TYPO Talks » Blog Archiv » Four (or so) Questions to … Erik Kessels

Erik has designed, edited and published several books of vernacular photography through KesselsKramer Publishing –including the In Almost Every Picture series, The Instant Men and Wonder. Since 2000, he has been an editor of the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography. Album Beauty, his current exhibition at the FOAM Photography Museum Amsterdam, is an ode to the vanishing era of the photo album as told through his collection. KesselsKramer’s award-winning documentary, The Other Final, shows a football game between the world’s two lowest-ranked teams played on the same day as the 2002 World Cup Final.

KesselsKramer worked and is working for national and international clients such as Diesel, Absolut Vodka, J&B Whisky, Vitra, Ben and The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, for which it recently finished the book The Worst Hotel in the World. KK’s collected works can be found in 2 kilo of KesselsKramer and now in a new kilo of KesselsKramer. In 2008, KesselsKramer set up a London office, KK Outlet. Like its parent company, this combined shop, gallery and communications agency prides itself on a very diverse output. Its work includes international clients like Bushmills Whiskey as well as exhibitions by prestigious artists.

1. Which work are you particularly proud of? Which work best represents your style or approach?

This will be the work for The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel. A hotel right in the center of Amsterdam, equipped with 500 beds. Not the best hotel to stay in (to put it mildly). So for years we used honesty in advertising as their only luxury. This work is entertaining, effective and a lot of fun to work on. For 15 years our office works for the hotel and in those years the hotel grew from 60.000 to 150.000 overnights a year, without doing any changes to the hotel.

The Worst Hotel in The World: The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel Amsterdam

Hans Brinker Budget Hotel

2. The theme of this year’s TYPO London is »Social«. Do you consider design to be a social discipline? Which design project do you consider to be particularly socially relevant?

Designers can play a big role in communicating social issues in their designs. It’s not that a lot of designers often do this, or have the projects or clients for, but it’s something that needs to be challenged. From our agency two examples that I consider to be social. One is for a mobile phone provider called Ben (means also ‘I am’ in Dutch). In posters for this provider we touch social issues such as migration (Ben welkom – I am welcome) and give attention to young and older customers (Ben nieuw – I am new, Ben er nog – I am still here).

Ben campaign

Another project we recently did was the signage to keep Amsterdam’s Vondelpark clean. Here we introduced gnomes, they have to do all the cleaning work if people don’t clean-up after themselves.

Vondelpark campaign

3. A conference like TYPO London is in itself an obvious example for a social event: what are you especially looking forward to?

On a conference like TYPO London, there’s always a dense concentration of people with more or less the same interest. I like to meet new people on these occasions, both from the speakers and the public. It’s in many ways a social event for designers, who work normally pretty isolated.

4. Required reading/watching: What are currently your favorite interesting/beautiful publications, exhibitions, books, movies and/or websites?

Films:

Books:

Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham: Saul Bass, A Life in Film and Design
Leanne Shapton: Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry
Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf: Armand Schulthess, Rekonstruktion eines Universums
Vladimir Arkhipov – Home Made
Christian Boltanski – Kaddisch
Hans-Peter Feldmann – 272 pages

Erik Kessels

Designer, Artist, Curator (Amsterdam)

Born in 1966, lives and works in Amsterdam. Erik Kessels is a Dutch artist, designer and curator with great interest in photography. Erik Kessels is since 1996 Creative Director of communications agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam and works for national and international clients such as Nike, Diesel, J&B Whisky, Oxfam, Ben, Vitra, Citizen M and The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel. As an artist and photography curator Kessels has published over 50 books of his 're-appropriated' images: Missing Links (1999), The Instant Men (2000), in almost every picture (2001-2015) and Wonder (2006). Since 2000, he has been an editor of the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography. For the DVD art project Loud & Clear he worked together with artists such as Marlene Dumas and Candice Breitz. Kessels writes regular editorials for numerous international magazines. He lectured at the D&AD Presidents Lecture and at several international design conferences such as in Singapore, Goa, NY, Toronto and Bangkok. He has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam), Écal (Lausanne) and at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture where he curated a celebration of amateurism. Kessels made and curated exhibitions such as Loving Your Pictures, Use me Abuse me, 24HRS of Photos, Album Beauty and Unfinished Father . He als co-curated an exhibition called From Here on together with Martin Parr, Joachim Schmid, Clement Cheroux and Joan Fontuberta. In 2010 Kessels was awarded with the Amsterdam Prize of the Arts, in 2016 nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and is often seen as the most influential creative of The Netherlands.

Speaker page

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