Exhibition “Moving Types” Receives Coveted Red Dot Design Award

“Moving Types” receives Design Award

The special exhibition “Moving Types – Letters in Motion” at the Gutenberg- Museum receives coveted Red Dot Design Award

“Moving Types – Letters in Motion”, the vanguard exhibition at the Gutenberg-Museum in Mainz, which refers to the history of animated letters in films and on the internet, won the coveted Red Dot Design Award. Thus the international jury awarded the prize to a project which does not only have design as its subject but also realizes design by presenting a small-space exhibition with a very innovative, multimedia-based exhibition concept. “Moving Types – Letters in Motion” is an special exhibition of the “Zentrum Zeitbasierte Gestaltung“ [Centre for Time-based Design] (Fachhochschule Mainz, Institut für Mediengestaltung [Institute for Media Design of the Mainz University of Applied Sciences] and Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd [Schwäbisch Gmünd University of Applied Sciences] under the direction of Prof. Anja Stöffler, Prof. Harald Pulch, and Prof. Ralf Dringenberg) and the Gutenberg-Museum (Dr. Annette Ludwig). In the world of art and design, red dots are much sought-after items. In exhibitions of galleries, red dots, which are to be found next to a picture or a sculpture, indicate that these artworks did not only appeal to the gallery owner but also found their buyers. The Red Dot Award is worldwide one of the most prominent design prizes. Every year thousands of agencies and designers compete for this award and try to meet with the approval of the high-profile awards panel. This year the exhibition “Moving Types – Letters in Motion” got one of the highly appreciated red dots. The exhibition shows in more than 200 film excerpts, title sequences, commercials, music videos, and internet presentations how letters come alive, how they are set in motion and become multidimensional. The examples range from children’s films or programming, such as “Winnie the Pooh” or “Sesame Street”, where letters wave over the pages like leaves or are eaten up for didactic reasons, to computer-animated, three-dimensional presentations, where texts fly around as virtual explanations. The works of more than 200 international artists and designers are shown in this exhibition, amongst them Oskar Fischinger, Jenny Holzer, and Matthias Zentner. “Moving Types” does not only focus on design with regards to content. But it also makes design a real experience by the future-oriented realization of the exhibition. The centrepiece of “Moving Types” is a “media lounge” where innumerable pieces of information seem to float on illuminated little white cubes. Each cube contains a film clip, a brief documentation, or an explanatory part in coded form. The information which is enclosed in the QR codes can be made accessible by means of iPads and so be watched and listened to. The same concept was used for the exhibition catalogue which is therefore one of the first catalogues with a “built-in cinema”. Another highlight of the exhibition is the media façade. The visitors of the exhibition (or pedestrians) can send their individual text messages via SMS which are then presented on the media façade. So they can make their own letters dance. The red dot initiator, Professor Peter Zec, said that the award impressively showed how well its winners could compete with and rank among the most creative people in this field. The exhibition was preceded by long lasting collecting activities and research work done by the z zg (Zentrum Zeitbasierte Gestaltung [Centre for Time-based Design]). Prof. Ralf Dringenberg and Prof. Anja Stöffler planned and created this exhibition with Dr. Annette Ludwig, Director of the Gutenberg-Museum in Mainz. It was realized with the help of several students at the Gutenberg-Museum on the occasion of “Mainz – 2011 City of Science”. “Moving Types – Letters in Motion” will be presented at the Gutenberg-Museum until August 12th, 2012. Then the exhibition will be shown in Schwäbisch Gmünd (“Galerie im Prediger”; from September 28th, 2012), which was made possible by the support of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation, and some time later in Warsaw (National Museum, in 2013). From October 25th – 28th, 2012 the special exhibition “Design on stage” (“Alte Münze” in Berlin) will present all works which have received a Red Dot Design Award and thus a short insight into the exhibition “Moving Types – Letters in Motion” will also be provided.

More information: www.moving-types.de