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InspirationGraphic Design

Bureau David Voss shows how it's done when it comes to student/studio collaboration

Many graphic designers have spoken about how valuable it is to teach others for their own practice, and few have manifested that relationship so beautifully as Bureau David Voss.

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Open publication spread with yellow left pages showing architectural diagrams and blue, red and white central pages with large overlapping typography spelling "Missverständnisse" and dense body text

Based across Paris and Leipzig, Germany, the studio prides itself on making conceptual design work across the cultural field. “The basis of our work is a strong collaboration with our project partners and to share competencies for good and fitting results,” says the studio.

The eponymous Voss first opened the studio in 2008 in Leipzig and was joined in 2014 by his first studio partner Ondine Pannet. Two became four when Lisa Pflästerer joined in 207, and Lisa Petersen a year later. In 2018 Pannet moved back to Paris, and in doing so opened the Bureau David Voss satellite studio.

It was in France that a wonderful recent project emerged, in the shape of a workshop and resulting publication from Un Festival of Missverständnisse at ESAD Valence-Grenoble last winter. The studio was invited by the art school there to run a project during the first semester of the master's programme in design.

Working with the artist and art mediator Paula Kanefendt and the poet and editor Tim Holland, the team decided to work with the students around the theme “misunderstandings”. 

“A broad associative approach to the topic was provided by a reader to help the students preparing the semester,” says Studio David Voss. “The reader outlined the possible potentials of the leitmotiv from different perspectives, and was the starting point for the discussion.”

Throughout the semester, students undertook collective and individual research using the reader as a starting point, working towards the creation of a collective publication based on the subject “misunderstandings”. The studio says: “This gathers the analogue and digital results of the various research and design process within a final publication.

“Thus, the two printed matters are framing this collective work on the subject of misunderstandings: the reader was its starting point and the compendium its goal and conclusion.”

A poster was also designed, and the results of the workshop were displayed in an exhibition. The resulting publication shows fascinatingly experimental approaches to typography, layout and colour; with a mixture of page styles—some just text presenting in storage, directed columns; others with collaged post-internet pictorial snippets, others with stark black and white futuristic CG images.

Beautiful work, and an example of the very best things about intergenerational collaboration.

Bureau David Voss publication with typography studies on white left page and bold red right page with embossed text
Open publication with red cover containing text on left page and zebra-stripe pattern illustration on right page
Open book spread showing a stone landscape with water and visitors on the left, and a close-up black and white photograph of a giraffe and zebra on the right
Display case showing Bureau David Voss's publication and workshop materials from Un Festival of Missverständnisse, featuring printed layouts, photographs and turquoise textile samples behind glass doors
Two facing pages of a publication spread with three columns of text on the left and dates with red and blue gradient overlays on the right
Two-page spread featuring intricately line-drawn abstract forms in white on black background, with small circular text element on the left page
Two pages of a publication featuring a dialogue between two speakers communicating through lines and numbered sequences, exploring themes of connection and misunderstanding
Two-page spread from a publication with columns of text and two vertical black bars dividing the layout, featuring the introduction section of a design project documentation
Colourful publication cover featuring vertical stripes in red, blue and yellow with white sidebar containing overlaid text reading "Un Festival of Missverständnisse
Colourful abstract poster with red, blue, white and gold curved shapes and diagonal stripes, designed by Bureau David Voss for Un Festival of Missverständnisse workshop
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