Design Commissions
Gailė Pranckūnaitė and Mislav Žugaj designed the graphic identity for the exhibition for _Neuhaus _(2019)
Neuhaus
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus's founding, Het Nieuwe Instituut opened Neuhaus, a temporary academy for more-than-human knowledge. For four months in 2019, the institute was largely taken over by the dynamic learning environment of Neuhaus, a temporary and transdisciplinary academy for a new breed of designer focused on managing, circulating, sharing and practicing more-than-human knowledge.
Graphic designer Gailė Pranckūnaitė specialises in developing new, experimental forms of typography. For Neuhaus, she and Mislav Žugaj took on the challenge of creating a font for a new language inspired by the more-than-human knowledge researched and accumulated at the _Neuhaus _academy. "Using the Latin alphabet, we developed a new series of characters for non-human species," says Pranckūnaitė. "We endeavoured to formulate an alternative language that gives voice to the exhibition's non-human elements (things, animals, plants and other organisms)." Pranckūnaitė and Žugaj devised a font that contrasts sharply with the Latin alphabet's uniform, standardised and rational system. "There wasn't a coherent concept," they explain, "it was largely an inevitable response to the flux of Neuhaus's organisation and curation. Although our final design is a fun and messy experiment, it reflects humankind's collective inability to understand anything beyond the human experience."
The _Neuhaus _graphic identity gradually spread over floor plans, text boards, announcements in the foyer and the main gallery's glass front. The information accompanying the exhibition is in Dutch and English. For every human language, the designers have developed a translation into non-human knowledge. This creates an illogical, chaotic graphic language, full of contradictions. A trail of signs and amorphous areas of colour runs right across the rationally ordered Dutch and English texts. "I realise that animals and plants will not understand the non-human language we have developed," says Pranckūnaitė. "Our main aim was to develop typography that evades all kinds of logical, conventional and functional typography. For us, Neuhaus has been a humbling, beautiful and ultimately failed attempt to see past our human perception. The graphic identity has many inconsistencies, cracks and illogical decisions, which is just an honest representation of the experience we all had in the Neuhaus team trying to grasp what we we've been dealing with. We're glad we didn't try to hide this confusion or present the non-human as anything that we can remotely understand. It's safe to say that we don't! But the whole Neuhaus team saw it through, and we're proud to have been part of it."
Gailė Pranckūnaitė en Mislav Žugaj
Gailė Pranckūnaitė is a graphic designer specialising in experimental typography. Based in Vilnius, Lithuania, she works mostly on commission on projects with artists, writers, art and film institutions, museums and universities. She regularly collaborates with Mislav Žugaj, who studies medicine in Amsterdam. Both graduated from the graphic design department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2013.