Green and purple BURG exhibition posters with speculative descriptions of works attached to a construction fence.
Purple BURG poster on a construction fence, describing a person sitting idle in an empty room.

Burg End of the Year Exhibition

How can something be made visible without deciding what should be seen?

Context

Once a year, Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design opens its studios, workshops and seminar rooms to the public. Across its campuses and other locations in Halle, the annual exhibition brings together work from more than 1,000 students in art and design, offering a glimpse into the projects and processes of the previous two semesters.
Communicating such a diverse exhibition presents a particular challenge. Selecting individual works inevitably gives them prominence over others, while an overarching key visual risks imposing a single image on a multitude of different artistic and design practices. How can an art school communicate the diversity of its annual exhibition without deciding what should represent it?

Approach

Rather than showing the works, the campaign describes what might be there. Inspired by alt text, speculative descriptions take the place of images and invite viewers to form their own. The visual identity remains deliberately open, leaving space for different expectations, associations and interpretations.
The audience becomes part of producing the image by reading, imagining and interpreting before encountering the actual works. In this way, the campaign reflects something fundamental to art and design: meaning is not simply presented, but actively constructed.

One challenge for visitors is finding their way through the many exhibition venues at the end-of-year exhibition. Therefore, we designed three key applications to help. One of them was banners.
Another application to help navigate events and exhibition sites was a foldable flyer, containing locations, events, timetables, and other key information.
For the first time that year, we introduced a comprehensive website in collaboration with Jana Reddemann and David Liebermann. It organized the end-of-year exhibition into students, teachers, focus areas, and locations, making everything that was going on visible and helping with navigation as well.
Green BURG poster with a German description of a work about seeking recognition in a world of illusions; annual exhibition, 15–16 July 2023.
Purple BURG poster describing, in German, a person sitting on a chair in an empty room doing nothing; annual exhibition, 15–16 July 2023.
Blue BURG poster describing a hand pulling a knitted tortoise shell over a stool; annual exhibition 2023.
Orange BURG poster describing black wooden pieces hanging above speakers, with the German aside “You cannot see the dripping sounds.”
Pink banner with a QR code hanging on a wooden fence outside a yellow building.
Yellow-green exhibition banner on a wall reading, in German: “The guests are equally fascinated and confused.”
Pink and red BURG annual exhibition text banners displayed in two windows of a pale facade.
Collection of Instagram posts and stories for the BURG annual exhibition, combining coloured text panels and photographs.
Project Title
Burg End of the Year Exhibition
Client
BURG Giebichenstein University of Art and Design
Year
2023
Services
Identity Design, Campaign Design, Website Design
Role
Concept Development, Design, Project Coordination, Production Coordination
Graphic Design
Sarah Fricke, Lea Sievertsen, Pawel Wolowitsch (Distaff Studio)
Design Consultant
Matthias Görlich
Development
Jana Reddemann, David Liebermann
Location
Halle (Saale)
Typeface
Arial by Monotype
Printing
University printing house