Michael Kryenbühl / Ivan Weiss

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Awarded

Michael Kryenbühl / Ivan Weiss

Photography book and font 'Akilandia' (diploma work)

Graphic Design

Jury report

Akilandia
We are all familiar with Aki Kaurismäki's authentic everyday heroes: the taciturn garbage collectors, the dreaming supermarket checkout girls, the reclusive night watchmen. These melancholy, solitary figures are found not only in Finland, but represent the universal human being and the (sometimes rough and ready) vagaries of life.

In their 272-page book Akilandia, created as a graduate piece at Lucerne University, Michael Kryenbühl and Ivan Weiss combine their collected impressions of eleven weeks spent studying Kaurismäki's cinematic world. They have called that world Akilandia and they guide the viewer through the films of the Finnish director.

As in a film, the content of Akilandia is conveyed by the dramatic structure and sequencing of the images. The book is made up for the most part of a wide variety of visual material. For instance, chapters are introduced by quotations from the filmmaker, presented as double-page spreads. This almost rebellious design is very much in the spirit of Kaurismäki, as is the AkiNewsBold font created by Kryenbühl/Weiss – a variation on the Cg News font – with its slightly uneven look that corresponds to the filmmaker's unorthodox thinking. The text in black was printed digitally, while the colour images were later added individually using an old inkjet printer, lending them an unusual and quirky charm.

Akilandia shows a film world and yet it shows the real world too. Just as Kaurismäki's visually powerful scenes tell of real life, so too does the book Akilandia interweave bizarre details with occasionally disturbing images of reality. Kryenbühl/Weiss have taken up Kaurismäki's key themes such as unemployment, homelessness and loneliness in photographs they have made of their own environment, thereby introducing observations, identifiable both in place and time, that address a raft of sociopolitical issues.

Compelling in terms of both content and design, Akilandia is remarkable for its typography, overall structure and painstaking research. Kryenbühl/Weiss have succeeded in creating a complex and insightful survey of Kaurismäki's cinematic oeuvre, which they present with enormous subtlety, a generous dash of wit and a touch of rugged Finnish individualism.
Anna Wacker