideas behind the work I am doing here.
This section is one part of an overall redesign, restructuring, rethinking of my blog!
First and foremost my aim was to unclutter pretty much everything, getting rid of all the decorative elements in order to create a better focus on the articles.
Other improvements:
II. Profile information are summarized in the new footer (click here to jump there) including contact options and a Twitter feed for thoughts and input on a more frequent base …
— Heureka! What do you think of about all that?
It’s strange how my mood sometimes still depends on the reactions I get for my work.
Or at the moment: how I’m still sad when I get no reaction at all for something I did or wrote.
When this is the case I’m always thinking about what Steven Pressfield said:
“[...] The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.”
This — like everything else from The War of Art — combined with the powerful sentence in the headline, which is a quote by Gandhi, and everything is cool again.
Note to myself: Don’t take yourself too serious.
—
And thank you, anyway, for having interest in what I do. I appreciate it.
Have a nice start into the new week!
I recently got together with Mirko Borsche for a nightly video conference to record the next interview
for my Journey into Interview Design and Art Direction — one of the new issues for my magazine.
We had a nice discussion which, not surprisingly, turned out to be not only insightful but also quite funny!
Unfortunately I’m still in the process of transcribing and translating everything, before I can finally pre-
publish the finished conversation here on the blog.
Anyway, let me give you some background information: In the summer of 2009 I made an internship at
Bureau Mirko Borsche in Munich (as reported here). Since then I’m still a big fan of their work and I knew
I had to reunite in some way with Mirko again — he’s a great addition to the content of my new project I think.
Alongside personal and quite banal stuff I was particularly interested in his work for Human Globaler Zufall
(Fig. 1) regarding my own projects at the moment (more on that soon). But we also talked more generally
about his methodologies, the process of magazine design and the passion for our profession —
I’ll keep you updated!
Fig. 1
(See more work of Bureau Mirko Borsche here.)
After the «Advices and Questions» yesterday, now a brilliant counterpart from another anonymous reader:
Contradictory Advices:
• You are always agreeing with everything. Negativity is a bad thing but You don’t always have to agree with people. Sometimes it’s OK to say they are wrong and to stamp your opinion. Doing that is not necessarily negative.
• Who said namedropping was a bad thing? Much of the graphic design “industry” is built on namedropping. The fact that you know, or have contact with someone can be important in getting work and opening up new avenues. Surely the more people you know, and the more people who know you know those people can only be a good thing?
• Stick with the same content. Building on what you have can only make that one thing better. Shepard Fairey has created an empire from the simple image of Andre the Giant. I could name a hundred designers who don’t try anything new, but that doesn’t mean they are boring or wrong.
• If graphic design is what makes you happy then it only makes sense to work like an idiot.
• You shouldn’t care about what others think of your writing. Does this sound strange:
http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/schwitters_kurt/ursonate/Schwitters-Kurt_Ursonate_02_Zweiter_Teil.mp3It sure as hell does, but if Schwitters had stopped and asked himself, “Hhmmm is what I’m doing strange, new and against the norm?” then unfortunately graphic design would be at a very different place today.
Questions:
• How is it possible to further develop the field of graphic design without self-investigation?
• Is one man’s profound another man’s superficiality?
Thank you.
The other day I got this feedback to the Open Letter by someone calling himself Hugo 2 :
Advices:
• Go your own way.
• Stop namedropping .
• Be more open to different content.
• You don’t have to “Work like an idiot until you’re happy” You should just be happy instead .
• Listen to yourself. (And I mean this literally: read the text aloud and record it. Afterwards listen to it. Does it sound strange?)Questions:
• Is graphic design about graphic design really such a good idea?
• What does “profound” research really mean?
I was a bit stunned by the directness and, well … the rightness of his points.
It was strange, I thought the feedback somehow sounded like an older, wiser me, an Alter-Ego in reverse …
But the important thing was to finally got a constructive feedback on what I’m doing here. Even better: a critique.
It made me think and I will try to learn from all that, while I see every piece of advice as chance to get better.
That said it now makes even more sense to me to have this sort of “publishing bug”. To share ideas and unfinished work and thoughts and to be thus kind of vulnerable and yes: open for critique.
(Credits unknown)
Some hours after publishing my Open Letter yesterday I arranged a meeting together with two close friends from my class Mr. Vincent Delaleu and Mr. Pierrick Brégeon which turned out quite fruitful and entertaining.
Discussing ideas together, communicating, showing, talking to someone about your concepts is kind of magic sometimes, when suddenly new connections ideas pop-up or something gets brutally clearer just by explaining it.
Each one of us presented the current state of his work to the others as serious as possible — a reflexion about the “Past, Present, Future” of the own projects — doubts, fears and questions inclusive.
