Today I travelled to Huddersfield, to watch a lecture by Berlin-based studio Neubau. They're a studio i've been interested in for the last 6 months, so I was really excited to get to meet the guys who worked there and learn more about their latest project.
Link To Studio
Five Years In The Forest (2009—2014)
Stefan:
- Inspired by Letraset Catalogues of 1980's.
- Neubau was named after a district he grew up in Vienna, called Neubau.
- The studio was set up in 2001.
- Neubau Postscript Typeface Exhibition of Neubau 55 typeface.
- First publication - Neubau Welt 1247HD
- Second publication - Neubau Model - Based around grids and patterns, for designers to use.
- Neubauism - 2008 Exhibition. Opened by Wim Crouwel.
- Neubau Forst - 20 designers, 39,000 hours, 60 months to complete.
- Trees are one of the hardest things to remove from an image, and no catalogues or even stock imagery of trees isolated from backgrounds are available online.
The Making Of The Book
How did they pick the trees? - 'Neubau' in Neubau Grotesk was overlayed over Berlin. The anchor points of the typeface were plotted against GPS points of the map.
The trees had a standardised system for photographing, and a manual was made to do so. The same can be said when isolating the imagery from the background.
Taking photos took 7 months.
Some trees were chopped down, but are relived within the book.
Isolating images of the trees took between 2 days and 3 months to do, depending on their complexity.
I asked the question.....
What did you do when there were no trees that matched up with the anchor points? Did you use a certain radius around each point?
Stefan told me the radius used was 10 metres, and because Berlin has lots of trees, usually this was easy to find.
Making Myself Known
I spoke to Benjamin Ganz after the lecture, and introduced myself. I took his business card, and asked about International placments. He told me they are at high demand, but they do happen.
I'm quarter German and can speak enough to get by, so I think working there could be within reach!
Overall Good Day
It was great to get out of Leeds, and it was also good fun going with lots of people from our class. I would love to arrange more 'class trips' in the future!
