End of page

Back to overview

Ivan Sterzinger

Awarded

Ivan Sterzinger

'Rap History'

Graphic Design

Jury report

Rap is finally a part of history
With 'Rap His­tory', a pro­ject that is at the same time am­bi­tious and fo­cussed, Ivan Sterzinger opens one of the most im­por­tant cul­tural phe­nom­ena of re­cent times up to di­rect ex­pe­ri­ence. Aim­ing to in­form the fans and the mass of ig­no­ra­muses about the music and its cul­tural back­ground as ac­cu­rately as pos­si­ble, the au­thor of the web­site pro­vides plenty of in­for­ma­tion about the well-es­tab­lished music cul­ture on the in­ter­net plat­form www.​raphistory.​net. It has now grown into quite a re­mark­able list: 2240 rap records by 2126 dif­fer­ent artists and 769 la­bels, a gen­e­sis of rap from its be­gin­nings (1979) to the pre­sent (2007). Ivan Sterzinger, aka DJ CEO Müller, is more in­ter­ested in the music it­self than in com­pil­ing the most com­pre­hen­sive list pos­si­ble of all rap records ever re­leased. His ac­tual medium is the party. To­gether with Kle­mens Wempe, he there­fore opened the doors to the 'Uni­ver­sity of Helsinki' in the Zurich based club 'Helsinki' more than 30 times. DJs be­come pro­fes­sors, re­searchers or spe­cial­ists and the spe­cially pro­duced tapes, posters and fanzines be­come teach­ing ma­te­r­ial. The vi­sual ap­pear­ance is out­stand­ing: it is im­pres­sive how this pro­ject man­ager and graphic de­signer has man­aged to canon­ise the al­most un­man­age­able di­ver­sity of a music genre. The con­cise and mem­o­rable lan­guage he has found re­flects it­self in par­tic­u­lar in the sym­bolic con­den­sa­tion of the record com­pany's logos laid on top of one an­other. You can get a feel for the new re­leases year after year and the ex­ist­ing la­bels are placed on top of each other. This pro­duces a con­den­sate com­ple­mented by con­cise text frag­ments of songs that stick in your mind. 'Rap His­tory' is there­fore far more than just dec­o­ra­tive event de­sign. 'Rap His­tory' is a well-rounded edu­tain­ment pack­age that opens mu­si­cal ed­u­ca­tion up to di­rect ex­pe­ri­ence, with­out mak­ing too much of an ef­fort.
Ed­uard Hart­mann

Biography

Ivan Sterzinger
Born in
1977
Education
MA of Science

also in

2012

Back to overview

Top of page