The finishing short project for which we had half a day. Find a headline in any recent newspaper and make an illustration for it. I chose mine from the sports section...

Yesterday we started our illustration workshop with a lecture by Mette Dreyer, an illustrator who works mostly for the big local newspapers. I don't get all the jokes, but the ones I do get are pretty funny. After that we did a couple of different exercises, which all included (very) quick idea finding and sketching as we were always pushed by time limits. We were also forced to use black ink and matches or thin brushes as tools. Some of my results for:

Five torsos of characters. 5 minutes for all. Otherwise free.

Combine two words into a new image. 1-2 minutes each.
Dog/Scissors – Key/Butterfly – Phone/Car – Brain/Box – Book/Sunglasses

Visualize words or newspaper headline. 2 minutes each.
Jealousy – Depression – "People Get More Sick of Food" – "Housing Will Be Cheaper in the Future" – Results

And now something to make everyone happy again.
P.S. Embedding kicks ass.

I found this picture by Philip Jones Griffiths in the recent edition of the scandinavian Vice and it really twisted my guts. I'm not gonna write about the story behind it, just try to get a free copy at your local skate store or hip fashion boutique before they're gone and read for yourself...

That's exactly what this week has been so far. We are currently having our introduction week into the second half of the semester, which means a new project (editorial design/illustration). People here, unlike in Germany, seem to put a lot of thought into the question how the students can be introduced most efficiently and effectively. So instead of handing out some lame paper with a couple of books to read and a short round-up of the course theme, we get lectures, speeches, field trips and workshops.

It started out on Tuesday with two lectures. One by Ole Munk, co-founder of Ribergaard & Munk, and one by Kenneth Schulz, Creative Director of the danish lifestyle magazine Euroman. Ole Munk talked for almost two hours about newspaper design/layout design and it never got boring. Tiering maybe, as 9 o'clock is just way too early for such a speech. But that guy really knows his stuff. Although I don't really like any of his other works, his newspaper re-designs are very nice.
And Kenneth Schulz, starting out with a portfolio presentation showing a lot of David Carson inspired work, talked to us about the truth of art directing, which is in fact a whole lot of organizing and planning and not even that much of being creative. Oh and he also told us a bit about the typical ad agency/publisher/magazine lifestyle. The stereotypes of all people in charge losing their grip on real life and instead doing coke and the 18-year-old interns? They're all true.

On Wednesday the whole course went to visit Politiken, Denmark's biggest daily newspaper. After getting a tour of the really vast, not to say huge offices of their building, we listened about an hour to one of the guys from the graphics department talk about 'something' – unfortunately for all exchangies it was in danish. The essence, so we were told, is that they get a lot of inspiration from Miro.

After having lunch at the very nice and cheap (4€ !) cantine, I went back to school to take my danish lessons and then on to meet up with Yoshi, Schwan, two more exchangies and three danish students to go to Lousiana, a very nice museum a bit outside of Copenhagen, where I had already been once before to see the Richard Avedon exhibition. This time the main reasons to go were Lucien Freud and Tal R. To my disappointment the latter is way overrated and in my eyes just naive child's play put on 4x4m canvases. Anyways, Freud made up for it, plus there was another exhibition called 'Frontiers of Architecture' which was also quite interesting but I just happened to discover a bit too late. Back in Copenhagen we went to get dinner at a very cozy bar called 'Café Klimt' and I finished off my very pleasant and long conversation with August, one of the Danes, about modern art, fashion, music and movies. Funny, we just seemed to have the same taste in almost everything.

1) Wiping my ass race stripe style.
2) With that name I'd probably not vote for him.
3) What the hell is the wood for?
4) School toilet. The cigarette's been there since semester start.
5) I guess the smell keeps strangers away.

Quick! Go check out Safarisounds new video and see the Funkanimal in action. Props to Falko-san for the nice work.

This Friday Pete invited 15 of his closest buddies here in Copenhagen to have drinks at the pretty posh The Lounge with him – and his parents. First I was a bit skeptic as I had no idea what an evening like this would look like. But then again, with Pete being one of the most open and good-natured people I've ever met in my life, his parents just couldn't be any bad. And that's exactly how it was, they are very warm and friendly folks who enjoyed themselves just as much as we did and didn't seem to feel a single bit awkward by going out with so many young brats.
And hey, they payed for three rounds of cocktails for everyone! How nice is that!? Thing was, we had to chug them down within 40 minutes, then the bars Happy Hour ended. Tipsiness guaranteed.



Oh and by the way, since this night I have a new favorite drink. 'Shark Attack' – vodka, strawberry syrup, Sprite and fresh strawberries. Damn sweet but sooo good.

This Friday was also one of the opening events for the local documentary film festival CPH:DOX. The festival doesn't start until November 9th but there are already some preliminary warm-ups all over the city right now. This one was called Bodily Functions and took place in the very cozy and friendly 'Byens Lys' in Christiania.

The location was sort of a mixture of bar, lounge and cinema all combined in one room with the whole floor being covered with silica sand, which felt a bit weird to walk on indoors. The evening
would be filled with three short films: an instructional movie from the 40s for nurses showing how to wash patients incapable of doing it themselves, two pre-pornos from the 60s shown simultaneously on top of each other (like two transparent layers), and a documentary also from the 60s made by the U.S. Army depicting the worklife of doctors/medics in the Vietnam War.

The first movie was just plain weird and I felt like one of these freaky film nerds who stare at a blank screen for three hours and are then able to hold nightlong monologues about the deeper meaning of it. The second one was, of course, a bit more entertaining and unintentionally funny. Lots of flower power, strange dancing and the conclusion that 40 years ago it apparently took a lot less to get people aroused than it does today. The third and last film was extremely gross and hard to watch. Soldiers getting their legs sawed off, getting the burned skin stripped off their muscles and getting bullets pulled out of their eye sockets. Not a pretty sight – several people left the building. What made it so bad was maybe not the bloody pictures itself, but the knowledge that this was the real thing and not just cheap special effects.

I should add, that the original sound of the movies was turned off and replaced by atmospheric lo-fi sound (1st) and rock music (2nd) created by a live band positioned to side of the screen. The third film was accompanied by three readers simultaneously reciting short texts, also live. All in all very artsy but interesting and entertaining nonetheless. Plus, the location and atmosphere we're just so relaxed and friendly one couldn't help but feel comfortable. Afterwards we went to a Halloween party at the Copenhagen Film School but didn't stay very long. The music was crap, the crowd not too wild and we were all still a bit shaky from the last movie. But the girls, oh my god, the girls. I guess I will never get over that as long as I'm here.



Please excuse the quality of the pics, it was a bit too dark. And sorry there are no shots of movie number 2, I know you'd like to see some – I misplaced my camera and couldn't find it in the dark. No shit!

The Algae Font is finally completed. Would be nice to get some opinions.

Climb onto a 10m high construction scaffold on a bridge pier at 3 a.m. on a saturday morning if you're completely wasted. Might have an unpleasant ending.