BAUHAUS.INSIGHTS: What is the Idea Behind the »summaery2024« Graphic?

Organised by the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, this year’s annual exhibition is all about »PLAN B«. The slogan highlights alternative solutions for current social challenges. These solutions are already being developed and tested at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. The slogan also points out that progress is impossible without failure and that research, art and teaching thrive on the freedom to experiment.

But how can these ideas be expressed in graphic format? We asked Lena Haubner and Hannes Naumann just that for our online Bauhaus.Journal BAUHAUS.INSIGHTS series. The pair developed the design for »summaery2024«, the annual exhibition at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Both studied Visuelle Kommunikation (Visual Communication) in the Faculty of Art and Design; Lena Haubner until 2015 and Hannes Naumann until 2024. 

In this interview, they discuss the idea behind the poster and media design that will soon be around the city and how they managed to translate it into a graphic design.

Lena and Hannes, you came up with the design for this year’s summaery2024, which was given the theme of »PLAN B«. What were your thoughts on the theme?

L: The big challenge this year was combining two tasks: The design for the Faculty of Civil and Environment Engineering’s anniversary and that of summaery2024.

H: We decided early on that the anniversary should act as the visual foundation on which to build summaery. To mark the »Bau-Jubiläum«, we opted for a severe, minimalistic design, which we then brushed over and reinterpreted for summaery.

L: We materialised the theme as a severe, solid watermark, which we combined with individually hand-brushed, illustrated, cut or glued letters for summaery. This allowed the events to build upon one another, but to still retain their own unique character, thus graphically covering the entire spectrum of what the university is offering.

Can you describe your creative process for us, from the initial idea to the final design? What were your sources of inspiration?

L: First, we looked at the term »PLAN B« and asked ourselves what this meant for us as designers. We didn’t want to simply capture Plan B as a motif; we also wanted to experience it ourselves during the design process. So we crossed out, started again, rethought, pasted over, tore up, improvised... Through collaborative crafting and brainstorming sessions, we each quickly came up with a few basic visual ideas, which we then worked into initial rough poster designs. We then met up again with our results, combined them, shared them with one another and tried to choose out main design.

H: We then split up the work again – Lena focussed on typography and typesetting, while I focussed on illustration and animation. But we always made the big design decisions together, for instance colour, general design, style, and we did this experimentally, which ended up working out much better than we initially expected.

You mentioned that you worked together on the design – were there specific strengths that each of you brought to the project? Were there any challenges or hurdles that you had to overcome?

H: With the anniversary-summaery combination, we came up with a design process in which every graphic had to pass through our four hands at all times – this didn’t leave any room for going it alone and so the whole process felt super collaborative. Of course, this back-and-forth working method posed a few organisational challenges; for example, it was necessary for us to first synchronise our working hours and rhythms. But we managed to do this through lots of communication, collaborative design sessions, and one or two Thuringian bratwurst lunches in Weimar’s northern suburbs.

L: In every collaboration, generally speaking, you need to recognise when to take a step back and make compromises and, on the other hand, when to fight for your favourite detail. Fortunately, in our case, it was always very relaxed. Between the two of us, we have a few years of professional experience and so we know when to let go of ideas that we aren’t both equally keen on and, at the same time, quickly become enthusiastic about each other’s suggestions.

H: I especially enjoyed the conceptualisation phase where you stand next to one another in front of a pile of paper or a whiteboard and exchange ideas instead of disappearing alone into your sketchbook or computer.

Is there anything you learned doing this project that you’ll bring with you into your future work?

L: I was really surprised at how similar our basic approaches to design were and by the fact that I am more of a team player than I thought (laughs). But it was also a lot easier to overcome differences and to embrace new things because we both were already on each other’s radar as designers and we follow and appreciate one another’s work.

H: It was also great that we are both comfortable using different tools and visual languages - Lena often works quite cleanly with fonts, grids and vectors, while I work a lot with illustrations or free collage techniques. We were constantly learning little tricks and hacks from one another.

In conclusion What are you most looking forward to at this year’s summaery and where can people expect to find you?

H: I’m definitely looking forward to the exhibition for a course that I myself had the honour of leading at the university this semester: »Stift und Drang« in the Atrium. The exhibition examines illustration as a tool for democracy and resulted in a small publication of utopian comics.

L: I just like the spirit of summaery; the doors are all open and you see creativity everywhere. As an alumnus, it almost makes you a bit nostalgic. It’s exciting to visit the workshops and project rooms where you used to work and to see what students are currently interested in.