Three designers depict the struggle of creative endeavour in new graduate show identity

Student designers Medeina Musteikyte, Marie Louise Gjerlev and Daphne Spelier have collaborated on a new identity for the Gerrit Rietveld Academie graduate show. “For the identity we were given complete freedom to bring any ideas and the only restrictions were the production dates,” explains Medeina. “With a good sense of self-irony, we tried to visualise the desire and frustration of reaching out and getting closer (but not close enough) to our goals.”

The project alludes to ambition and artistic aspiration by using body parts like curling fingers and lolling tongues to visualise the idea. “The body parts are all reaching and stretching for this invisible ’something’ creating a surreal scenario of ambitions intertwining and interacting with each other,” says Medeina.

The trio of designers animated the different elements and then had to translate the moving images into stills, ensuring each visual communicated the initial “liveliness” and energy seen in the accompanying animation. “With the colour we wanted to enhance the naivety and childlike straight-forwardness of the illustrations and therefore went for pure poppy colours.”

Along with the posters, tote bags and show guide Medeina, Marie and Daphne wanted to create lighthearted pairs of “graduation socks” and it proved to be the most challenging aspect of the project. “We came up with quite a tricky and demanding technique for the sock – sublimation printing, which uses special transfer paper and hot press,” explains Medeina. “This meant we had to print the cut-out shapes on each sock manually which took longer than we initially thought. However we managed to finish it for the day of the show without having two of the same sock in the whole pile.”