Laurenz Brunner

Awarded

Laurenz Brunner

Various publications

Graphic Design

On the Laurenz Brunner Style
Lau­renz Brun­ner has now won the Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Award for the sec­ond time, hav­ing pre­vi­ously done so in 2006. This year, he sub­mit­ted pro­jects from the past four years: one se­ries of pub­li­ca­tions, two cor­po­rate de­sign con­cepts and an ex­hi­bi­tion cat­a­logue. These com­mis­sions are all of a cul­tural char­ac­ter. Taken as a whole, they re­flect the de­signer's com­plex ap­proach.
Lau­renz Brun­ner was given an ex­ten­sive com­mis­sion to cre­ate de­signs for every as­pect of the Arn­hem Mode Bi­en­nale fash­ion event - in­clud­ing a vi­sual iden­tity, an on­line pres­ence and a dis­tinc­tive type­face. The con­cept was based on the name 'Amber', used to de­note a fic­tional fig­ure who is a kind of ab­bre­vi­ated name­sake of the Arn­hem Mode Bi­en­nale.
In the case of the cor­po­rate de­sign con­cept de­vel­oped by Brun­ner for the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, the cen­tral image was not a woman, but an icon of the in­sti­tu­tion's home city: the Sankt Gallen bratwurst sausage. Since 2007, the sausage has ap­peared on plac­ards, fly­ers and in­vi­ta­tions, in a play­ful but never overly friv­o­lous way. In the case of the in­vi­ta­tions, the large-for­mat re­verse side was of­fered to local in­sti­tu­tions, as­so­ci­a­tions and firms gratis as a space for ad­verts, which were com­posed by Lau­renz Brun­ner.
The graphic artist has col­lab­o­rated with Julia Born to cre­ate a se­ries of pub­li­ca­tions and a text for the Utrecht-based firm 'Casco - Of­fice for Art, De­sign and The­ory'. He re­ceived a Most Beau­ti­ful Swiss Books award in 2007 in a jury de­ci­sion that recog­nised his skil­ful han­dling of ty­pog­ra­phy and of a wide va­ri­ety of ma­te­r­ial - the same qual­i­ties demon­strated by his re­cent Arn­hem Mode Bi­en­nale pub­li­ca­tion.
It will be in­ter­est­ing to see how the 'Un­folded' cat­a­logue is re­ceived. Cre­ated for an ex­hi­bi­tion of works by pho­tog­ra­phers Mau­rice Schel­tens and Lis­beth Abbenes, this cat­a­logue is a col­lec­tion of three-di­men­sional ren­der­ings that were cre­ated in par­al­lel with the ex­hi­bi­tion it­self. They cre­ate un­usual views and per­spec­tives and shed light on the trans­la­tion of spaces into two-di­men­sion­al­ity - a cen­tral theme for both pho­tog­ra­phers.
After study­ing in Lon­don (Cen­tral Saint Mar­tins) and Am­s­ter­dam (Ger­rit Ri­etveld Acad­e­mie), Lau­renz Brun­ner now lives and works in Am­s­ter­dam, Berlin and Zürich. The in­flu­ence of the very dif­fer­ent de­sign tra­di­tions of Eng­land, Switzer­land and Hol­land is re­vealed by the wide va­ri­ety of pro­jects han­dled by him and by his mas­terly im­ple­men­ta­tion of them.

Laurenz Brunner
Born in
1980
Education
Grafikdesigner