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Lukas Zimmermann

Awarded

Lukas Zimmermann

A serial of posters

Graphic Design

Jury report

Underground Ambassador
What makes a de­signer de­cide to print in only one colour? The Zürich graphic de­signer Lukas Zim­mer­mann, who grad­u­ated in vi­sual com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Zürich Uni­ver­sity of the Fine Arts, ex­plains: he starts by look­ing for com­mon ground on which to base type­face, image and draw­ing. Since 2003 he has con­sis­tently printed his posters in only one colour. He skil­fully cul­ti­vates man­ual crafts­man­ship, as clearly shown in the let­ter­ing, the ap­pli­ca­tion of the ink and the line draw­ings. Most of his posters ad­ver­tise mu­si­cal or cul­tural events and he prints them him­self in edi­tions be­tween 30 and 300. Rarely does one come across such a strin­gently de­signed oeu­vre, ar­tic­u­lated in sev­eral print­ing tech­niques in­clud­ing dig­i­tal, silkscreen and card­board prints. In ad­di­tion to his vir­tu­oso mas­tery of let­ter­ing, Zim­mer­mann 'finds' suit­able im­agery and con­sis­tently trans­lates one pow­er­ful idea into a sin­gle image per poster. A roar­ing lion an­nounces a DJ evening at an un­der­ground Zürich club – a strik­ing and sin­gu­lar state­ment, ca­pa­ble of call­ing at­ten­tion to it­self in the rau­cous mar­ket of music fly­ers. For the an­nounce­ment of 'Evil Rave', he used provoca­tive line draw­ings of a set of knives from a par­ing knife to a large butcher's knife. His let­ters often look as if they had been cut out by hand and ra­di­ate a crude charm. Zim­mer­mann's fly­ers com­mu­ni­cate an un­der­ground feel and re­as­sur­ingly pit them­selves against om­nipresent high-gloss graph­ics. He also – un­sur­pris­ingly – de­signs fly­ers for the Rote Fab­rik in Zürich. His treat­ment of let­ter­ing is es­pe­cially cre­ative; he dis­torts it, blows it up and often makes it look as if it had been stamped on the paper. Zim­mer­mann's courage to step out of line and wil­fully es­pouse a hand­made look is a vital and wel­come con­trast to the re­lent­lessly smooth, styl­ish world around us.
Peter Stohler  

Biography

Lukas Zimmermann
Born in
1977
Education
Designer FH, Visuelle Kommunikation

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