Pixelgarten: Layouts in Space

4 Aug 2008 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Graphics, Worldwide

Pixelgarten: Layouts in Space

From the "Um was es nicht geht" (What it's not about) installation by German graphic duo Pixelgarten. They created something similar for Laforet's Grand Bazar summer campaign that is all over Tokyo right now.

Young German design studio Pixelgarten is experimenting with spatial graphic design inspired by comic aesthetics — as you see on the cover of the superb Tactile: High Touch Visuals for Laforet’s Grand Bazar Summer 2008 campaign in Harajuku. WOW! For that, Catrin Altenbrandt and Adrian Nießler were happy to spend a week in Tokyo to put up an installation. PingMag enjoyed a chat with the duo. ZONK!

Written by Bianca Beuttel

Laforet’s Grand Bazar Summer 2008 campaign is based on an installation by German design office Pixelgarten.

So, you are from Germany and did the design for the latest Laforet campaign in Japan. How come?

First of all, we didn’t do this all alone — we worked together with two art directors, Masaya Asai and Takayuki Niizawa, from TBWA/Hakuhodo in Tokyo. They saw one of our works in the book Tactile - High Touch Visuals by Gestalten and asked if we would be interested in a project.

Pixelgarten’s design all over the giant Laforet shopping mall for Harajuku’s fashion victims. Image courtesy of Rabichan.

The TV spot for Laforet’s Grand Bazar Summer 2008 campaign isn’t computer animated at all: There are 10,000 (!) ‘real’ speech bubbles flying around. Made by Pixelgarten with TBWA/Hakuhodo’s Masaya Asai and Takayuki Niizawa.

The Tactile book says it “presents graphic design that works with space.” It perfectly describes what you do! Since several of your works were featured in it — and, on top of this, you also designed its cover — which one in particular attracted the attention of TBWA/Hakuhodo?

The Laforet installation is mostly based on one of the images of the “Um was es nicht geht” (What it’s not about) series, the one with the wooden frame, inspired by a comic strip. At first we exchanged ideas via e-mail. For example, Masaya Asai, one of the art directors, suggested to japanify the frame, since Japanese manga are divided diagonally. Then, after receiving the client’s approval, all went very quickly. And just two weeks later we came over to Tokyo to build the real sets!

Pixelgarten’s cover design for Tactile - High Touch Visuals published by Gestalten.

From “Um was es nicht geht:” comic bubbles and real wooden frames…

… and your Apple desktop icons as cardboard objects. From “Um was es nicht geht.”

The installation for the Laforet campaign was your first work in Japan, but not your first Japan-related work…

Yes, in 2004 we did posters for Nippon Connection, a Japanese Film Festival in Frankfurt. Actually, this was our first work together. We both were students at the German Academy of Art and Design in Offenbach and from that time on, we did more projects together. At first, ‘Pixelgarten’ was just the name of our website. After graduating in 2007, we founded our design office carrying on the name.


Haha! From “Um was es nicht geht”…

… as well as these physically manifested comic splashes.

Ah! And since then, all of your works look like lots of fun with so many witty and playful details. Catrin, there is your portrait in the “Um was es nicht geht” series where there are all these threads around your head. That must have been weird…

Catrin: Scary! I lost my sense of orientation: I couldn’t, see, I couldn’t hear properly, I couldn’t say anything — I could only breath. And Adrian made fun of me, saying “OK, I go now!” When I heard the door slam, I was crying “No, no, no…”


Paper ‘Portrait’ of Adrian, from “Um was es nicht geht.”

Thread ‘Portrait’ of Catrin, from “Um was es nicht geht.”

Another awesome installation involving hoodies from “Um was es nicht geht.”

Oh, dear! But Adrian, you got tit for tat! For your portrait you had lots of small paper strips on your face…

Adrian: It felt itchy and it was very painful when pulling it off because we used double-sided tape to fix the paper in my face. I was glad when the photo was taken!

