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Tatiana Rihs

Awarded

Tatiana Rihs

'Portfolio'

Graphic Design

Jury report

A Playful Lack of Polish
Ta­tiana Rihs has been awarded a Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Grant for the sec­ond time, hav­ing pre­vi­ously re­ceived the award in 2007. This year, she pre­sents a wide range of her skills: from com­mis­sioned works to solo and group pro­jects. In each case, the focus is on graph­ics, il­lus­tra­tion and the way they are com­bined.
'Al­pha­bet' was cre­ated in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Lau­sanne-based group of artists Körner Union (in­clud­ing Sami Ben­hadj, who is also one of this year's award win­ners) and pro­duced by Rollo Press. Play­ful, un­pol­ished and de­light­fully witty, ob­jects shar­ing the same first let­ter of the al­pha­bet are arranged to form the let­ter it­self. Read­ers can brush up their Eng­lish while leaf­ing through an en­ter­tain­ing cor­nu­copia of every­day items and mot­ley cu­riosi­ties. The so­lu­tion to each il­lus­tra­tion is given in the brochure: the names of the pic­tured ob­jects are listed below or be­side each roughly-drawn let­ter they rep­re­sent. Rihs finds a strik­ing bal­ance be­tween seem­ingly naive il­lus­tra­tions, lov­ingly crafted de­tails and clear-cut lay­out.
The posters, pro­grammes and book­lets for the ex­per­i­men­tal music venue Rue du Nord in Lau­sanne were cre­ated in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mélodie Mous­set. Through­out this se­ries of com­mis­sioned works, pub­lished every two months, there is a cen­tral, re­cur­rent graphic motif that makes their as­so­ci­a­tion with the venue in­stantly recog­nis­able. By re­peat­ing the lozenge-shaped zigzag pat­tern in ever dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions, Rihs not only en­sures a high recog­ni­tion fac­tor, but also adds enor­mous ver­sa­til­ity to the printed mat­ter as a ve­hi­cle of in­for­ma­tion.
Notwith­stand­ing the fact that the con­tent is largely pre­scribed by the client's brief in any com­mis­sioned work, Ta­tiana Rihs in­vari­ably en­deav­ours to merge form, il­lus­tra­tion and type­face – and she suc­ceeds in often sur­pris­ing and ut­terly com­pelling ways.
Pa­trizia Criv­elli

Biography

Tatiana Rihs
Born in
1976
Education
Postgrade en communication visuelle
designer HES, communication visuelle
premier certificat philosophie et histoire du cinéma, diplôme de sociologie

Web

also in

2007

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