Design CommissionsDesign Commissions

Sandra Kassenaar worked as a graphic designer on three parts of the Temporary Fashion Museum (_A Speculative History of Dutch Fashion, Collected By & _and _Precious _) in 2015, and on Finders Keepers (2017), Sicco Mansholt. A Good European (2014), and Designing Health (at Designhuis, Eindhoven).

"Marshall McLuhan's statement 'The medium is the message' made a big impression on me as a designer," says Sandra Kassenaar. "What happens when you make the content of a magazine three-dimensional? How does a newspaper's content work on a billboard? What connotations do these different media have? Which elements determine the medium, and what does this mean for the content?" These questions are a common thread running through her designs for Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Her most recent contribution was the graphic design for the Finders Keepers exhibition in 2017. It was curated by the editors of MacGuffin magazine, which Kassenaar designs. "MacGuffin began as an idea to create a portable exhibition - an exhibition in magazine form," she explains. "Each edition's theme addresses an everyday object, such as a bed, window, rope, or cupboard, which is then viewed kaleidoscopically from many perspectives through image and text. It was nice to reverse this idea of the compact exhibition and transfer the magazine's content back into three-dimensions. The exhibition became a reflection of the printed matter." "For Finders Keepers, I looked for ways to bring characteristic elements of the magazine back into the exhibition without interrupting the flow of the assembled objects. I discovered the glass covers that are used in the archive of Het Nieuwe Instituut to display vulnerable exhibits. They offer an elegant method of simultaneously displaying and protecting objects. For the exhibition, we had plexiglass covers made, with the proportions of a page from the MacGuffin magazine. We also printed interviews with the collectors onto these covers. Some of the covers were very tall, others low, depending on the objects underneath them. These "pages" were then photographed and collated into a publication accompanying the exhibition. "

Het Nieuwe Instituut invited the design and crafts magazine _MacGuffin_ to bring together more than 5000 objects - from razors to jeans, and from ropes to stairs - from more than 40 collections in a 'Grande Parade' of quotidian utensils. The _Finders Keepers_ exhibition featured collections from various artists and designers. The exhibition focused on the diverse motives and strategies of collectors, the aesthetic pleasure of collecting, and the hidden life of things.

For the Temporary Fashion Museum, Kassenaar created the graphic design for the publication and presentation of A Speculative History of Dutch Fashion and the exhibition Collected By &. "In A Speculative History, developments in Dutch fashion and society were linked to events on the international stage - like a collage of different information - which resulted in unexpected insights. The newspaper format was a good medium for presenting such a speculative history as factual truth. This layout also refers to the collated newspaper clippings."

A Speculative History of Dutch Fashion, a canon written by Guus Beumer and Georgette Koning, shows the international impact of the Dutch housewife in the 1950s, the Provos in Amsterdam, the squatters' movement, club-goers and the internet pioneers who developed new models for borrowing and sharing.

_Collected By _& featured two clothing collections: a personal couture collection and that of a vintage store. Visitors could choose how they wanted to experience these archival displays. "My task was to emphasise this archival function in the exhibition's graphic design," says Kassenaar. "We labelled and indexed the garments piece by piece. The visitor could request a piece of clothing from a card catalogue. I devised a space with a system of numbered shelving units so that the box containing the requested item of clothing could be found quickly. Everything was slightly enlarged to visually enhance the archive idea."

_The Temporary Fashion Museum_'s largest space was devoted to various collections, alternating between a personal, a corporate and a commercial character, from the personal couture clothing collection of Eva Maria Hatschek from Switzerland to the public and commercial archive of a vintage store, curated by Ferry van der Nat. Visitors could access these archives at their discretion. Collection pieces could, depending on their condition and status, be viewed, handled, adapted or purchased.

The most prominent part of the graphic identity for the exhibition Sicco Mansholt. A Good European was Hajo de Reijger's illustrations. He is known for his cartoons in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper. "I thought it was fitting that a political cartoonist portray the different phases and aspects of Mansholt's life. After all, the farmer turned politician had a turbulent political life that frequently came in for criticism in the newspapers. The typography corresponds to this in its use of newspaper headline forms." Studio PolyLester interpreted Mansholt's story in an installation comprising five scenes analogous to the five-act structure of classic tragedy. Parallel to this, the walls featured archival documents about Mansholt's political life and policies. "I thought it was appropriate to keep expanding the information, from small archive cards to wall-filling posters," says Kassenaar. "The approach intended to resonate with the butter mountains and milk lakes that Mansholt's scaling up policies instigated.

Sicco Mansholt was a farmer and social democrat who became an authoritative post-war Minister of Agriculture in the Netherlands. After 14 years of ministership, he took office as the EEC's first Commissioner of Agriculture. In this role, Mansholt became one of the founders of the European Union. Mansholt's policy had a significant influence on the economic position of farmers, the unification of Europe and the design of the Dutch landscape. The exhibition tracks the rise, fall and radical change of heart of this emblematic figure of European agricultural politics.

Sandra Kassenaar graduated in 2007 from the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem. Since then she has been working as a graphic designer together with artists, curators, writers and architects, focusing mainly on printed matter. During a residency in Cairo, she organised the Success and Uncertainty poster project with Bart de Baets, which was exhibited worldwide. In collaboration with editors Kirsten Algera and Ernst van der Hoeven, Kassenaar, she publishes the biannual design and craft magazine MacGuffin. She teaches in the graphic design department at ArtEZ in Arnhem. Her clients include De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdamse Kunstraad, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, De Appel, Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Piet Zwart Institute, Marres Projects, Kunsthuis SYB, Bik van der Pol, Edward Clydesdale Thomson, and Malkit Shoshan.

Website Sandra Kassenaar