Annik Troxler

Awarded

Annik Troxler

'Vergissmeinnicht', various print products (diploma work)

Graphic Design

Jury report

Ways of not forgetting
How do you man­age not to for­get the most im­por­tant pur­chases in a su­per­mar­ket? The graphic artist Annik Trox­ler, who lives in Berlin, has done some re­search on the sub­ject of re­mem­ber­ing and for­get­ting. How can you make your­self re­mem­ber some­thing? And how can graphic art help that? In her diploma pro­ject 'Ver­giss­mein­nicht' (for­get me not), Annik Trox­ler sug­gests cre­at­ing and using dif­fer­ent mem­ory-aid­ing im­ages. One of the meth­ods pre­sented is the ra­dial 'Mind Map', which has now been widely ac­cepted. This has the most im­por­tant idea at the cen­tre, and the branches then move out from the gen­eral to the par­tic­u­lar, from the is im­por­tant to the less im­por­tant.
Her stag­ger­ingly sim­ple sug­ges­tion for keep­ing a grip on every­thing you need to buy in the su­per­mar­ket in fu­ture should elicit a very pos­i­tive re­sponse. In­stead of writ­ing out ab­stract lists, her sug­ges­tion is based on our sense of ori­en­ta­tion. The su­per­mar­ket shelves are drawn out on paper as a ground plan, and a cross can be made at the point where the goods are ac­tu­ally to be found in the shop. When can we ex­pect the su­per­mar­kets them­selves to get round to this graphic vi­sual pre­sen­ta­tion to help their for­get­ful cus­tomers? The de­signer hopes that by using the meth­ods she has in­ves­ti­gated we will be able to re­mem­ber cer­tain things bet­ter, but at the same time for­get more unim­por­tant things with a clear con­science.
She also looks at mem­o­ries of things that have al­ready been seen in her ty­po­graph­i­cal re­search called 'Sign Type'. She makes a new al­pha­bet from noth­ing but traf­fic signs, which she used as amaz­ingly in­tel­li­gi­ble let­ters (see the 'Call Back' let­ter­ing in the il­lus­tra­tion). Things that have been seen over and over again are used again for this work in a sur­pris­ingly fresh way, prov­ing that cre­ative graph­ics has a great deal in com­mon with in­tel­li­gent re­cy­cling.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Annik Troxler
Born in
1979
Education
designer HES en communication visuelle, spécialisation design graphique