Berlin Highlights - 13.2.18 - 15.2.18

The Jewish War Memorial - This was something I'd visited before in Berlin but this second trip I found to be incredibly inspiring. Wandering round I found it incredibly consuming and isolating and rarely had something sculptural create such an effect on me. Afterwards I found myself in a discussion about the fact we had seen children running round through the rectangular pillars. Was this incredibly disrespectful or does it actually show new life growing around such a tragedy? It made me want to reexamine how we talk about those we have lost, and in some ways it should be with sadness but also with hope for the future. This was a significant moment for me, despite the fact it was less to do with design itself.

A German magazine cutting that I thought employed an interesting style.

This was a spread dedicated to the Boros collection, which is a collection of art displayed in an abandoned Nazi bunker. This was an incredible experience, with strange and wonderful pieces of art, offset by the historical surroundings around them. I particularly liked the business shown below, with minimal shapes but interesting detail. There was also an interactive part of the exhibition were we able to try woodblock printing with knife shapes - this created an interesting effect and I hope to experiment with this more in future. The second image was another flyer from one the exhibition pieces, telling the story of a man who traveled Africa just by exchanging goods he acquired along the way.

These are some spreads I did to document the Berlin underground system. The card is from the Bauhaus, I have used it to isolate an aspect of the map and bring shapes out of the design. The second spread is a about a dream I had on the journey home from Berlin - falling unconscious on the coach I had dream where the bars of the tube twisted and stretch like vines, it was interesting seeing this in their bright yellow tone.

This is a spread dedicated the Berlin Museum of letters, a collection of letter signage held under a Berlin railway. It felt almost like exploring catacombs looking at all these letterforms. Walking round it made me realise that letters do not need to be perfect or shiny new forms to have an effect, a lot of them were damaged and old, but this only added to their impact.