For me concerning my plans several things got clearer and ready to be improved:
1. Project I—the Research is rather to be a printed compendium of ideas, observings, and opinions, while Project II—the Conversation is — obviously — more appropriate to be supported by a web/interactive/iPad version (more details soon).
2. The Practical Part or Graphical Research in Project I will be used to create a more interesting rythm within the whole magazine, e.g. popping-up every now and then instead of being fixed as one chapter in the end. And thus I could also show the natural development of my designs after passing and learning visually from interview to interview — like first to be thought as to get solved with an iPad version. [Am I too complicated here?]
3. I’m going to continue developing the form of my content as my designs feel still too shy, not yet appropriate somehow. I will need to test and approach more extremes and literally push the limits even more!
—
Apart from that I finished and sent a bunch of interviews today, and wrote wrote wrote and made made made.
“Work like an idiot until you’re happy.”
Cheers!
(And sorry for nerdiness … uh!)
This following text is an open letter to Angelo Benedetto, Nicole Udry, Ludovic Balland, Jonas Vögeli, Ian Party, Gilles Gavillet, François Rappo, James Goggin — and dedicated to everyone else mentioned in the following text who did not know about my plans up to now (→ you will get a mail soon!) and aims to provide some transparency into my process at the moment — for everyone who’s interested.
Dear Teachers,
I write you this email to give you a theoretic overview on the current state of my two graphic design semester projects.
I’m sorry that my following decription turned out to be pretty long and detailed, but I also simply saw it as a good possibilty for me to review and structure what I have done so far and where I’m heading to.
Important note before I start with the decription of the projects: both of them are designed/written and planed as two new issues of my already existing magazine Better Mjstakes — so at the same time there will be a strong focus on printing and distribution too.
Project I — work title:
The Research Issue: A profound journey into Art Direction and Interview Design in an editorial context.
As the title indicates my research will be an analysis on the process of creating magazines, with a special technical regard on the construction of interviews. Plus a more “subjective” view discourse on creating a certain atmosphere of a magazine.
The present state of the table of contents is the following:
II. Radical Little Magazines — On Attitude
An additional text (maybe combined with the introduction) on the radicalness and power of young magazine creators — from today in comparison with the past — shown with the example of an exhibition called “Clip/Stamp/Fold — The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X”.
III. Magazine Analysis — Personally written descriptions + images
I’m analysing a range of favourite magazines — mainly contemporary and from the cultural sector — but also groundbreaking titles from the past as well as highly commercial publications. Additional interviews with the creators will provide insight information into the process of creation.
IV. Interviews I — With special regard on designing
Tim Giesen (032c, Arch+)
Veronica Ditting (Fantastic Man, Gentlewoman)
Mirko Borsche (Zeit Magazin, Human Globaler Zufall)
Ryan Waller (Hot Gun, New College Beat)
Emmanuel Crivelli (Dorade)
Dylan Fracareta (PIN-UP)
V. Interviews II — With special regard on art direction
Jop van Bennekom (Fantastic Man, Gentlewoman, Butt)
Olivier Zahm (Purple)
Maxime Büchi (Sang Bleu)
Felix Burrichter (PIN-UP)
Kai von Rabenau (Mono.Kultur)
Jörg Koch (032c)
VI. Practical Part — A graphical research
Presentation and analysis of my graphical research for the second semester project (see Project II below)
VII. Conclusion — Future visions
A summary and reflexion on the journey and what I have learned from it for the future.
Although not all of the content is finished/arrived yet, I have — of coursce —already started designing.
But besides a rather classical print version I recently thought about a more ambitious idea for the form: a (technically simple) version of the issue for the iPad, which allows the reader to see and feel the progress of the design acording to the content live. The design could start extremely basic for example, but then after reading the first interviews the aesthetic is magically transforming and getting more complex.
Also, an iPad version could really push the boundaries in the presentation of my research. I could provide additional information, links, recources, additional images, maybe audio/video material.
Above that I just like the idea to have a self-made/self-initiated/self-published-young student’s-design/theory-magazine available as iPad/interactive version. I think this could be pretty revolutionary, also in regard to our mission to spread the word and to share our ideas and visions to a wider audience than just (graphic) designers.
But how would the digital version be connected to print? Is print then still necessary?
Is there maybe just a link to a print-on-demand service to get the issue in a real magazine format?
Project II — work title:
Mike Meiré vs. Hugo Hoppmann — A conversation.
The second new issue of Better Mjstakes will contain a conversation that I recorded this summer while I was doing an internship at Mike Meiré in Cologne.
We talked for over two hours non-stop so the transcription of the interview is pretty heavy material = ca. 40 A4 pages of pure text.
Although I’m already busy designing, I’m constantly re-asking myself: how do I edit the material? Am I cutting away everything not-so-important? Is there anything not-so-important? Wouldn’t it be interesting to keep everything how it was originally said?
