Memory & Dogma | minor film II

Memory & Dogma from Mirjam Leppers on Vimeo.

With film I tend to use subjects that provoke me: Little stimuli that make me have a magical moment.  Many of my interests revolve around nostalgia. Although nostalgia means more to me then a desire to obtain something you cannot relive twice. Nostalgia is reliving that same feeling you had when you think back of something, or more likely, get hit by an event that triggers the same feeling.  Although it’s not the exact same moment, I believe you cannot, not speak of nostalgia if you can replace the same feeling you had with a new event. Supposedly nostalgia as a memory can’t be described as a time-bound occasion. 

-         In a way everybody has their own working method and maybe even rules that you live up to while working, I was wondering if mine would block me in a way to develop further as a film producer.
 Or keeping me from portraying events as i want them to.

-         I feel like my work is produced more as a prey then a predator. I tend to get really close to a object without provoking it. I watch and look, wait and carefully look for the right ingredients to use. I don’t judge. I want to bring content to the surface as it should be, or as i believe it should be portrayed.

-         My classmates assigned me with 5 absolute rules to work with, challenging with me to stay away from familiar guidelines.
5 rules to live up too.  Not really a problem, as I like the challenge.


Memory & Dogma
Bas is quite the eccentric figure who loves to talk, especially at the  first meeting you’ll have with him. He’ll try to impress you with his 'dominant' presence and wants to take control of the room. Once  you’ll give him the space to talk though, he’ll share his views and thoughts.
With an interview that went in many directions, I was hoping for different reactions and different emotions, confusion maybe or defensiveness, which he tends to do. Keeping my working method in mind though: I’m not forcing, I’m just asking and watching.

"If you have limitations to your work, you're forced to use your imagination".

Lars von Trier

Identity | Website

For my website research, I looked into many possibilities to give my work the platform it needs, considering different presentation forms. I want to present it 'big', not on one page, no titles as links. For now the design will work as a carousel. The next step will be choosing the define the selection of work that will be shown and make descriptions with them. As I'm not done yet with my personal logo, the pixel perfectness and the look and feel might change slightly.

Also the personal text is still a long version of the text I am working on.

Some defining research:

Saturday animation practice | movement

Some animation sketches.

Identity | the big question

Classmates describing my work

"The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others" Gandhi. A frequently used quote from a wise man, which I personally try to live up to.

Maybe more personally than work-wise, but still worth quoting. With the identity project this year: coming up with a personal logo, house-style, writing your role as a designer and finally creating an online portfolio, I tried to evenly work on these separate aspects. Whereas this obviously all has to match together to come across convincing and confident. The logo has to breath my vision, and instantly be 'recognizable' as 'me' and my work.

The process started with classmates describing you and your work. Where luckily, most words I got from different mates overlapped. From there on, an A3 poster was made with all the hook-up words and imagery found on the web that would match your personal  style and working-method. I tried to look for work that would match the touch and feel of my work, and matching colour pallet. Because my work is very cross-medial, i try to not focus on the medium itself. The poster will be a base for most of the matching identity solutions.

The 'my role as a designer'-text is still in progress, where i think I'm at version five now, I do realize I'm not as much a writer as an image-maker, quite hard to catch your essence into a few sentences.

With my personal logo, I'm still in the phase of looking around with different aspects, looking at different typefaces, shapes and forms. Mainly looking at how i want to shape my name into one block, staring from black and white, with little detours with colours. As i tend to work from colour, and not shape, so just for 'fun', some colour experiments.

All together, it's getting a little bit of shape and form. As I did had a little bit of trouble while thinking how I want to come across as a designer. Where do you focus on: your best skills? How do you want to come across? Is that medium wise, personal wise, skill wise? Loads of thinking and self-reflection this year, but at this point, the whole process is doing me good, and in a couple of weeks I believe I'll have a clear visual language for myself.
The last year is different in the way that: I'm quite used to production ongoing, project after project, dipping into new assignments. This year, I'm much more looking around, what inspires me, who inspires me and why...

Lumen | Lights and projection

With participating at the minor Still Moving this year, it all resolves around the thin line of moving and still image. Getting loads of theoretical and philosophical input, while trying to reflect these views into your own work. The challenge with this little experimental video was to look at Aleph, by Wallace Berman and use his way of converting `still into motion`. Short montage, uses of the Verifax and still as moving. 

My interpretation revolves around the theme: lights in the dark. As seeing little lights in the dark, especially when travelling makes me at ease, comforting still. I always volunteered as a little kid to accompany my dad driving if he needed to do that, just to watch. Also, I'm looking into projecting image in different ways.

24 festival | lectures in Amsterdam

So Tuesday the 7th of October the 5th edition of 24 festival happened in Amsterdam,  first time I attended.

