Eric Andersen

Awarded

Eric Andersen

Posters

Graphic Design

Jury report

When the Poster Bares Its Teeth
Why should one still la­bo­ri­ously print posters by hand in this day and age? For Zurich-based graphic de­signer and poster artist Eric An­der­sen, what sounds like an anachro­nism is a work­ing method which he has con­sis­tently adopted for many years. From con­cep­tion to ex­e­cu­tion, he does every­thing him­self. Eric An­der­sen takes his very own ap­proach to tra­di­tional print­ing processes such as wood­cut, screen, lino and re­lief print­ing. He de­signs pro­gramme cards for var­i­ous music clubs in Zurich as well as posters and books. Within his oeu­vre, his po­lit­i­cal posters in par­tic­u­lar stand out. These ag­i­ta­tion posters are screen printed in an edi­tion of 500 copies. They are not only po­lit­i­cally charged but also so orig­i­nal in terms of their de­sign that they are col­lected by the poster col­lec­tion of the Mu­seum of De­sign, Zurich. A 1st of May protest poster shows, re­sem­bling some type of stamp col­lec­tion, a row of peo­ple who are bar­ing their teeth: 'Zurich is bar­ing its teeth', the apt cap­tion reads, sup­ple­mented by a call to as­sem­ble for a protest march on the 1st of May. An­other poster protests against the mon­ey­mak­ing schemes of an in­ter­na­tional foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion based in Zurich: dozens of dis­torted faces can be seen. They are cut up and re­assem­bled Panini im­ages of foot­ballers. Un­der­neath them in bold let­ters: 'Fuck Fifa'. Yet an­other poster takes part in a hot Swiss po­lit­i­cal de­bate, set­ting some kind of vi­sual trap for the viewer: 'Scared of scare­mon­ger­ing' is pro­claimed in large type. What is con­fus­ing is: An­der­sen uses an out­moded ty­pog­ra­phy which at first tends to be as­so­ci­ated with the de­sign pref­er­ences of right-wing ex­trem­ists. But those who take a close look and read the text re­alise that the poster in fact makes a state­ment against the xeno­pho­bic poli­cies of cer­tain right-wing pop­ulist par­ties – and also against the poli­cies of those who ben­e­fit po­lit­i­cally from this fear of for­eign­ers. A win­ner of the com­pe­ti­tion in 2009, Eric An­der­sen is ho­n­oured with the Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Award for the sec­ond time al­ready for his orig­i­nal and con­sis­tent work.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Eric Hans Andersen
Born in
1981
Education
Graphic Designer

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