Robin Cédric Kiesel

»Examinations of the deliberate use of disturbances in typography«

My final thesis is about the creative examination of the conscious use of disturbances in typography. The aim is to illustrate how a disruption in typography can look, when it occurs and at what point it is perceived as a mere obstacle. I have shown how a disturbance that is consciously applied differs from one that arises unconsciously and where the limits of the plannability of disturbances lie.

To illustrate this, I have carried out various series of investigations, such as the random combination of different type styles in a grid, the division of letters into their characteristic segments and the effect of shifting them, and the creation of a variable monotype pixel font, which I have influenced by code.

In order to make disruptions in typography tangible, I created an editor with which users can interact and quickly and easily create abstract variations of letters. The work is intended to encourage a rethinking of typeface design and to serve as general typographic inspiration.

The "Kölner Design Preis/Toby E. Rodes Award" is an annual ceremony where the best final theses by designers from Cologne are getting rewarded. The event is organized by students from the KISD (Köln International School of Design). So this year I got the chance to create the background animations for the stage.

My task was to produce:
✸ a general animation for non-specific speeches
✸ an animation for the handover of the awards (I created illustrations of the winners and did a slideshow out of the rewarded work from them)
✸ an animation which shows the jury
✸ an animation in honor of Toby E. Rodes

The GIFs you can see were compressed and sped up in order to grab your attention. The original files are way longer so the audience won't get distracted by fast scenes during the talk.

The 33PT Conference is an event where all kind of designers are giving a talk. The conference takes place in Köln at the KISD (Köln International School of Design) and at the FH Dortmund. In this conference was all about editorial design.

Everything was organized by the students in consultation with their professors. First we had to find a subtitle for the topic "editorial design". We came up with "show hidden characters" named after the InDesign command you probably know. This command shows many important characters which are very helpful when it comes to editorial design.

After that we had to created a poster which reflects this spirit in a not too complicated way.
My poster (you can see that at the bottom of this page) was chosen and from that we constantly worked on this style to improve it. The main thought behind my design was to show the basic elements of layout and typography without loosing the attention of the beholder. So I split the poster in different rectangles to control the field of vision of the viewer and direct him to the essential parts of it. With that I got an interesting but also minimalistic design which stands out next to other posters.

To get some life into this event I created illustrations for all speakers and animated them. These clips were played behind the speakers while they were giving their talk. I also did a general animation which was played between the talks.

As part of a fundraising campaign, I conceptualized and designed a typeface for Ryzon that appears wild, loose and approachable due to its handwritten look. The typeface contains four variants per letter to ensure as much variability as possible, to appear less repetitive and to give more room to the imperfect nature of a handwritten font.

For the spring campaign of liebs I generated and edited images with the help of Ai to present the clothes in a more unconventional and abstract way.

Together with Jost Goldschmitt I designed the identity of the KISD Release Party 2022 where newly released books were presented and read. For that we created animations, posters and social media content.