Krater & Hohl: the new brand

Welcome to my new company, Krater & Hohl. We makes holes. All kinds of holes, in most things, on things, about things etc. 


This is a company that offers possibilities - not only where a hole can go but what you can put into it. K&H is not a hole filling company but simply a hole making company. We give you a hole to do with what you will. Or maybe hole itself is all that is needed - after all, who doesn't like a nice hole?

These people are unhappy with a hole. We promise higher standards 

than our competitors.

It is important to say that K&H does not sell a commodity. Nor is it a service for everyone who desires a hole in their lives. K&H is a consultant and an implementer. We meet with you to discuss the possibilities of having a hole and then figure out all the details of making that hole happen.

After all, holes are a little different than other products. We can't sell making a void in a solid on the supermarket shelf and sending a lawyer in a van with a shovel simply isn't sufficient. We hold high standards for the creation of holes and seriously consider their future effects. Not every hole is timely but we work to find the best hole for your vision. We adapt the concept of hole to all possible circumstances. (with notable exceptions)

Here are a couple kinds of holes that we can make!:

1. Paper: When you loose your hole-punch or make your own staples
2. The ground: Only to the Asthenosphere
3. Shoes: Best for getting your enemies' socks wet
4. Walls: Great for windows
5. Arguments: Beat them every time
6. Or anything else! No job too big or definition too obscure!

We do not make holes in: doughnuts/bagels, swiss cheese, stump speeches, beehives (don't mess with bees), the vacuum of space, your friend's head (except the ear), wicker furniture, the prosecutor's argument, Florida

Up next: Branding Krater & Hohl.

 For the savvy, mercurial, plotting consumer. 

The Book Project: the final form

I am pretty happy with how the final book turned out. Below is the collection of envelopes which contain the pages.  The titles for each section were chosen both by the subject of the Mark Manders quotations and also by the presented images.

Below are the open envelopes. I thought it suited the pages better if they were presented on a black background.

Here are a couple selections of pages. I chose a text organization that was consistent for all pages of a single category.

The Book Project: the beginnings

I wanted to do a book project that was organized but not in a linear way. I wanted to have an interaction with the audience that was more than flipping through the pages. I decided to do a set of different categories, the reader could investigate groups of pages in whatever  way they chose.

The images on the pages were going to be selections from drawings I had done in Sumi ink and charcoal. I wanted to exhibit parts of each drawing in a way that a diversity of forms could be shown in a limited vocabulary. I also wanted to show particular elements of the drawings that happened over and over. Below are two of the 8 drawings I used.

I also used text for the work and for a long time could not decide what should be presented. I thought about writing the text myself, but I am not a writer and that was not the focus of the project. I decided to use selections from the writings and interviews of Dutch artist Mark Manders. Manders is one of my favorite artists, I have been reading and following his work ever since I went to the Venice Biennale last year.Below is an example of his work. 

Manders is a poet who became a fine artist and his explanations of his work are carefully chosen. I selected  a sentence or two at a time which I found to be either poetic or very specific and then organized those quotations into sections. Below is an every test of what different pages in the book could look like.

I decided to organize the book into 24 pages, or 6 categories of 4 pages each. Each group of pages was going to go in an envelope. I organized the words and the images separately, then I combined them into distinct groups.

The poster project: choosing the image

Once I had decided upon the theme of the song, or the visions it conjured up, I set to realizing that image. From google I collected images of the city at night, highways and driving cars. Roxy Music is definitely pop, and the band has a sort of arms-wide-open emotionality. It is cosmopolitan, glamorous and stylized. I chose images that I thought were attractive and could be mined for both form and color. Below is my two selected images and two possible color schemes I drew from both.

After I chose the colors I experimented with drawing an image. I didn't want to the copy the images directly, I tried to simplify and focus the design. Below are my ideas for the bands of light and the lighted pedestrian bridge.

Afterwards, I started drawing purely abstract designs that had some of the same sort of energy. I am not sure yet whether I should incorporate these designs into the final poster.

The poster project: choosing the song

The song I chose for our Single poster project is "India" by Roxy Music. It came out in 1982 and I guess could be called a transition song on Roxy Music's album "Avalon."

