座落在美麗瑞士蘇黎世的個人工作坊 studio marcus kraft，創辦人Marcus跟我們分享了在他生命中非常重要的三個專案：蘇黎世觀光識別設計、社會設計展覽視覺、以及Don't Eat the Yellow Snow這本書打開工作室知名度的過程。
JT: Design Weekly interviewer
MK: Marcus Kraft (Studio Marcus Kraft founder)
JT: 你曾經為德國非常知名且有象徵性的這本Novum雜誌設計過一期的封面對嗎？
MK: 對的。Novum是一本歷史非常悠久的設計雜誌，我不確定它到底幾歲了，大概有100年了吧。
JT: 這麼有歷史了喔？從他們的封面跟雜誌形式去看，我還以為這是其中一個新創立的雜誌。
MK: 他們在這十年來有做了一些品牌重塑。雖然如此，它仍是一本古老的雜誌。很有趣的是，他們每一期都會跟一位不同的設計師合作雜誌的封面設計。我被這本雜誌邀請了製作這一期的封面設計。基本上，他們給了我非常大的空間去創作，所以我邀請了一家蘇黎世當地印刷公司Wolfensberger一起工作，它同時也是擁有悠久歷史的印刷坊，而他們也對於實驗性時的方法抱持著開放的態度，就像去推進極限。
JT: You’ve done a cover for the prestigious and iconic magazine in Germany called novum.
MK: Yes. The novum magazine is like a really old German design magazine, I don’t know how old it is, probably 100 years old.
JT: That old? From their cover and form, I though they are one of the newest magazines.
MK: They have a couple of rebrands over the decades. So, it has a lot of history. And what’s interesting now is that they also work for every issue with a new designer for the cover. So, for one issue, I was invited. Basically, they gave me a wild card, which means you can do whatever you want under the topic of printing process. So, I asked a local printing company in Zurich, Wolfensberger, who is also an old printing house with a long tradition, that if we could do that together, because I knew they were quite open to experiment on the printing machine, to push the boundaries a bit.
所以，我們決定去創造出12,000份有著不同細節的獨特封面。為了達到這個目標，對我們來說其實有些壓力在。因為當你要去印刷這些雜誌，你們應該也很多人看過機器運作的過程非常快速。
我們三個人在印刷機上操作著不同的「干擾」程序。
舉例來說，一個人會手動加水到印刷機上，幾乎大家都不會這樣做，因為你就會產生所謂的印刷錯誤。但當時，我認為這不可預見的結果是有趣的。有時候我們甚至會暫停印刷機，我就把這些化學顏料再加到印刷機盤上、擦去一些顏料、再繼續印刷、之後再擦掉一次。
我們做到最重要的事情是：我們將顏料從機器隨機地從頂端放入，而這些顏色開始混合並且創造出不同的漸層。
這是非常直覺性的過程。因為你不能預測最後結果為何、去看什麼會發生、或是知道這個機器會怎樣去運作。其實去用一種不符合常規的方法去操作這台機器蠻有趣的。
So, we made this plan to create 12,000 unique copies each one with a slightly different cover. And to achieve that, it was actually quite a bit stressful. Because when you print these magazines, I’m sure a lot of you might know, they go really fast. We were three people doing different interferences on the printing machine. For instance, one guy would put water on the printing machine by hand, which you would never do, because you would be creating an error. But I thought it would be quite interesting to add too much water in the machine to see what would happen. Sometimes we would even stop the machine and I would put the chemicals onto the printing plate and erase some stuffs, and then move on and erase again.
The most important thing we did was we added colors on top of the printing machine quite randomly and colors started to mix to created new gradients.
It was somehow an intuitive process, because you also couldn’t predict the outcome, see what happens, or see what the machine does. It’s nice to use the machine in a way that is not meant to be.
JT: 讀者怎麼對你的封面做回應呢？
MK: 當雜誌在出版後，不論在報攤或是對於那些有訂閱這本雜誌的讀者，人們甚至會把封面都貼在Instagram。得以一次看見所有雜誌的不同封面變化很好玩，因為當初在印刷的過程實在太迅速，來不及好好的看見每一個封面。
JT: How the readers responded to the cover you designed?
MK: When the magazine went out, on the kiosk, or to the people who subscribed to the magazine, people even posted them on Instagram. It was funny to see all those variations of the magazine because I’ve never seen before since the printing process happened so fast on the machine, you couldn’t really get a glimpse of every one of them.
JT: 你們怎麼形容你的工作室？
MK: 如果要用一個詞語來形容的話，應該是「簡單」。我喜歡將事情簡約化。同時，我認為設計就是應用美術，所以設計永遠都應該有一個目的；假設沒有的話，那這就只是藝術而已。我同時也認為平面設計應該要讓人們的生活更簡單一些。所以這就是我認為平面設計師該做的事情：去讓人們的生活更為豐富、更美麗、但同時更簡單，因為生活有時候已經夠複雜了。
JT: How would you describe your studio?
MK: If it has to be in one word, it has to be simple. I like to keep things simple. And also, I think that design is always an applied art, so it always has to have a purpose; if it doesn’t, then it’s just art. And I also think that graphic design should make people’s lives simpler. That is also what I think us as graphic designers should do: to enrich people’s lives, to make it more beautiful, but also simpler, because life itself is already complicated.
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