Arjun Gilgen, Visual Communication

17

:
  • Solid
  • Typeface
  • 2021

Solid is an honest and resolute typeface with a sober appeal. It unites the seemingly natural proportions of 20th century neo-grotesques with a firm, geometric construction informed by strict arithmetics. With stylistic sets of alternate glyphs, including straight and curved tails as well as square and rounded punctuation, Solid flexibly adapts to different contexts while maintaining a confident and sincere presence. Collaborator: Stefan Hürlemann.

16

:
  • Now Country for All Women
  • Identity
  • 2021

Now Country for All Women is a concert series promoting emerging artists from a variety of genres. With the combination of a (gender) star and a clock as its key visual, the visual identity embodies the platform's activist name and vouches for progress and inclusion. While type and space are treated in reference to protest banners and flags, the animation breathes the air of development in waves over time. Symbiotic gestures in form and custom typography punctuate the design, transcending the binary by dissolving boundaries. Collaborator: Stefan Hürlemann.

15

:
  • Topfpalmen
  • Identity
  • 2020

Topfpalmen is an award-winning tragic comedy presented by the Film Academy Vienna. The visual identity amplifies the movie's shrill and intoxicating energy of unrooted over-excitement and emphasizes the contrast between glittering appearance and cruel reality. Accentuating the characters' clumsiness and cherishing the analog film's elegance, the design provides the movie with an impactful face. Designed for Studio Es. Art Direction: Verena Panholzer.

14

:
  • Fokus Berufsbildung
  • KV Winterthur
  • Poster (Proposal)
  • 2020

Fokus Berufsbildung is a Swiss professional congress stimulating innovation in vocational education. The promotional poster exhibits a contemporary orientation towards the future: focusing on the ‘B’ in the form of arrows forming each other, it visualizes the importance of today's education for tomorrow.

13

:
  • I (Body = Man)
  • BA-Diploma
  • Hardcover Edition
  • 2019

‘I’ is a book of visual allegories and a tribute to corporeality. It consists of 180 visual arguments that make sensually accessible why physicality is indispensable for the unfolding of human consciousness. Organized according to the letters of a poem which acts as its DNA, the book is divided into chapters of body parts with lengths corresponding to their sensorimotor significance. Japanese binding and a detached spine allow for air to flow through the book, making it breathe. Thus the book forms a body of its own, in which the physical and the metaphysical merge into one.

12

:
  • Talent braucht Boden
  • Fondation ZHdK
  • Promotional Card
  • 2019

The ZHdK Foundation supports talented students of the Zurich University of the Arts and funds pioneering initiatives in the arts and design. In order to attract funding partners, the promotional card intelligently accentuates the foundation's mission in a simple visual gesture, stressing the creative's dependency of financial stability in realizing meaningful work.

11

:
  • Omen
  • Hardcover Edition
  • 2019

Omen explores the manipulative power of disinformation through visual communication on the example of the topic of electromagnetic radiation. Presenting itself as a well-founded atlas on the field, the compendium is trustworthy only at first glance. Closer inspection reveals it as vague and dubious, raising questions of risks within communication and highlighting the crucial role of careful examination of information. Collaborators: Dorian Delnon & Meret Fischli.

10

:
  • Alors Festival
  • Identity
  • 2018

The Alors music festival in Zurich stands for cultural inclusion and transformation. With geometric lines in rhythmic harmony, the 2018 visual identity expresses the ideas of building bonds and developing as a collective. The design evokes a dynamic and spatial feel, drawing viewers in by creating visual friction like flashing and moving light. Dense typography and the festival's signature red complement the composition, creating a stimulating overall image of appealing force. Collaborator: Pascal Hartmann.

09

:
  • Showcase VC
  • Visual Communication ZHdK
  • Identity
  • 2018

Showcase VC is the annual exhibition of Visual Communication at the Zurich University of the Arts. The visual identity introduces the new acronym of the renamed department ‘VC’ in a multilayered composition tightly interlocking several apt symbols. Playing with perception and negative space, the design is an example of the power of graphic expression. Collaborators: Janic Fotsch & Pascal Sennhauser.