My day kicked off with a talk from  Christian van Thillo, who started with the problems and solutions that come with cross medial thinking. As a publisher within the Persgroep Nederland, active in the Netherlands and Belgium, the question: 'Is print dead'? comes across quite a lot. Christian didn't seem to have a proper yes or no answer. With the up rise off all platforms that can be used, he stated that the question for magazines is still there, yet do realize what people are expecting nowadays. A magazine isn't only a print matter anymore, interactivity and different platforms can be used to sell a brand even more. Which was a theme in the joining talk later on hosted by Mathijs van Nieuwkerk, where the Voetbal International magazine for example exists partially (mostly even) with its supporting TV program.  Many different CEO's and editors from magazines, The Vogue, Linda, Volkskrant came to talk.

I was pleasantly surprised with the presentation of Terres des Hommes in the after noon, the creator of Sweetie. The virtually created girl who helped tracking down 1000 of sex offenders, committing sex crimes through the webcam to kids in the Philippines. The moment that project came to public somewhere half a year ago, I was enthusiastic anyway. However, the way he talked about this project really gave me a good feeling. How he, as just one individual, once had the idea to 'solve a world problem', and did it.  Amazing.

Quick side note to the day, I've never been in the Schouwburg Amsterdam, but what a lovely surrounding to be in....

Hup holland hup

Magazine cover tryout. Inspired by the dutch lady: Loesje.

Exchange Falmouth | Last Report

The last little bit about my Exchange at Falmouth University, writing and creating a report what the half year did for me. My final year is starting, getting back to serious (dutch) work and finish at the AKI Enschede this year! Woo!

Montagen Jeunesse | final bords

The Brief : “We want you to choose a famous brand, product or service and redesign it in a breakthrough way.” Designers Bridge’s brief is all about taking an original design and taking it to the next level. So taking that in consideration, I should pick a brand that really needs refinement but also one that has
potential to grow.

Montagne Jeunesse : Thinking of a product that desperately needs some drastic change I thought of the Company Montagne Jeunesse, a brand that I bought some products from when I was a teenager.
Montagne Jeunesse is a beauty brand that sells all kinds of beauty products but the company mostly focuses on face masks, where it is also known for. Founded in 1989 this brand started off small in the UK and nowadays sells internationally.

Goal: The goal is to create a new identity for the brand and with that create a new logo. With the new identity I will focus on creating new packaging for one particular line of theirs: Peel-off face Masks.

Plan of approach: Jeunesse is a company that specializes in face masks, so logically I took it upon me to rebrand the logo and the packaging of their “peel-off“ line. The products are very popular among young girls (12-25) . Altough, if I ask my friends if they have ever used Montagne Jeunesse, they say they didn’t. If I show them the packaging though, they say they didn’t. Reason why my friends couldn’t tell me that they did  se it, is that nobody seems to know the product by name, it is just known as the fasemask with the tacky  ackaging. So that would be the first thing to keep in mind: make the brand name more clear to spot. It is not an expensive product, bearing that in mind I wanted to rebrand it with more focus on: Natural ingredients, Fun, Easy, Young and Lively.

Come up with a nice design, without trying to make it look too expensive, so a little tackiness
may be required. At this moment the product mostly just screams: very chemical.

Don't shoot the messenger | presentation bords

Self inititated assignment, to deep into ethics of design and try to find a way to find my own thoughts on design and how to bring that knowledge to people. Intro on the book:

"I am a designer, a thinker, a creator but most of all just a normal human being. I have my doubts and securities, but most of all questions. Questions about who I want to be as a designer, what kind of part I want to play in the big industry of Visual Communication. Enjoying what you do, would be the first thing that comes to mind, but what does that say about my intentions? 

I do want to be aware of my position in the world as a designer after I graduate, to be conscious of what I am doing. For example I would love to play along with the big guys, hell, why not set up my own design agency. Doing fun projects, getting in contact with inspirational people and travel around. Nicely naive thoughts, but the other thought that comes after it, I don’t know for sure if I would want to work for big clients. 

In my home university we had an assignment to make a 30sec. commercial for a brand, Cartier was signed to me. I loved it, shooting beautiful imagery, creating a concept to show of the jewelry the best and having a lot of group sessions about it. But actually, I wouldn't like to promote those kind of luxury products as I don’t believe in them, I would never buy it, people pay to much for it. But is that just a bit of naive hippy belief of mine, enough to turn down a job?

Say I want to change the world, but I have no knowledge for that, or at least be an influence on the next generation of designers  or consumers. How do you do that without having a clear state of mind where you stand. I believe I am not the only one who doubts, or is looking for some answers of some sort. The misleading factor about answers is, that they’re quite relative."

The intention with this project was mainly to deep into ethics and inform myself way much more about ethics than i knew before. Without a steady plan for an outcome I started to dig into bigger issues and questions where philosophers as Aristotle and Heidegger, Nietzsche and Marx have been struggling with. I was hoping to find some answers, or at least find myself more secure about some questions I had, but the opposite happened. Diving into a subject like this, and also not in your first language, is quite hard and resulted in more questions (and curiosity) which still didn't give me a right way to go, as I wanted to develop an outcome for my project..

Course Promotional Material | presentation bords

 Final presentation bords for the assigment Course Promotional Material. Brief, description and development are described on the bords.