Graduation 2015

Graduation 2015

Primark march

Primark, some presentation try-outs.

Green light | presentation

Green light | showreel from Mirjam Leppers on Vimeo.

Friday 23th January I've held my 'Greenlight presentation' for teachers and students in order to get a 'green light' for my graduation, which took place in Concordia Enschede. I've showed a little showreel to support my talk and a slideshow about my travel through the course and working up to my graduation idea. Here's a small text which sums up a bit what I talked about:

Loads of imagery, loads of ideas. 
I tell my stories through imagery, but today I'll talk about it.In the first year of the AKI, which was an orientation year,  
I couldn't be happier with what was offered to me, painting, sculpture, drawing, video , photo shopping etc. 

Great, but that did made me doubt until the ultimate day which course I wanted to do.
 I wanted as much freedom, in material and media-choice, themes and ideas. 
I chose to do Sculpture.Which I did for half year, experimenting with different material and subjects, combining and tasting,
which was really nice for getting to know different techniques and material. 

It didn't make me as happy though. I missed something essential, a rhythm maybe, and inducement, a question or problem?


Then there was something as ACD on the AKI, Art & Crossmedia design. Which, in that time, was spoken about with some fine-arters a little bit as:

                           "That's just making logos right? Corporate identities?"

                                                    "Do whatever a client wants?"

                          "Being ubergood in photoshop?"

                                                    "You do earn lots of money with it tough..."

                          "How can you develop a signature with that?"


Well, was I mistaken. When I switched to ACD, a world opened up to me, just as much media freedom and material choices,
 but we had questions or problems that we had to solve.

Where it didn't ever matter as much what the question was,
 coming up with an idea for a jewelry commercial,
programming a flash game and designing the concept for it,
making a hand drawn animation starting with nothing.. etc.

Over the three years I had loads of fun experimenting with media,
 getting new assignments every week and let a process go on that.
I discovered that my fascination isn't in being able to use all the media that I want and practice,
 but to choose the right medium for the question. 
Although I also believe that there is no perfect solution to a 'design' question, only a suited one.

Last half year I tried to discover what my point of view is and clarify that,
by looking into some more critical and political subjects with my dissertation,
film minor, working with dogma and identity research.

This was my story, and now for my graduation I'm going to look in other stories.For my graduation I'm going to look into the column, IK@NRC, a daily column with little personal anecdotes of readers, and translate that into imagery. Loads of imagery, loads of ideas and translations Where I'm going to use all the expertise in from the last years that I gained, my view and signature and as always: let the process guide me and let that frame the end-result.

Slides used during my talk.

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.

Fold | product design

As we had to design a product made out of a material that doesnt excist (koleen), I designed: Fold. A little packlet that is soft and small in its normal state and when you let electricity (via the laptop USB) run through it, it becomes a solid table. Handy on the way, when you want to work on your laptop, but there's no suitable working place.

Airport Twente ; Animal Community

Little Booklet about my concept for the new destination plan of Airport Twente, Animal Community

Woolen birdhouse