Design CommissionsDesign Commissions

Studio Moniker developed the concepts for Het Nieuwe Instituut's website, its web covers and the interactive digital installation Neuhaus.world (2019).

Het Nieuwe Instituut's website comprises an extensive collection of web magazines. "As well as managing cultural heritage and making it accessible, the institute organises exhibitions, lectures, debates, research projects and so on. Given this broad range of activities and topics, we questioned the importance of having a single homepage," say Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters of Moniker, who developed the concept for the website together with Jonathan Puckey. "Instead, each project gets its own website and domain name." These semi-independent websites are given the name "webmagazine". The homepage always presents an up-to-date selection of these web magazines. "

In its capacity as an institute for architecture, design and digital culture, Het Nieuwe Instituut concentrates on progressive and experimental digital design," explains Maurer. "Therefore, we thought it appropriate to present the website as a gallery for digital culture." The website's design is based on the graphic identity developed by art director Maureen Mooren. She designed the house style as a template in which different designers can give an identity to Het Nieuwe Instituut's projects. "We have continued this approach on the website. The web magazines each get their own cover, which consists of an interactive digital work by a different designer."

Many different web covers have now been developed. "We curated an exhibition of the covers for the International Biennial of Graphic Design in Brno in the Czech Republic," says Maurer. "This resulted in a beautiful collection that we are very proud of. The digital domain is not a simple medium, so not every designer can deal it equally well." To lower the threshold, Moniker recently developed generic web covers for video, image and text, which can be completed by designers without having to do any programming. One of these templates consists of two images, of which the top one drifts over the bottom. "I am surprised by the diversity of web covers given this strict constraint. It's great to see what designers can do within such a simple format." Moniker also investigated this phenomenon in participatory projects, where participants work within a fixed set of rules, often resulting in very complex results.

Moniker interactive design studio also develops its own projects. "Het Nieuwe Instituut invited us to contribute to the programme for _Neuhaus_, the temporary academy for more-than-human knowledge. We developed an interactive digital world that plays out like a film." Neuhaus.world starts rather conventionally, showing images of a landscape and mountain, but the viewer is soon enveloped in a world full of abstract forms. "When you click on the shapes, you receive prompts to use your phone to add images, such as 'photograph something dark' or 'photograph a dream'. The viewer flies, as it were, through a film collage assembled from very different images. An eclectic, continually changing world arises that transcends the individual's imagination."

This project was then used as a cover for the _Neuhaus _web magazine, in a social media campaign and as an accompanying video for the Neuhaus.world soundtrack composed by the band Jo Goes Hunting. "The overlapping of autonomous and practical approches is fascinating," says Maurer. "It's a pity that these worlds are often separated. Therefore we intentionally work at the intersection of the autonomous and practical. I also see this development in study programmes, where students will take an autonomous approach to their work."

Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters founded studio Moniker in 2012 together with Jonathan Puckey, who branched out on his own in 2016. Moniker works with a broad range of cultural organisations and commercial companies. Their interactive design studio works to assignment and also invests in self-directed projects of a more experimental nature. Through their work, they investigate technology's social effects, particularly how we use technology and how it affects our daily lives.

Website Studio Moniker