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Guy Meldem

Awarded

Guy Meldem

Illustration and art design for various posters, t-shirts, skateboards and publications

Graphic Design

Jury report

The animal and us
Lau­sanne graphic de­signer Guy Mel­dem also works with Sami Ben­hadj and Tarik Hay­ward under the label 'Körner Union'. He cre­ates a world very much of his own. The vague retro charm one en­coun­ters at first sight proves de­cep­tive on closer in­spec­tion: Mel­dem's aes­thetic is very rad­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary. Char­ac­ter­is­tic for Guy Mel­dem's work is a will to de­sign and to cre­ate a per­sonal uni­verse. The hand-draw­ing is ob­vi­ously very promi­nent: ex­pres­sion of a new de­light in draw­ing by hand in the post-com­puter gen­er­a­tion? More­over, what stands out is Guy Mel­dem's un­usual way of deal­ing with an­i­mals, a theme that runs through his work. Even the vi­sual iden­tity he has given to a skate­board man­u­fac­turer, car­ried through onto the boards, but also the printed mat­ter and t-shirts, is made up of un­usual an­i­mal draw­ings. Al­though one can some­times make out birds and foxes most of the an­i­mals are re­ally akin to myth­i­cal crea­tures. If some­one has such an idio­syn­cratic graphic lan­guage, they should have dif­fi­culty work­ing in a con­trac­tual re­la­tion­ship. The graphic de­signer trained at the Ecole can­tonale d'art in Lau­sanne. He demon­strates the op­po­site and keeps his own hand­writ­ing even when work­ing in a con­trac­tual re­la­tion­ship. He de­vel­ops his fly­ers from the font, for ex­am­ple for the 'Dirty Danc­ing' se­ries at the 'Loft' Lau­sanne music club: let­ters start to melt, to sprawl, lead an un­canny life of their own and in a way com­ment on what the words an­nounce. Or a face pops up be­tween the let­ters, in a cou­ple of lines. Thus, a charm of its own is cre­ated that cap­ti­vates and fas­ci­nates the be­holder. Who could re­sist a closer look? In­deed, in Guy Mel­dem's work things seem to get a life of their own, to lead a kind of se­cret life, a life un­der­neath the sur­face the be­holder is urged to dis­cover.
Peter Stohler

Biografie Biographie Biografia Biografia Biography

Guy Meldem
Geboren Né/Née en Nato/Nata in Born in
1980
Ausbildung Formation Education
designer HES en communication visuelle, spécialisation design graphique
Gruppenname Collectif Group name
Körner Union

auch im Jahr aussi en anche nel also in

2007

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