An important fact in regarding the concept: Although the magazine will have only one conversation as principal content, I want to create a whole system of references images, footnotes, personal background information, universe around the interview. So this will also be a specific aim in my research (Project I) — too discover (and reinterpret) solutions like the in-text-thumbnails in Fantastic Man or in-line-footnotes as seen in Dorade, or supplement-like reference pages like used in Gentlewoman.
In fact Project I + Project II are heavily connected. And not only for technical part (as described before) but also on a more subjective level: What are the crucial steps to create a new magazine? How to create a certain atmosphere? What is the role of an art director? What makes a good interview?
These are just some of the questions I want to ask leading magazine creators like Jop van Bennekom, Olivier Zahm, Jörg Koch, Felix Burrichter that will help to shape the direction and design of this interview.
So: Project I (the research issue) will naturally amending Project II (the conversation issue).
—
What do you think of all this?
Maybe you will find some time to give me a quick feedback the next days — I would be thankful for any support.
Looking forward to see you all next week!
Yours,
Hugo
PS: James and Mr. Rappo, I also send this mail to you in the hope of a conversation with you in the near future — if you find the time and motivation to do so.
PPS: This email is an “open letter”, so you can also find an online version of it on my blog.
(+ The first finished interview — with Kai von Rabenau, publisher of mono.kultur — is already available here.
Now dear readers: What do YOU think of all this?
Is it ok to publish an “open letter” like this? Does it feel somehow arrogant? What could I have done better?
Am I a total geek?
«Die Gestalten are on a roll these days, and I’m slowly reconsidering my preconceptions on the Berlin-based design publishing company. To make up for the embarrassing Los Logos Volume V — speaking of which, will someone at Gestalten finally redesign that logo, please? [...]»
(From mono.blog)
I remember that when I started being seriously interested in graphic design the books by Gestalten were highlights for me. Then after exploring more and more and getting deeper involved in the subject my fascination for their publications suddenly turned into ignorance towards them. I was confused by books like Los Logos which were just overwhelming compendiums of mediocre graphic design — quantity, rarely quality.
Luckily the interest was growing again due to some good books that the Gestalten have been released lately …
And I’m happy to be featured in their new publication called Turning Pages with two of my projects — the Grace Jones Typeface specimen and my SPEX book. Both are from 2009, and therefore — unfortunately — not really recent works. (The process of the book was quite long …)
But how can you not feeling good (and a bit honored) in such great company. Basically you find in the publication almost every contemporary graphic designer/art director/magazine creator I admire at the moment, e.g. Omar Sosa, Jop van Bennekom, Vier5, Felix Burrichter, Node Berlin Oslo, Ken Leung, Jungundwenig, Onlab … and alongside some good folks I’m fortunate enough to have already worked/interact with personally: from Mirko Borsche to Johannes von Gross to Ludovic Balland to Gavillet & Rust to Mike Meiré to Tim Giesen — thank you all!
+ some nice Super Paper spreads featuring the Grace Jones Typeface.
Although its main focus is magazines, newspapers also feature along with the occasional book project, allowing the publishers to subtitle the book “Editorial design for print media”. But ignore that, this is a magazine book through and through, and one that includes plenty of the independents we love at magCulture. The top stream, as they might be called, are all present: 032c, Fantastic Man, Futu, Manzine, Kasino Creative Annual, Apartamento, Pin-Up etc.
[...] The back half carries profiles of the current generation of European editorial designers; among them key figures such as Omar Sosa (Apartamento), Francesco Frachi (IL), Mike Meiré (032c) and Onlab (Domus).
From the review of ever curious Jeremy Leslie from magCulture
→ Order Turning Pages at Amazon.
«As if the band Kraftwerk would have interpreted a neo-classical antiqua typeface [...]»
(From Typeface of the month written by Thomas Pruss)
This article is dedicated to my Grace Jones Typeface and the journey it has made since it has been developed one and a half year ago.
It all began with some sketches and a following workshop at ECAL supervised by Ian Party in 2009 — assisted by David Keshavjee and Emmanuel Rey.
In the following summer I made an internship at the good folks from Bureau Mirko Borsche, where I got the assignment to create a new visual language for the redesign of the Munich independant city magazine Super Paper. After several tests and experiments we decided to introduce the typeface (with its two style; round and square) for all headlines, posters etc. — and the main logo — with my handmade super brush.
Since then (and long time after I left Munich) the magazine is still up and running. I love who the good people in Munich are experimenting for every new issue with the font, which is everytime a pleasure for me to see. I’m very thankful that my work is still appreciated!
A collection of Super Paper covers by Bureau Mirko Borsche:
Here are some inside spreads from Super Paper … also, you can download every issue here!
Find additional images and information on hugohoppmann.com.
(→ Grace Jones Typeface and/or → Super Paper)
Note: The typeface will soon be available to buy in the Gestalten online shop.
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