The Hague Street Art (THSA) is a well-known street art collective in The Hague, and in 2018 the municipality invited them to transform an old industrial area in The Hague into a ‘street art district’. For over a year, local and foreign artists worked on multiple artworks and ‘pieces’ on various locations raging from power boxes and garages to full murals and even hotel rooms.

After a year THSA asked us to bundle all the artworks into a publication, and create a Street Art Guide of the area.

Even though all the artworks are legally made in broad daylight, our concept for the design came from the thrill, adventure and fun that is surrounded by graffiti artists. Trying to translate this adventurous characteristics with the important element of fun, we chose to show the artworks in the form of a comic book – using the same dimensions, shiny cover and uncoated paper of the comics we used to read as kids.

Since there was off course no storyline, all the individual projects are ranged chronologically as they were made, all of them marked with a location and time as for all of these projects their story starts here. The one anomaly in the story is transformation of the ‘Teleport Hotel’ into a Street Art Hotel, giving the artists the opportunity to paint the lobby, hotel rooms, their garage etc. This project started earlier in 2017 and is still on-going, so by using flash backs and flash forwards we fit this project into the story by using the language and characteristics of comics.

And of course as any good comic book story, this project is to be continued…

RESTORY is a serious game which can be used by policy-makers, officials, architects, artists – everybody involved in (re)using space and purpose – to (vacant) plots and (empty) buildings, such as office buildings, a park, malls, churches etc, to create a new purpose of program such as education, space for artists, recreation, catering industry etc.

The game was conceived by Martine Zoeteman / Stadvogels and commissioned by H-Team, to create a tool for the complex task of reusing buildings and plots with all parties involved to get a better understanding of the process and each other, and to see and discuss possibilities you maybe haven’t thought of before. Possibilities to ease the process, for communicating with partners and parties, or possibilities that can flip the whole idea you started out with.

In the game you can find yourself in multiple existing and non-existing cases and in various roles of people involved (i.e. architect, official, resident, sustainability expert etc.), all having a personal mission.

The game comes with a manual, a manifesto, role cards and case cards which are all printed with a risograph. The box is laser cut and the icons are laser engraved.

This is the facade of our very own studio complex in the inland harbour of The Hague. In fact, our studio is situated at the end of the big hall where you can see inside in photo shown.

The studio complex has a rich history of housing artists – from being a dependance of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in the ’90’s, to temporary use for a group of artists (including the founders of ‘De Besturing’), to being the self-owned ‘breeding ground’ it is today. To become the latter was quite a process, and took the effort of a lot of people who have their studio in De Besturing and also perform its management tasks. But in the end ‘we’ succeeded; we bought the building!

It was time for a new and fresh identity to mark this succes and face the future. It was an open call to all the tenants, so we teamed up with Typeish (Michel van Soest) to take on the challenge.

After a lot of brainstorming we decided to design a blackletter typeface, finding the constructed characteristics and craft of a blackletter a really good match with the ideas, character and image of De Besturing and its tenants.
Starting out sketching the individual letters through calligraphy, we later digitalised and finalised the typeface.

As a statement of the clear and worry-free future that was now laying before us after the purchase of the building, we painted the line ‘It’s all smooth sailing from here on out’ on the facade, also welcoming the ships still using the industrial harbour.

“In Situ” is a 180 page photo documentary by photographer Bertus Gerssen Riso-printed in black and white. It features loads of photos from the Hague’s underground musical scene from 2013 to 2015, and is a hommage to now mostly defunct DIY stages, squatted art spaces and tough-as-nails artists and crowds.

The book features an in depth prologue on the Hague’s once vibrant underground scene by one of it’s main protagonists, Guy Tavares and beautiful black on black printing by Bertus’ own risograph.

You can order the hand-printed book (limited to 300 pcs.) on www.bertusgerssen.nl/boek-in-situ-bestellen

On september 31st 2018, the book made the student selection of the ‘Best Dutch Book Designs / Best Verzorgde Boeken 2017’ and was on display at the accompanying exhibition at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

A comment from the Panel Report: “This book is about the underground music scene of The Hague. You could think of a lot of shapes that such a book should have, but none would be the one that is chosen here. This makes it a interesting book. At first glance it has an expensive appearance, but when you look closer the rawness seeps through. In contrast to the almost-velvet paper, the booklet is bound together in one fold and is left uncut. At first it feels heavy and important but the ink and paper that are used leave your hands feeling a bit grimy at the end – a great metaphor for the photos that are shown in the book.”