DESIGN LECTURE SERIES: Gregor Huber

Wednesday, March 4, 10:00am–1:00pm
CSB 218C

Gregor Huber is a co-founder of Huber/Sterzinger (formerly Glashaus), a collaborative design practice based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Past projects include Yto Barrada, The Dye Garden, Edition Digital Culture Nr. 6 – Virtual Reality, and A Pyrotechnic Display of Creativity (recipient of the Swiss Design Awards 2009).

On A Pyrotechnic Display of Creativity, Au­re­lia Müller noted:

“Gre­gor Huber is re­spon­si­ble for the con­tent, con­cept and de­sign of the Rote Fab­rik news­pa­per and has been awarded a Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Grant in recog­ni­tion of his graphic de­sign for the years 2007 – 2009. The news­pa­per, which ap­pears ten times a year, pro­vides in­for­ma­tion on the pro­gramme of events at the Rote Fab­rik in Zurich, a for­mer fac­tory turned al­ter­na­tive arts cen­tre. It also ad­dresses a wide range of top­i­cal is­sues. Al­though it fo­cuses more on the role of this his­tor­i­cally left-wing in­sti­tu­tion as an on­go­ing pro­ject rather than on any ide­o­log­i­cal dogma, ac­cord­ing to the graphic artist, the news­pa­per can and does take a po­lit­i­cal stance.”
“The themes tra­di­tion­ally as­so­ci­ated with the al­ter­na­tive arts scene are de­lib­er­ately re­placed by cur­rent top­ics. In one issue, for in­stance, the news­pa­per ex­plores ‘Wis­sen und Be­denken’ [Knowl­edge and Mis­giv­ings]. In an­other, it looks at the Wikipedia Gen­er­a­tion and the rise of half-knowl­edge. Under the head­ing ‘Fo­cused on you and your needs’, the ques­tion of sur­vival in a cor­po­rate world is dis­cussed, while an issue de­voted to ‘Selb­stveröffentlichung’ [Self-pub­li­ca­tion] is all about pri­vacy and the quest for iden­tity in a mass-me­dia so­ci­ety. What is par­tic­u­larly re­mark­able about this news­pa­per is the way it merges con­tent and form: in this issue, a Face­book-style lay­out is used to con­vey all the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered on­line and col­lated to form the fic­ti­tious per­sonal pro­file of a so-called Mr Rolf Müller.”
“The key to the graphic de­sign of the Rote Fab­rik news­pa­per is that it re­sponds specif­i­cally to the cur­rent theme of each issue and is freely adapted to suit the topic rather than hav­ing to fol­low a pre­scribed for­mat. This tai­lor-made ap­proach means that the de­sign of each issue is unique, brim­ming with ideas and in­vari­ably full of all sorts of sur­pris­ing and un­ex­pected graphic so­lu­tions.”
“Gre­gor Huber notes how im­por­tant it is for him to be on the look­out for new, ex­per­i­men­tal ways of get­ting the mes­sage across. He has cer­tainly proved that amply in his de­sign for the news­pa­per. The pos­i­tively py­rotech­nic dis­play of cre­ative ideas in his use of dif­fer­ent styles, to­gether with his metic­u­lously ex­e­cuted and highly var­ied so­lu­tions make him a de­serv­ing win­ner of this award.”

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