At the end of October, the annual Graduation Show of Design Academy Eindhoven took place. The event is part of Dutch Design Week and showcases the final projects of all bachelor’s and master’s graduates from the past academic year. During the exhibition, a brand-new catalogue is also presented, capturing all the works in words and images. This year, Buroform had the honour of printing the book, in collaboration with the design collective WhyWhyNot Collective, book consultant Trudy Dorrepaal, and project leader Stijn van der Vleuten. The day after the show, we met with Stijn over coffee for a small recap of this wonderful project.
“It was nice to see Jesse at the show as well,” Stijn smiles when we meet him. “I heard that plans were made right after to collaborate more closely with our students in the future. How and what exactly is still being explored, but it’s fantastic that after a first collaboration, a bridge is immediately being built that we can mean something to each other in the long term. For our students, such a project can be an important first step in their careers.”
Design Academy Eindhoven is one of the most renowned design schools in the world. Every year, countless designers graduate there, in the broadest sense of the word. Stijn himself completed a design programme there in 2009. He now works as an independent designer and is part of the artist collective We Make Carpets. For several years, he has also been working freelance for the Academy. “As a coordinator, I’m the point of contact for all recent graduates. In addition, I work as a project leader, focusing on the annual Graduation Catalogue. It was in that role that I came into contact with Buroform. In fact, it was Trudy Dorrepaal who recommended you. I’m responsible, among other things, for assembling the team that develops the book. She was jointly responsible for the production and had already worked successfully with you in the past.”
The Graduation Show is one of the world’s most influential exhibitions of work by emerging designers. The catalogue forms an essential part of it and is officially presented during the event. The result is a meticulously designed reference work, refined down to the smallest detail in both aesthetics and printing technique.
“The composition of the book in particular was a complex challenge,” Stijn emphasises. “It brings together more than 230 projects from all graduates of the bachelor’s and the five master’s programmes. Each final project is given a spread with one or more images and a short project description. In terms of subjects and visuals, it truly goes in every possible direction. The initial question was how to create synergy between all these different elements. How do you make a book that captures and clarifies such enormous diversity? How do you categorise all the projects? How do you design an engaging layout that’s still functional, allowing readers to easily navigate between all the works?
For the designers and printers, it was sometimes about testing the limits of what’s possible. Throughout that process, Trudy also played a major role. With her technical expertise, she really knows how to push a project to its limits. But you can only create such a book by bringing together all the available knowledge and maintaining a critical dialogue with each other until the very last moment.”
In essence, the book is structured quite simply. The work of the bachelor students is followed by that of the five master programmes. The distinction between these six graduation tracks is immediately visible on the side of the book through a green marking. In addition, an extensive table of contents summarises each project in three key terms. To make navigation even easier, certain pages are fold-out, and a bookmark ribbon has been included.
“Every one of these aspects was considered endlessly,” Stijn explains. “Take the bookmark ribbon, for instance — it’s not just about whether you include it or not, but also exactly where it’s attached, what kind of printing it gets, and so on. The book also brings together a wide variety of images, from light to dark, indoors and outdoors. There was an extremely critical focus on the printing grid to reproduce photos and text in different sizes as precisely as possible.”
One of the most striking graphic choices is the use of a green spot colour that recurs throughout the entire book as an accent — also visible on the marked edges mentioned above. On the cover, this shade is combined with a glossy embossing that symbolises the connection between different parts. “You can see it as various dots or even water droplets that are linked together, reflecting the fluidity and intersections of all the projects in the book,” Stijn explains. “That was important too: over the past decade, our school has become a melting pot of nationalities and cultures, and we wanted to highlight that. First and foremost, we decided to give former students the opportunity to design the book.”
This year, that honour went to WhyWhyNot Collective, an eight-member group of designers from different countries, each with their own (graphic) skills and strengths. “With the catalogue, we also wanted to show how at Design Academy Eindhoven various backgrounds come together and how that diversity shapes the creative industry. For example, students were given the option to include their names in their own language. There was also space for them to describe their discipline in three words. The approach is very inclusive, right down to the addition of one’s own professional title and preferred form of address. This gives what is essentially a factual book a deeply personal touch, making this year’s edition truly special.”
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