OK, we’ve got the message! It’s hard work! So, “Um was es nicht geht” translates into “What it’s not about.” Please explain, what is it about?

This is exactly what it is about: What it is not about (grins). No… We already mentioned the wooden frame in one of the pictures. It is meant to be like a comic strip, but we left out the story…

… to trigger the viewer’s imagination?

You only see an effect, for example the explosion and its sound, KAWOOM! But you don’t know the context and the cause. The story itself remains unarticulated. Besides that, in “Um was es nicht geht” we’ve committed ourselves to accomplish one picture a day, using only material we had at hand in our studio — including ourselves. At the end of each day, there had to be a result. A very interesting process.
Not only the photography itself is important, but also the arrangement of the pictures and the requisites used in these pictures. The work is part of the group exhibition Gute Aussichten — Young German Photography 2007/2008 that is touring through several German cities. In each exhibition space we arrange the installation differently.

From virtual space to physical space: How to display Internet and open source. Room installation/book cover design together with David Heßler for a lecture series at the Academy of Art and Design in Offenbach, Germany.

Like the relation of the object and its representation got confused in these installations, we are quite confused about how you consider yourself: as photographers, artists, designers… does it even matter to you?

We don’t know what we are! And this doesn’t matter to us. Since we hear this question quite often, we should have a good answer to it by now. But we don’t! Whatever you call us is exactly what we want to be.
Crossing boundaries can be quite exciting. For example, we just took part in an exhibition in the Netherlands called European Championship of Graphic Design. It was curated by Erik Kessels of KesselsKramer and took place in the Graphic Design Museum in Breda [which PingMag just introduced to you last week!]. Amazingly, you can see everything but classical Graphic Design in this exhibition!

Remember the record cover? Installation “All I do is think of you,” for the Diesel Wall Art Project in Berlin with the Jackson Five.

Detail of Diesel Wall Berlin: It took 1.5 Km of electric wire for the glowing eyes of the Jackson Five!

Speaking of boundaries, what was your first work in this direction?

Our first work in this regard was almost four years ago for a book that sadly got never published. Its content was a series of lectures about Internet, open source and more related topics held at the Academy of Art and Design in Offenbach, Germany. Our design intention was to relocate the topic “virtual space” into physical space, and so we started to do our layouts in a three-dimensional room [pictured above.] For each lecturer, we took characteristic elements and arranged them in this room. For example, one lecture was about the invention of the internet. We represented that creative moment of the very idea by a scribble on a napkin at a café. The picture of the entire installation was meant to be the cover of the book with close-ups of this installation as visuals for each chapter’s respective lecture.

However, our work in a physical environment wasn’t possible without digital support: The title of the book was mounted on the wall with electric wire, corresponding to the topic of the book. The wire was very stiff, so, at first, we had to develop a typeface adapted to this particular material and purpose with the help of the computer!

“VISA Wire Heads” as more individual credit cards — the winning entry in the German competition for VISA. Sadly it was never produced, although it would really work! Would also be nice in PingMag’s RFID collection.

Wow, though sadly unpublished it seems that this project has been fundamental to your work! You also seem to apply this special spatial approach to your portfolio where you literally show your works on the pages…

This way you can get a better impression of the final work. The paper quality — glossy or matte — the size, and whether it was folded and so on. All this is so important and yet so difficult to communicate in a digital portfolio. Some good examples would be our illustrations for the 50th anniversary issue of German Form magazine. This was exciting as we had the opportunity to experiment with printing techniques like hot stamp foil, scratch-off foil and flocking. This way, another ‘tactile’ aspect was added.


Cover design of the 50th anniversary issue of German Form magazine #214.

Cover design of the 50th anniversary issue of German Form magazine #214.

3-D illustration for the 50th anniversary issue of Form mag.

And more 3-D paper craft for the 50th anniversary issue of Form.

Lastly, any plans for more work in Japan?

Not definitively — but we would love to come to Japan again!

Good luck with that, Catrin and Adrian of Pixelgarten! Would be nice to have you here for more funky spatial works!!

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