two options.
Hello everybody, my name is Michiel Schuurman and today I'll be showing you some of the
work I make. I designed several items but today I want to show you some posters and
flyers because these are the things that I really enjoy doing and these are the
things that are kind of my playground for the more commercial stuff I make. So
today you'll be seeing posters I guess and but first I'm going to tell you how
I ended up here. This is my final exam. This is a picture for my final exam. I
did it on the Wietveld together with Hans van Halen and it was a magazine and
I was really focused on content at that time and to be honest that wasn't a
great success so I kind of had a shitty exam and then I ended up here which is
FedEx Kinkos and I became their manager after my exam for about four years so I
guess my school didn't went so well and it took me quite a time to become a
graphic designer again. I worked in the store for four years and first there's
just a copy slave and then I became a manager eventually and in that period I
learned a lot about printing and using paper and using software and I kind of
took that time to play around with the copiers, the printers and the donor
stuff and to me this education was really important maybe more not not more
important but equally important as my school and then after four years working
here I asked myself if I want to do this the rest of my life and I said no I
want to be a graphic designer I want to give it another try and so I was
looking for a job and two friends of mine was starting a smart exhibition space
in Amsterdam in a squatted building and they were searching for a graphic
designer so they asked me and they needed everything they needed logos they
needed posters they needed the signage so we started with the signage so this is
the kind of a bench or signage in front of that that's that space that's also
became the logo for the horsemen it was called the horse move project space and
this is the space itself this is this is this is this was near the the Steylick
Museum or the temporary building of the Steylick Museum and we squatted it and
yeah started our own art exhibition space there this is some pictures of
that this is a nice view this is the object used as a DJ table there was
around that time that I started doing posters and I want to show you first
the first posters I did in that period they weren't so good but I was I was
happy I could do something and I was starting to develop my own style
gradually and also trying to design my own typefaces I'll just show you some
pictures and then this poster with design typefaces and in the beginning it
was I guess really conservative I just took a typeface designed a typeface and
then put it on white paper and that would be the stuff I made then I made
this one and this is kind of the beginning for I guess what I'm still
doing this is like a poster which I experimented more and I was really happy
with that Willem part it says Willem no we can really read it but I was really
happy with it that you cannot read it that it looks more like an image you're
not type anymore so I was thinking to myself what can I do to emphasize that
more and then I created this poster which is really tripping I was really
happy with this poster because there wouldn't be borders anymore from the
letters and the background so the background and the typeface are the
same thing and I really like that and I was wondering if I could do more stuff
with that this is also from that poster and I made this poster so the thing
with this post was that obviously it's totally computer generated so you can
see that I wrote an action in Illustrator and an Illustrator kind of made this
poster for me and I was happy with that but not too happy I also want also wanted
to make it more human so I made this poster and this poster is kind of like
the same structure you saw before but in this case I hand placed all this little
balls so I also had a growing system and I would totally if I would sit
there for the whole evening placing this little balls until the whole thing
was filled and that took me like 14 hours I think but I'm really yeah I was
really happy with it because finally something finally was showing that I
can do stuff on my own and develop an own style I see how complicated it looks
and it was kind of confusing too because a lot of people asked me if I
programmed these but I don't I don't program these only thing I program is
that I calculate how big the next ball is going to be with my calculator and
then I hand place these balls until everything is done and I it's nice to
hear Thomas talk about Fibonacci because I use a lot of Fibonacci rules to in my
poster so the poster is in the golden rule which is kind of like there's
something to do with Fibonacci and also the growing of the balls is also with a
golden rule so I use it quite a lot but I like also to make it more organic and
not so it's like a like half organic half computer thing this is the this is
also this is the inside of a flyer I made for the same show looks really
disgusting and really like it you see and it kind of surprises you if you do
stuff like that then you don't know what what comes out of it so you just make
this and then it looks really cool so I kind of like that I kind of liked that
new approach this is a poster in the same I did same way but this time I used
stars and I used to I made a white layer of stars and then underneath a black
layer of stars and a white layer black white black white black so there are no
gray tones and yeah it makes it the show was called ritual tendencies and if you
can see it over there and I thought it looks kind of ritual to me look kind of
like feathers or something you see you see it's more and also the all these
stars are hand-placed so I had a lot of time back in those days and this is from
the same series but it's a little bit different these are this is show with
Frank Amalan and Michael a hockey or a gecki never know it but they are
painters who use really huge amounts of paint and I painted this directly in
Photoshop so this is this is I think the only thing I ever did by hand
immediately and I was it was pretty quick I finished this post pretty quick
but then it took me hours on the on the in the copy store to to make sure that's
the shading in the letters there's a little bit of shading where that's
because that's why the letters seem to pop out took me a lot of time to to get
the shading right and so the letters seem to pop out these are all done on
black and white copiers the normal computers copies you you know from the
copy store but I tweaked them a little bit so these are 1200 DPI posters which
is ridiculous no posters 1200 DPI but I kind of like it because you can work
really can really seem zoom into and yeah really make nice details with it