Hopefully it plays below:

The song made me think of something that was romanticized yet contemporary. I began to think of driving at night in the city, the lights of the cars and buildings, a quiet dynamism. Below is my word chart for the song. Hopefully it is readable.

Swoon at the Brooklyn Museum

After visiting the Brooklyn museum last Thursday, I wasn't sure what to think of the exhibition.  Swoon is a New York artist who makes sculptures and huge prints that are meant to be placed in public. I liked the quality of the work, and it is fun to look at, but I just wasn't sure what  I was looking at. After reading the wall text, watching the video and a little bit of research online, I can see that the work is a response to Hurricane Sandy and specifically designed for the Brooklyn Museum rotunda. Besides from that, I'm not sure how the elements of the collected works do that.

Above is a print by Swoon that is in the rotunda. It is about 15 feet high and looks to be a portrait of a person with a headdress or garment made out of feather and crystalline forms. It looks cool, but what is it about? Below is one of two rafts that Swoon made to float both on the Hudson and the Adriatic into Venice. It's a bit similar to Aldo Rossi's floating theater but Swoon's rafts are more exaggerated. People apparently lived on them but I can't image how.

This image below seems to the closest to the Museums promotion of Swoon as an activist artist. But what is the work about? Is it a portrait or a particular person or a documenting of a particular cultural artifact, like the SouthEast Asian figure in the lower right?

About the Gig Posters

For our ongoing project, designing a gig poster, I checked out this website which showed some contemporary poster designs, almost all from bands. I found most of these posters surprisingly similar, most of them were supposed to look like they had been silkscreened, and used collage of old photographs or cartoonish illustration. I don't object to these strategies, as shown below, my favorite poster of the bunch used these techniques. But when so many of the posters are similar, it places a specific bar very high. The silkscreen process has to look really good and the images have to be legible and interesting, rather than simply having a cartoony vintage look. These are not simple requirements, and a lot of the posters did not do more than collect all these elements. Below is a concert poster for the marching band Mucca Pazza:

The poster is a three color silkscreen which depicts a small cartoon man beating an over-large drum which is printed with the name of the band. This itself is a clear idea, Mucca Pazza is an exuberant, high energy marching band and the huge drum has the potential to neatly present the concept and the band's spirit. But there is a lack of clarity in the presentation. It is hard to tell that it is a drum which the cartoon character is beating, it looks more like the cartoon is simply stuck on the bottom of a huge circle. The silkscreen effect also does not reach its potential, the splattering of ink could be used to provide an outward energy from the center of the drum but instead is merely a decorative effect unrelated to the other elements. Finally, the color scheme, presumably chosen to add to the vintage feel, is more reminiscent of a swamp than a celebration.

Not all posters lead me to such harsh criticism, I think that the Mucca Pazza poster was one of the most derivative and least considered. There are many other posters that use the same elements to greater effect. However, my favorite poster of the bunch separates itself from the pack by its apparent lack of elements.

The poster for Phish's show at the Utica Memorial Auditorium in Utica, New York is far more quiet and considered in its presentation. The silkscreen effect is more than decorative, it renders a photograph into a more legible composition. The graffiti-like writing of the band and the details of the show on the side of the building are not as easy to read as they could be, but they serve a purpose. First, it makes the viewer question whether the  information was really printed on the side of the building, that draws the viewer in.  Second, it argues that this concert is part of a new chapter in Utica, industry is over, as evident by the decaying building, but culture is taking over. 

Among so many compositionally complex, bright and loud designs, a picture of a run-down industrial structure behind an empty lot is a peculiar choice. The quietness of the image, and it's apparent simplicity sets it apart from the other designs, it stands out because it lacks the attention-grabbing energy of so many other designs. In that way it makes a statement: there is such a glut of promotional images,  especially online, and so many of them are so voracious in their desire to impress, that they tend to run together into undifferentiated noise. The Phish poster doesn't need that noise, it asserts itself through lack of promotion. Another way to say this is: by not attempting to heavily promote itself, Phish shows that they have an audience no matter what. The "X was here" attitude of graffiti lends itself to the position of this poster, reminding people that there will be a show is enough for them to come.