"THINGS
I'VE BEEN TOLD"

Four people with very different backgrounds were given a wall each and told to make "text-based art" for an exhibition in the summer of 2021 - and I was lucky enough to be one of them.

My first thought for what to make was to avoid all technology and make something completely analog with just a scissor, a pencil, some old newspapers and a perhaps a xerox machine. The same key ingredients I learned the basics of design with in the early 90s.

But for some reason halfway through the process I went in the exact opposite direction and ordered a fancy (but buggy) drawing machine from Italy, brushed up my old processing skills and started prototyping and experimenting with code, graffiti ink, needles and expensive paper.

Since I was the only designer among the four people, I got the idea of creating a concept that was somehow related to that. And after browsing through a bunch of my old moleskine notebooks with sketches and notes from meetings over the last decades - I decided on "things I've been told" while working as a designer.

MAKE IT BIGGER - I guess we've all heard this line one, two, three - or two hundred and fifty times.
Neue Haas Grotesk

MY WIFE LIKES BLUE - I will never forget the CEO who told me this the weekend after I had shown him the new logo and identity of his company.
Langestrand

THE EXPOSURE WILL MAKE YOU FAMOUS - I guess artists in all fields get told this over and over. But like the song goes; Exposure does not pay the bills.
ZAPF DINGBATS (And yes, it's a D.Carson homage)

The exhibition lastet for two weeks, and every morning I started my friendly drawing machine to make something a bit new, either with a new bit of code, some new ink (needles are great for injecting different type of inks into pens btw). And some days it turned out great, and a few days it failed completely either due to network issues or most likely because I was trying to push way too complex svg-files to my poor italian drawing machine.