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TYPE IN MOTION BUILDS ON TRADITION
AND BRIDGES CULTURES

About the workshops

The city of Ulm, Germany, is proud of its worldwide renowned design heritage: the School of Design Ulm (HfG), founded in 1958 and closed in 1968, whose design methodology was based on the Bauhaus principles. The founding director was Max Bill, a former Bauhaus student, and the first courses were taught by former Bauhaus teachers such as Josef Albers, who returned from the United States to support the successor school of the Bauhaus in the new democratic postwar Germany. Today the school building is a design archive for scholars and researchers from all over the world. A permanent exhibition shows student work in industrial design, visual communication, architecture, information and film. Remarkably, foreign students from 49 different countries accounted for 44% of the school. The influence of the HfG – especially in Latin America and Asia – has been seen around the world.

Susanne P. Radtke is tenured Professor of Graphic and Media Design at University of Applied Sciences, Ulm, Germany, since 2002. Prof. Radtke earned a graduate degree in visual communications from Berlin University of the Arts and she has studied with renowned teachers from the HfG. After completing her graduate work, she was a master student of Prof. Herbert W. Kapitzki, the former department chair of Visual Communication at the HfG. She is co-author of Textbook for Visual Media Design, 6th edition, required reading at many design schools. Since 1987, she has maintained a graphic design office, in Berlin. Radtke lives in both Berlin and Ulm.

Prof. Radtke has developed and run international workshops for 6 years mainly in the Middle East and the United States. Typography and signs are always the foundation for her intercultural approach. The meaning and the message typography and signs can convey is very different in various cultures, even apart from differences in writing systems. Designers today focus on one hand on the global market but on the other hand remain sensitive to their own national and cultural heritages.

Through the classes “Type in Motion” and “Signs go Global”, diverse media such as animation, sound and typography combine with the student's unique voice to become part of the animated piece. Increased knowledge about the rules and conventions of the broad field of typography and is gained during brainstorming, storyboarding and working on the final design. Lectures in kinetic Typography and semiotics also help to build a theoretical background for the practical work.

Good prerequisites for the intercultural workshop are an interest and openess for different cultures and a curiosity to explore and express the hidden meanings in signs and symbols, proverbs, sayings or expressions. The program AfterEffects is usually used for the animation although the students are welcome to use any other software. Creativity and experimentation while playing with animated typography is essential for all the workshops with our partner universities shown on this website.