Design Today

The projects of the design studio Claudiabasel have over the years become a pleasant experience for the visually-aware residents of Basel (a city located at the northern region of Switzerland). The work of the studio has gained national and international recognition throughout the design community, due to an approach that’s derived from the Swiss graphic design heritage of the 1960s’, and is different enough to overcome expected stereotypes. Taking a closer look at the processes of their work, especially the cultural posters designed by Jiri Oplatek (*1976), promises answers to the question of how visual innovation appears in the processes of design. 
The following analysis is based on an informal interview that was conducted with Jiri Oplatek, as well as observations on the sketch material that were presented at the time of the interview. 
The process that we will examine, is of an early poster in an ongoing poster series for the Swiss Architecture Museum (SA M) in Basel, which Jiri Oplatek has been designing since 2007. Similar to every applied project in communication design, we can describe a framework for this process. The existing corporate design of the institution established by Claudiabasel in 2006/07, the communication strategy, the theme of the exhibition, and the budget are all clear parameters, guiding one’s decisions in a design process. These guidelines can be outlined before the first sketch has materialized but they are only describing a field of visual options and not a final result. In order to oversee the field of visual probabilities, conscious thought reaches its limits, and another mode of decision-making comes into play. But how can we talk about these decisions which we can verbalize partially only after they show their effect in a sketch?
From the interview with Jiri Oplatek some of his reflections provide a starting point for the analysis. After some general remarks he points out, that he remembers an important shift developing the SA M poster for the exhibition of Pancho Guedes: “With the Pancho Guedes poster we have experimented for a long time as one would expect and as we have learned in our education, placing the title SAM, large, in top at the beginning of the reading sequence and as the importance of the text decreases the type was chosen in a smaller size towards the bottom of the format. We made many sketches like this in the office and while I went out to drink a beer not specifically thinking about the project I got struck by the insight, that houses are built from the bottom, from the foundation towards the roof. Transferring this idea to the typographic composition later on, the reading direction from the bottom to the top became a surprising solution I didn’t think of before.” By reversing the conventional reading direction to go from the bottom to the top, an iconic reading of the typography emerged. The text blocks formed an image related to the sequence of constructing the house. 
Furthermore the decreasing sequence of type sizes evoked another basic experience of perception. The text blocks created the notion of objects distributed in increasing distance to the beholder of the poster. 

With this typographic composition the distance between the viewer and the depicted house is bridged. Both iconic messages address the viewer on the level of his/her bodily experiences in 3-dimensional space and not through the message encoded in the words represented by typography. 
As the sequence of sketches demonstrates, there were several attempts to alter the letterforms and create an additional typographic reading. The rounded deformation was explored to create a reference to the design process of Pancho Guedes. As a starting point of his projects he used to paint the soul of the house he was working on. Since this fact is not known to the general public, the letterforms are mainly transporting the message in organic forms—bubbling or melting.
With the deconstruction created out of shapes derived from the background image (Image 5 - P. 31), an additional and more meaningful level of the typography was evoked, binding the verbal message, the iconic level of typography and the photographic image together. Through the missing elements of the letters, the layer of colourful typographic forms and photographic information disturb the clear spatial reading of the poster. Through the cropping of the letters SA M along the path leading to the building, a clear spatial representation is denied. The letters are in the foreground and at the same time covered by an element which is, in the spatial logic of the photograph in the background. Even though the relevant shift in the process leading to the final poster design can later be described, the notion of a building triggered a solution that transcends beyond the mere illustration of a house. By deconstructing the letterforms, a composition is created that denies a clear spatial relationship between the typography and the background image. This particular treatment differentiates the SA M Poster, in the Pancho Guedes exhibition, from what we have in mind, when discussing Swiss Graphic Design of the 1960s. In this contradiction of spaces, an ornamental effect is achieved and the beholder is forced to overcome his/her own schema of spatial representation through imagination.
Even though the described process could now be interpreted as proof of the genius powers of an individual designer struck by lightening, a closer look at the circumstances reveals relevant influences from the collaboration with the client and the colleagues. 
Oplatek describes that Francesca Ferguson, the curator and director of the museum at the time of the early posters, had provided a small selection of photographs relevant to the exhibition and was instrumental in challenging the message of the poster (though not the formal solution) in order to achieve a result of high quality. Also the discussion carried out in the office, where the individual taste of the designer is confronted for the first time with the reaction of other beholders—a significant aspect of the design process. Furthermore the effect of a first successful poster of a series on the following processes could be discussed in depth. Even though these aspects remain in sketch-form, they demonstrate how a closer look at the design process can be the starting point for the understanding of an individual poster’s iconic meaning. 
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