Contact:

CH-8041 Zurich
office[at]simonwenk[dot]ch
Instagram

About:

Through my education i was already able to gain a lot of experience in the fields of typography and editorial design. But as a graphic designer, i'm also interested in the natural sciences and technology wich can be integrated into the design process. That's why i try to incorporate programming and new media into my design alongside intensive visual research and experimentation and bring new influences into graphic design.

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Education & Experience:

2023–now

Specialist Graphic Design and Administration
ETH, Zurich

2022–2023

Internship Graphic Design and Communication
ETH, Zurich

2021–2022

Graphic Designer
Self employed, Zurich

2021–2022

Junior Graphic Designer
697THz GmbH, Zurich

2018–2021

BA Visual Communication
University of the Arts Bern

2016–2017

Preparatory Course
NSGL, Langenthal

Appreciations:

2021

DDC Awards, Shortlist
Category Communication
DDC e.V.
Frankfurt, Germany

2020

VOLUMES Award, Shortlist
Category Publishing
VOLUMES Independent Art Publishing
Zurich, Switzerland

Since the revelations of Edward Snowden, we all know that we could be monitored via our cell phones. But in this digitized world, other potential surveillance methods are now on the rise. But you'll never even notice when you're being monitored.
The project connects a journalistic point of view in form of texts with satellite images and articulates how this images are abused to gain geopolitical power. But also shows for what this technology could be used to help in the challenges humanity is facing.
Especially in the context of mass surveillance, however, the question arises whether satellite surveillance can be used at all to monitor an individual, for example. There are far more efficient methods than this, which do not even require new technology.
Among other things, such a form of monitoring would also be far too expensive to use for single individuals.
And yet satellites are used again and again to coordinate military operations. Many of these are also related to power struggles that could increase the risk of an international war.
Even if this is probably a long way off, we should ask ourselves how much surveillance is necessary to establish security and at what point is the individual's personal rights violated in order to systematically monitor a mass of individuals.
An experiment in which the goal was to create something new from a random photo using different techniques and methods.
Among other things, i used Photoshop to warp and abstract the image. Later, among other things, various filters were used.
Through the process i decided, among other things, to screen print the resulting image with silver paint on black paper.
The print and the silver color used created such interesting details in the image.
Arad is a visual research project about the hebrew and latin script. It deals among other things with the ductus and charcteristics of each script and archives the forms in a compendium. The research was the basis for my font akiva, wich i'm working on.
The compendium combines about hundred forms wich have been extracted throught a long extensive research in writing both scripts. All forms can be tracked down to is individual glyph in the script and the language.
The inpiration for this project was my interests in old scrips and the associated cultures. The research started after i traveled to israel for vacation where i photographed a lot of graffitis and other hebrew scrips in use.
The goal is to develop a font that works for large texts or big headlines and combines details out of both scripts. The details are also researches throught visual research.
The font comes when it's finished...
The Afterwork Lectures are a regular lecture series of the Typoclub of the University of the Arts Bern. In the lectures, guests from the fields of graphic design and type design present their work and answer questions from the audience.
Prior to each event, students are given the opportunity to design a poster. From the submitted posters, a jury will select six from which the students will choose one to be used to promote the event online and offline.
The posters shown are a selection from posters i submitted for the various lectures.
In Silico is my theoretical bachelor thesis that deals with the design of interfaces in science fiction movies. In the thesis i ask myself the question in which relationship design and purpose of the interfaces stand.
In addition, it is also about whether ways of thinking and principles from fictional design can be translated into reality and thus could be incorporated into future developments in various fields of research.
I examined various human-machine interactions from films such as Alien, Matrix, and Blade Runner for how they functioned in the appropriate context of the scene and the overall plot. Criteria in the functioning were, among others, hierarchy, logic and usability.
All analyses include, among others, a descriptive perspective and my view as a designer. In order to include another perspective, i made use of an interview with a cultural scientist as part of the project.
The work was finally also the basis for my practical bachelor thesis in which i dealt with future technologies and tried to further develop a technology with creative means. The analyses were increasingly pushed into the background by the design process.
A fictional poster for a lecture on the opportunities and obligations related to climate change. The poster combines the technique of digital printing with screen printing by layering them on top of each other.
Among other things, the poster plays with euphemistic statements that repeatedly come from political circles and distract from the real problems. The phrase used also alludes to the globally rising temperatures which are caused by climate change.
It was created in connection with a module at the University of the Arts Bern and another lecture i attended before.
Lost in Translation is my practical bachelor thesis as well as a research project that deals with different encryption methods, brings them to a visual level and intended to use the gained knowledge to develop a own visual encryption method.
The whole research and design process is documented by a journal and shows important milestones in the development of the encryption method. The process, respectively the individual pages in the publication are broken down by a map.
The intended method should make it possible to encrypt individual words visually in a symbol and finally to decrypt them. To decrypt it, a key should be used like in common encryption methods except that it works visually.
In order to understand how unintelligibility can arise and function visually i first had to understand how intelligibility functions in various non-verbal means of communication. Therefore i investigated different forms of this communication.
In order to finally connect these forms of communication with visual cryptography, it was necessary, among other things, to analyze the systematic structure of encryption methods.
After the translation into visual cryptography, respectively into my own encryption method, finally only the form of the symbol was a topic which also arose from the research in the different forms of non-verbal communication.
In a next step, the analogously developed method is to be converted into an executable program for a computer. Among other things, the visuality of the method is to be revised again.