this is the final poster of the of that exhibition space horse move the horse
move project face it's called the final farewell not the first way of farewell
but final farewell and I think this is for me personally this is the best of
all the of that series because it's really cartoony and really there's a
lot of detail and this time it it didn't took me so long to make it I think
like six hours or something because I really know how to do it and I really
cool there are cool depths because the I used I just used this one building block
and then because I used a building block it has like a gray light gray gray in a
black era of area and then you can see it in the poster itself so the bottom is
black this is more darker and that part becomes lighter so in the end I think
this is a really good it's one of my favorites this was the closure of the
horse move project space and then at that time we we get us quite a few artists
and friends and we looked for another building bigger building and then we
came to a new locations called the service garage this is the poster of the
opening because at the moment that we we came there it's all the garage and
that there were looks of legs hanging everywhere so I made this poster for in
between the looks of legs so people could see that would be an opening of a
new art exhibition space this is the space itself we painted used letters on
the on the walls if you ever visit Amsterdam you should come there it's
really cool and for this exhibition space the first year I didn't want to do
any post anymore I wanted to do flyers and I really wanted to use the copier
really well so and it was also the final year of me working at the FedEx
Kinkos so it was kind of like a farewell a farewell to to Kinkos so I
just these are kind of like my my copy masterpieces I used really nice paper
but again it's just a normal copier you can find anywhere and I tweaked it and
tweaked it until you get these nice gradients and stuff like that this is
like a this is a flyer that if you fold it together every corner fits
exactly which is really hard with the copier so I worked really hard on that
one yeah and I think that the paper I just took nice paper and then it really
looks nice but I think one flyer of this is one like 1 cent or 2 cent production
cost so it's really cheap and really good looking this is another flyer I did
on the copier yeah if you zoom in you can just see that it's just copied it's on
a copper paper paper that looks like copper and yeah I think this is one of
the best flyers I did on the copier machine I get all the gray tones and
everything is just just okay there it's a show up it's called at the tights which
it means old-fashioned in one way or dead in another way actually and it was it
was about age ageing artists so we had a lot of old artists and a lot of young
artists together in one room which was really cool to really big show and here
you see the inside of the flyer so I was yeah this is another flyer
called I did it like a cold-looking logo and again it this was really hard
to print on the paper but I managed it it's the inside of the flyer kind of a
mirror the whole that we had the whole garage painted with mirrors and stuff
like that so yeah and then I of Naya not really true and the FedEx kink was
closed so I had to look for different techniques and then I decided it's
finally time to start six screening and that's what I still do nowadays and this
is the first poster I said screened and it's it's it's okay it's a kind of the
same technique I used before it looks complex but in terms of six screen this
is really easy of like a big pink blob and black typography over it so it's not
really using the the the method of six screen very well I guess but it looks
really cool and these pubic hairs are all done again by hand and it's a brush
in illustrator so you can imagine how many times I have been brushing before I
had this poster
the show is called sense of pornography which I really hate it when people come
up with the title that is so that has so much explanation in it so I thought
well fuck it I'll make something that looks like born and there you have it
this is the first attempt to make a real silk screen poster what I wanted to do
is this is not actually a photo of the poster itself because it's really hard
to photograph post because the colors are really delicate I have some posters
with me I'll show you later but what I wanted to do is I have an orange layer
and a purple layer and when they get together they form the typography so
the typography is formed by adding these two layers together because the ink is
transparent this is a technique that I used in another poster well but I'll
show you later this poster didn't really came out right it was really hard to do
and the first time I did it twice and the first time I forgot that the six
screen ink is not transparent by default so when I added the second layer it was
totally covered and it didn't work anymore but it came out nice it came out
okay I guess this is a poster that is heavily illustrated
sure this is I'm really proud of this one because it's it's kind of a new way
of reading I guess you you don't see typefaces you don't see letters but you
see groups of letters and by reading the groups of letters you're reading the
message and I really found it funny it's a it's an expert meeting so it's a
meeting between artists and people from the museum and stuff like that so I just
wanted to make gatherings of of letters and again this is a silk screen and it's
it's so screened in Einhäu in Einhäufe by Linda arts I wasn't so screened this
by one by self and it's done really sharply even the smallest typefaces the
smallest layers came out really good I made this poster by tweaking the the
average tool in Illustrator it's not really coding and I never code actually
I'm just I use codes a lot I guess but they're in the background for me and but
it looks kind of cool
now here's some more detailing oh yeah this is a painting by Monet and there's
something interesting with this painting because the the Sun in the middle is
painted with the same saturation as the rest of the painting and the Sun is you
take a black and white picture of this painting Sun disappears and I've never
seen it in real life but I've heard that if you see it in real life the colors
become really vibrant because of that saturation that the saturation is equal
so I wanted to do a poster with that there was a show called Contained and it
would be I thought it would be fitting to use colors that if you photograph them
in black and white they would disappear the poster came out great only it is so
hard to photograph I have it with me
well you just have to see it if you come up close you can see it in them
they'd like to break or something
the whole thing with the colors dissolving like this Monet painting it
