Moniteurs / xplicit ffm (DE)
www.moniteurs.de; www.xplicit.de

Find and Seek

30.07. - 05.08.2006

How do I get from A to B-oisbuchet? Together with course participants, Sibylle Schlaich (Moniteurs, Berlin) and Alexander Branczyk (xplicit ffm) will develop orientation systems for the workshop grounds. We will come closer to the topography - through typography. Guide or hide? Identity & appearance, architecture & landscape, pathway & roadway, space & time, font & image, surface & material, marking & embarking, commands & reprimands … and doing so without signs?

Moniteurs / xplicit ffm

Sibylle Schlaich (*1964) studied visual communication at HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd and HdK Berlin and gathered her first professional impressions at Otl Aicher in Rotis, GGK in Frankfurt/Main and Henry Steiner in Hong Kong. Sibylle Schlaich subsequently worked for two and a half years at MetaDesign in Berlin before founding the design firm Moniteurs in 1994 with fellow female designers.

The Berlin firm conceives, develops and designs guidance systems for urban spaces as well as orientation systems for buildings and facilities. Current projects are signage for Zaha Hadid's BMW plant in Leipzig, the Tropical Island Resort in the former Cargolifter Hall in Brandenburg as well as the Märkisches Viertel (Mark Brandenburg Quarter) in Berlin.

After seven years at MetaDesign, Alexander Branczyk (*1959) joined with partners to found the xplicit Company for Visual Communication Ltd. in 1994 with locations in Frankfurt/Main and Berlin. xplicit performs conceptual and design work for the printed and "virtual" worlds. Areas of focus are corporate design and typeface design, exhibition and catalogue design.

As Art Director of the music magazine Frontpage (1992-1997) - for which he also designed the fonts - he helped shape its expressively emotional style. In addition, Branczyk is a founder of the experimental typography collaboratorium F2F. Branczyk has created numerous fonts including quite a few corporate fonts for German commercial enterprises.

Sibylle Schlaich and Alexander Branczyk are co-editors of "Emotional Digital" (Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz). They both have teaching experience in the field of typography (Schlaich at FH Bielefeld and, since 2005, at the Hochschule für Kunst und Design Burg Giebichenstein in Halle; Branczyk as a guest professor of typography at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar).