Poster task

 Poster task 

• Design a poster to tell us something about your selected issue; visualise a piece of research
• Poster restrictions; 2 colours
• Consider how do you communicate words or images; hijack or contextualise things 
• Tone of voice
• What message do you want to communicate 
• What rules could you create 
• Doesn't have to be obvious; can be visually abstract 
• Connotations of existing imagery and type 

Concepts I want to communicate

• Anti techno tourist; hijack holiday flyers and leaflets 
• Celebrate the Berlin techno community; reflect the idea of 'church' and 'Sunday mass' 
• Communicate the idea of creating unique spaces; other worldly environments 
• Communicate the anti phone rules of Berlin club culture; people who go inside have to put a sticker over their phones in order to prevent people taking photos, etc. Also, due to the use of drugs within the building, there are no mirrors so that guests are spared the 'buzzkilling indignity of seeing their own faces'. 
• Explore the idea of censorship 
• Celebrate the idea of bringing East and West together; the name of Berghain also originates from its location in between East and West Berlin; straddling Kruez(BERG) and Friedrichs(HAIN)
• The Love Parade; a massive event for the LGBTQ community 

Creating a distorted/ illegible typeface

In order to focus on the idea of censorship, I wanted to take a typographic approach to the poster task and develop a super illegible typeface. This custom type reads 'Kirche', meaning church in German; I wanted the poster to conceptually reflect the idea of community within the Berlin techno scene and how it is often a religious ritual for many regulars. As well as this, the concept of locals going to Berghain exclusively on Sundays also relates to the impact of techno tourism; due to the overwhelming amount of tourists visiting the club on Fridays and Saturdays, many regulars only go on Sundays, referring to it as 'Sunday mass'. 

Visual rules; the 9 circles of Dantes Inferno

Linking to these religious undertones, I thought it would be interesting to visually represent the almost ritual like community of Berghain through looking more into its comparison to Dantes inferno; in my research, the architect responsible for the power plants renovation referred to the Berghain's architecture as Dantes inferno. An interesting rule I thought I could explore in light of this was the 9 circles of Dantes inferno.

Visualising Tilman Brembs photography (1992-97)

I felt like this particular photo from photographer Tilman Bremb's archive series on Berlin techno fit the atmosphere I wanted to capture, as the thorn crown worn in the image is very reminiscent of Jesus, thus relating to the religious associations of Berghain. However, the format didn't really have any rules and lacked an association with censorship that I wanted to communicate. 

Using the rule of the 9 circles of Dantes inferno, I decided to select 9 images from Bremb's photo series, and super crop them into circles so they were censored more. This circle format also related to the idea that visitors of the clubs have to put stickers on their phone cameras, wherein a circle somewhat visualises phone cameras. As well as this, to make the link to censorship even more concise, I scratched out the faces of the people in the images, to communicate this idea of protecting those within the techno community. 

Experimenting more with colour, I decided to have a very minimal contrast with grey on grey, as it made the images hard to make out, thus communicating a sense of censorship more. However, I felt like there could be some visual disruption to the design in order to distort and confuse the audience more; kind of censoring the images further by things being overlapped. 

In light of this, I created this distorted shape that had a very sharp and somewhat industrial tone to it that felt right in the context of Berghain; it also visually complimented the typeface, inspired by the crazy and weird serifs featured in that. 

Part of the design process was focused on colour schemes for the poster, as I felt like I could go down two approaches to communicate censorship. On one hand, I could communicate it with minimal contrast so the images are hard to work out/ illegible. On the other hand, I could approach it in a way where the colours don't go together and feel aggressive; this example in particular captured that tone of voice pretty well, as the images are censored by having such a awful colour scheme, it kind of hurts the audiences eyes. This works well in the context of a poster, as having something that is horrible to look at kind of deters techno tourists and protects the community. 

In contrast to the other poster designs, I decided to take on a more minimal approach in hopes that it would have more of a visual impact. I used the same concept of censoring the people's faces in the images, in order to communicate the idea that the people of Berlin are not 'objects of curiosity'. I feel like there is definitely more impact in these outcomes, but I also feel like I could definitely visually communicate the idea of censorship better. I want to challenge myself to push how I could visually explore this, and find a balance between the outcome being informative/ educational, as well as protecting the community.

Initial ideas 

• Creating a tips/ dos and don'ts for techno tourists to help protect the Berlin techno community; could be a series of zines or posters educating the audience.
• Focus more on educating techno tourists on the cultural history of Berlin's techno scene; celebrate their community by creating a curation of images and artefacts that explore the origins of the techno scene. 
• Visually, I'm conflicted on how to explore the idea of censorship within the outcome, as the concept of protecting the community through censorship/ anti phone policies is a massive part of the techno scene. 
• I could either; take a super maximalist approach inspired by Frontpage fanzine and censor things through super chaotic design OR I could censor things and hide elements through very minimal design 
• In terms of packaging, I like the idea of packaging little roll out zines in objects such as cassette tapes, as it relates to how East Berlin got into techno through listening to mixtapes
• I need to look into alternative formats that I could hijack that would relate to my issue