Design Practice 1 - Erik Kessels

Erik Kessels born (1966) is a dutch designer who has been educated as an Art Director and graphic designer. He is mostly known for his publications and his use of photography to tell visual stories in his books. he is the Creative Director of KesselsKramer publishing in 1996 and today the company consists of 38 staff.

 Here is a small biography of Erik Kessels found on Format Festival

Some of his most interesting publications are the 'In Almost every Picture' series, consists of 10 editions of the book, each made up of an individual set of photographs that Kessels was inspired by, and then used to tell a story using images, more often than not these books used photos containing a constant element, for example;

'In Almost Every Picture 1' 

This edition is based on a collection of photographs Kessels fell upon at a flea market in Barcelona, it is a collection consisting of over 400 photographs of a wife that were taken by her husband. The photo's had ended up at the flea market due to the husband and wife passing on, as the husband and wife had no relatives the house was emptied by dealers. Kessels felt inspired by the beauty and consistency of the photographs and used then in his first 'In Almost every Picture' edition.

 You can see spreads of the other editions on KasselsKramer publishing, there is also an interesting interview with Erik Kassels by Joerg Colberg on the Conscientious EXTENDED called 'Conversations about Photobooks: Erik Kassels'. He talks about where he got the inspiration, materials and ideas for the 'In Almost Every Picture' series.

I also found this video interview of Kessels after 'Typo Berlin 2010' which is not the best interview but it makes me laugh. 

 'what is Comic Sans?'

I also came across this video of an Erik Kessels lecture at CCAarts which you can watch HERE, as he talks about his early work, it is obvious that he is a very idea's led designer, usually playing with a brands current identity or advertising it in a way that would ne ot normally be expected, for example, advertising a shoe company using models with only one leg, or as you can see below he uses comedy to sell a product.

24 Hour Photo installation

One of his most recent famous installation art pieces was the 24 hour photo installation (November 2011)  a part of an exhibition at FOAM, Amsterdam.

The concept behind this installation was to take 1 million photographs uploaded onto social networking sites over a 24 hour period, print them about and pile them into this exhibition hall, the idea is to show the shear quantity of images that we all deal with in day to day life, he encourages the audience to walk through the mass of prints and look at the images.

It is such an interesting concept, I am not sure what genre of art and design you would class this as, it is quite contemporary and I am not sure how it would be classed as graphic design, but as he is influenced and produces graphic design, art, photography, advertising etc this is a piece that will try to help those people who may not be aware that imagery is such a huge aspect of all our lives and we should not take it's power for granted.

his style of design can't help but be inspiring, he proves that as a graphic designer there is no set way of producing good design,