Design Commissions
German designers Marius Jopen and Max Kuwertz designed the identity for a series of exhibitions about the body in 2016. The brief included two magazines, posters, flyers and digital items such as banners and web covers. Jopen studied in Konstanz, Rio de Janeiro and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Kuwertz studied in New York, Hong Kong and Cologne. They worked together for the first time for Het Nieuwe Instituut, combining Jopen's idiosyncratic illustrative work with Kuwertz's conceptual, typographic approach.
The Body
On the occasion of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Het Nieuwe Instituut devoted a large part of its 2016 programming to the human body. This focus concerns not only the physical achievements of individual athletes but also the constant surveillance, analysis, and manipulation of crowds of people as a collective body by advanced systems. Technological innovations have created a situation in which the body of the citizen and that of the state, the city and the public realm can be more efficiently moulded according to an ideal image. The body is being designed at all levels, and the media plays a crucial role in recording and propagating these innovations.
The programme comprised: T_he Life Fair_, Munich 1972, Space embodied, Conrol Syntax Rio en 51 Sprints
"The Body was the overall title for a series of six exhibitions that took place at Het Nieuwe Instituut in 2016. Each exhibition was about the human body and how it is monitored, viewed, and shaped by society. As a design team we were commissioned to create a campaign that encompassed all six subjects in the exhibition series.
Through this mandate we came up with the idea of BODY Magazine, a fictional magazine that looked at the human body through the lens of science and technology. The magazine's initial design consisted of blank boxes surrounded by articles and information pertaining to the exhibitions. After this we painted directly onto the magazine, writing commentary, drawing images, and highlighting specific content. We then took the magazine apart and made posters for the six exhibitions, using the cover of the magazine for the background in each instance. Similarly the invitation for the opening exhibition used the contents page while all other multimedia aspects, such as the website and associated video trailers, appeared as advertisements for BODY Magazine."