it didn't work out that well this is the black and white picture of that same
photo so you see that well I totally I totally failed actually but it kind of
works it you can imagine that especially the blue is really vibrant and
that's something that you you can only achieve by six screening and not with
for instance offset or something like that and to make it five we used a gray
paper I say we because I printed this with Harmon Limburg but we used a gray
paper and then on top of that we put a white layer and I'm on top of that the
reds the green and the blue so that the colors really come at you so this is a
poster about colors I guess here's some detailing I always make sure there's a
lot of overlap in the colors and I really like them the details that come
out of it so the black lines so to speak this is a poster with a ridiculous
title the show is called chaos becomes s a s m s house becomes cosmos and I had
to use it normally I can just tweak it a little bit so can I do I really have to
use it yeah this time I really had to use the title and the art artist actually
told me he wanted landscape and so I said okay I'll give it a try and I made
this poster and this poster is for me is interesting because in six screening here
you have a detail I used three types of transparent white so the the grays is
the is actually transparent white with a lot of transparency in it and I put
these three layers on top so that you get all these nice interlocking white
things here you have the m so with only three layers you can get a lot of
complexity and it's yeah I I think it's really nice to to print white on black
it's it's something it's also something that offset can't offer you you have to
search screen that so I'm always looking when I'm so screen I was looking for why
would you sex screen in first place well that's because of the colors and the
white and transparency so I want to use that in my posters this is a really
quick and simple poster it was a movie called two ways and it's about
mountaineering guys mountain climbing and I just shredded the film so what you
see on top the edge of the mountain is shredded film so I just read the film
put it on the lighter and let the gray of the card the paper do the work for the
mountain itself it was a really a quickie I had one week to to come up with it and
so screen it but it was okay
this is a poster the last of the mohecans this post I kind of did for
myself I was talking to Harman Lindbergh which who is also a silk screener
he's actually quite a good silk screener and he always says that he feels like
he's the last of the mohecans so kind of make this poster for him and he works a
lot with transparencies so and what the is so special about this post of that
tie-face or the the letter forms are formed by these random blobs and I can
show you if I show you the films here is the film of the first layer and here's
the film of the second layer you see that the into where they cross the
letters form and I wanted it looks so spiky because I wanted to because it
obvious isn't random because you really have to be you really have to to to make
it work but I make it spiky so that it looks kind of random and also it looks
like ink so what's kind of attributes to a silk screeners in it all come in so
what you think I'm gonna do this is a poster it's not for the for the service
garage you this is for a young from the plug he's a minimalistic painter and so
I wanted to do a like a minimalistic poster for him and this is entirely done
with four colors so it's just pink yellow and blue and pink and yellow form
the orange and pink of the yellow and the blue form the green etc etc and
this is all fluor colors I have the poster with me you can just see it when
you want to see it it's really hard to photograph again I really love this
poster it was selected for show more this year you have details you see the
overlap again this is an offset poster that was kind of awkward to me I was so
used to a silk screen that I kind of lost it with offset so this was my first
offset poster in a while so I kind of went back to my horse move days and did
what I did then but I think it's a it's a nice poster
oh yeah okay well this is the last this is the chroma key poster chroma key is
the the thing you have in movies that you have a blue screen and then people
act in front of it and then later stuff gets superimposed in it and what I
wanted to do is make two different layers and where the colors where they
meet the the word is disappearing and we did that with Iris print the same
principle Thomas taught you about so these are the two films you see there
aren't any colors hiding in it this is like the silk screening and what happens
I'll show it
love some ink here, here, here, and then this rainbow color effects emerges
they all become different so this is one this is another one
so this is gone entirely on the silk screen machine and that's one of the films
oh
I'm going to explain this is my last poster this is a zero I'm kind of
developing another new thing now where I use black to cover all the stuff up that
I made so you have like a really nice color back black background and then I
put a really heavy black on it this is a kind of a new thing that I'm doing right
now this is one of those posters also with the same principle but I guess that
was it okay so are there any questions from the audience to Michiel here if you
have a question please erase your hands so I can see it anyone question for
Michiel okay there's a question right there the readability of your posters
becomes most of the time severely compromised you really have to work to
read what your poster is saying yeah when you see those posters on the street
people have to stop to read what what you are advertising yeah exactly well is
it a problem because you might think that you you lose some of your potential
clients or people who come to an exhibition I don't think so because I
thought about this a lot because I get this all the time that my posters are
not logical I think it works from my poster works like this that people that
are interested in art or are going to these shows they take the time to have
a look at these posters and see them as something that stands out between all
these other posts that just deliver a message so it in the landscape of posters
it's really hard to to catch interest of people and also I think it makes it
also a bit more sincere there's a lot of me in this poster so I think people will
notice that it's just a different mindset I mean if you're across the street in
the car you see this poster you're not gonna break yeah no I know but you'll
probably walk around at another time and then if you still don't stop to to look
what it is it's probably new for you anyway okay is there any other question
okay well it's it that's it then well clap your hands everybody for me
