News

The poster series designed by Beton Studio in the new corporate design for the relocation to Schillerplatz was chosen in the competition as one of the "100 best posters" in the German-speaking countries.

By country, the 100 award-winning posters and poster series are divided into 39 x Germany, 54 x Switzerland and 7 x Austria - 79 x category A (commissioned work), 4 x B (in-house commissions) and 17 x C (student project commissions). The jury with Christian Hoffelner (A-Vienna), Radovan Jenko (SI-Ljubljana), Larissa Kasper, Kasper-Florio (CH-St.Gallen), Denis Olgac, Sucuk und Bratwurst (D-Berlin) and Susanne Stahl, Stahl R (D-Berlin) first made an online pre-selection as usual. At the final jury meeting, chaired by Susanne Stahl, 362 posters (259 individual posters and 103 series) were submitted by 227 entrants.

The traditional kick-off exhibition at the Kulturforum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, is scheduled for June 23, 2022. This will be followed by a tour of exhibitions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as in Korea and other locations.

The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna was represented again this year at the BeSt education fair in the Vienna Stadthalle. Beton Studio designed the trade fair stand in the new corporate design. The different fields of study and institutes are visually highlighted through the use of the new color system.

An example of the sustainable application of the new design is the flexibly designed and applicable academy folder. Using our standard A4 sheets in the new color system, targeted information can be individually and easily designed with a template and printed out yourself, and once folded can be assembled in A5 with a fixed cover and elastic band.

A fixed printed picture selection visually communicates the contents of the academy and complements the respective booklet, which can be used both as an image brochure and for study contents and press kits. The covers and pictorial pages are available for design on a do-it-yourself basis from the Public Relations Office. With the new system, printing costs can be saved and all changing information can always be presented in an up-to-date manner.

With the move back to Schillerplatz, the museum store in the foyer of the galleries is now back in service. In order to make the new design of the Academy visible there as well and to meet the needs of the visitors, a small product line is offered for sale: Parallel to the exhibition Hungry for Time there is a Wrinkle-Bag with appropriate print and from the graphic series of the academy are Hoodies around 50.- and T-Shirts around 18.- euros to buy and/or to acquire.

For the start of the semester, the new design has arrived at the academy in time. Students are welcomed with newly designed information material and bags, and all departments and institutes of the academy have converted to the new logo in the business equipment in a first phase and are prepared for the new appearance with individual templates for their different needs. A transitional period of testing and feedback on the individual applications in everyday work, or readjustment and supplementation in Phase II of the conversion process, is now beginning. After the dissolution of the working groups, work will now continue on concrete requirements in personal meetings with all offices in direct exchange.

As the Academy's offices and institutes slowly move back into place, we are excited to officially open the newly renovated historic building at Schillerplatz on October 8, 2021 starting at 7pm with the exhibitions "Hungry for Time. An invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media Collective, in the Art Collections" and "Thicket of Ideas - Thicket of Times. Students of the Academy in dialogue with Raqs Media Collective" at the contemporary Exhibit Gallery. An extensive program with artist talks, exhibition and architecture tours on the weekend invites you to join the celebration!

The academy's campaign to move back to Schillerplatz is the first visible public appearance for the new graphic image. For this, Beton has developed layouts that highlight the possibilities and scope for action of our corporate design toolbox and exemplify the flexible use and composition of the basic elements and the color system.
A series of posters in Vienna announces our return to Schillerplatz over the summer, arouses curiosity, and takes an indirect path of communication with the viewer that fits the art university. With selected advertising media, we want to create desire, identification and recognition, both internally and externally.

Bags made of organic cotton in changing designs, sustainably manually screenprinted in Vienna by former student Dejan Dukic, graduate of the Department of Fine Arts/ Extended Painting Space at Franz Graf and Daniel Richter make the start of our tools for internal and external use. Choose your bag with your favorite term!

After studying together in Vienna, Benjamin Buchegger, Daniel Car and Oliver Hofmann founded the graphic design studio Beton in 2011. After that, the three designers lived and worked in the cities of Leipzig, Salzburg and Vienna. The different places influenced their way of working. Now based in Vienna and Salzburg, their focus is on a typographic-conceptual approach. They strive for simple, open and decisive concepts - at the same time they are preoccupied with concepts such as variety and ambivalence. By developing graphic systems, they create design tools for themselves and their clients. Rather than producing hermetic work, they take a dialogic approach to design, where all parts in the application work together, but context and viewers are also considered. The academy is very happy about the collaboration with Beton.

The academy's internal orientation system working group addresses issues such as accessibility, construction, resistance to vandalism, gender diversity, and directions to the collections and exhibition spaces in the building to meet all requirements and needs of different target groups.

Fixing the positions of the new elements will be done after careful review and on-site coordination to ensure spatial context. For sustainability reasons, the existing door signs will be recycled and reused.
The new orientation system will make its presence felt not only inside but also in front of the building: Two so-called "landmarks" will point to the second main entrance in Makartgasse, among other things. Approval from the Federal Monuments Authority is expected in the next few weeks so that the elements of the orientation system can be produced in time for the opening at the beginning of October.

After two months of work in the various subgroups and with all levels of the Academy, the scenarios of the implementation steps have been defined and reviewed. The structure and framework of the graphic layout for all the requirements of our new corporate design have been approved and will look like this when viewed together - see illustrations. It is now time to plan and define the individual steps until the first public appearance at the press conference on June 15 and the production of the orientation system.

In her external review, Linda van Deursen, internationally active and numerous award-winning graphic designer and founding member of the Mevis & Van Deursen agency from the Netherlands, speaks out in favor of Beton in particular because of its well-considered, prudently and sustainably developed design for the Academy:
»The motivation of their choices (graphic designers) is well articulated and communicated. They reveal an intellectual effort, an awareness of graphic design history as well as sufficient and accurate practical knowledge. There is an evaluation of the existing identity, they consider a colour palette, invest in materials and think about economical concerns as well as sustainability issues. They are thoughtful about the adaptation of an identity, and how it can function within the different communities, but also in a larger setting, perceived by outsiders. They look ahead, at a possible implementation and after life of the identity. The identity is not presented as closed-off, but rather open for discussion.

Although the visual language is rather straightforward, there is also space for another level of communication. The ellipsis (suspension points or »dot-dot-dot«) seem to offer space for something unexpected and playful. Also the idea to introduce punctuation marks within identities is not new. In this case, it even refers to the current identity, which might be good. The letter/symbol combination seems to function well as a logo in disguise, for occasions where branding is needed, but also on interactive and social media platforms where the ellipsis indicates there is more to come.«

Martin Beck, Elke Gaugele, Elke Krasny - heads of the Institute for the Artistic Teaching Profession, together with some students, express criticism of the signet, the smallest form of the Academy's new logo:
»A capital A followed by three dots carries fixed meanings and is not open to interpretation. The ellipsis has become politically coded in recent years. In the global context of social media, this has gained a sinister and ideologically charged dimension through Donald Trump's Twitter communications. Although the discussion of Trump's Twitter ellipsis has not found the same presence in German-language print media as it has in the Anglo-American sphere, here, in the German-language context, historically as well as currently, the A followed by three dots has clear connotations as a swear word and as a non-word that one does not pronounce.

There is a serious possibility that, in the short term, in the press and in the perception of other public institutions, the Academy will face unpleasant attention and gloating, as well as, in the medium to long term, damage to the Academy's attention economy.«