08

:
  • Creative Week
  • Art Directors Club Switzerland
  • Identity
  • 2017

The Creative Week is an annual event for the Swiss creative industry with internationally renowned speakers and a national award show. The 2017 visual identity under the motto ‘Story Rules’ builds on the guides of a ruler. All information is lined up in the pattern of a typographic waterfall, reflecting the themes of time and narration in form of a quotation mark. The dramaturgical structure (the ‘story’) is not only revealed, but itself becomes the significant feature of the identity—establishing a smart and ruling presence. Collaborators: Sebastian Bayer, Filip Despotovic, Nicole Jara Vizcardo & Aline Meier.

07

:
  • Atlas of Design Tools
  • Editorial (Contribution)
  • 2017

The Atlas of Design Tools reflects on the impact of tools on the work of today's graphic designers. The chapter on one of them, the flatbed scanner, underlines the claim that most major changes within the industry are due to technological development. The layout follows the scanner's working manner of a light axis moving through a field. Comprising scans of the best-selling scanner to date, its user reviews and historical, technical and statistical data on the scanner, the episode becomes a ‘self-reflexive’ essay shaped by the tool itself. Collaborators: Marina Marjanovic & Tyrone Schorrer.

06

:
  • Hong Kong Kino
  • Filmpodium Stadt Zürich
  • Poster (Proposal)
  • 2017

The poster for the Cinema of Zurich's film program dedicated to the golden years of the Cinema of Hong Kong brings the vibrancy of Hong Kong's neon-lit streets to Zurich. With an abundance of contrasting colors and Latin and Mandarin chaotically harmonizing, it celebrates the blending of cultures. Collaborator: Julius Åsling.

05

:
  • Art Container Zurich
  • Identity
  • 2017

The Art Container organization reuses old shipping containers as art spaces in Zurich. By translating harsh forms and mechanical gestures into a sensitive use of typography and space, the visual identity enhances the objects' industrial heritage and builds a technical but playful metaphor for the art spaces and their function—forming an appearance that is significant, reputable and fresh.

04

:
  • For Us by Us
  • Identity
  • 2016

The visual identity in black and white for a lecture by Swiss type foundry Grilli Type at the ‘For Us by Us’ series of the Zurich University of the Arts set a strong focus on typography. Just like a typeface, which as a larger whole exists only in the totality of its smaller constituents, the design is based on a choreography whose meaning emerges from the collective of its parts. Playing with distance and dimensions, it describes the foundry's character(s), acting bold and resonating details at the same time. Collaborator: Dorian Delnon.

03

:
  • Planetarium
  • Miras Collective
  • Invitation Card
  • 2016

The invitation to a private rave at a secret location materializes the happening's extraterrestrial theme, ‘planetarium’. With laser print on Heavymetal Silver paper an effect is achieved which mostly confines the image to illegibility, making it visible only under certain light and viewing conditions. In this way, the wordless card not only tells just enough to lead invitees to (the) space, but itself marks the curious start of a mystical experience.

02

:
  • Schnellmann hcm
  • Logo
  • 2016

Schnellmann hcm specializes in customized coaching, career planning and recruitment solutions for companies and individuals. The simple but refined logo smartly represents the company's expertise in opening the lead to success. In just one strong act of progression it transforms constricted into free, static into dynamic, flat into spatial and potential into realization.

01

:
  • Olma-Messen St. Gallen
  • Poster (Proposal)
  • 2015

The poster for the Swiss agricultural fair presents a sun as an udder and an udder as a sun. A symbiosis that unites the fundamentals of existence and highlights the unity in the cycle of life. Amusing with a graphic reduction that sparks the beholder's imagination, the poster celebrates the act of communication itself and exhibits the fair's mission to joyfully cultivate connection(s).