Amsterdam

This week we took a trip to Amsterdam as a class, to experience their aware design culture and visit the many galleries and museums. We stayed at the Hans Brinker budget hotel, so we were very close to the museum quarter and not too far to walk and see all of Amsterdam. Before the trip I was excited to experience a new culture and try new food, from my previous trips and travels with uni I have become more confident and adventurous, looking forward to traveling to experience new things. We were asked to document our thoughts and time spent from day to day on our shared tumblr site, check it out here.

Flower Market 

I spent around an hour in a great postcards and art prints shop, searching through every section of postcards they stocked to find the perfect inspiration to bring back home with me. After searching for so long the shopkeeper mistakenly took me for Dutch, perhaps from the postcards I bought.

Stedlijk Museum 

In the gallery, a few pieces by Dan Flankin was on display, he has an upcoming exhibition at the IKON gallery in Birmingham I previously saw advertised on my visit to see Fiona Banner's typographic exhibition. It was a great surprise and made me all that more excited to experience more of his art next month. The Stedelijk museum was my favorite gallery by far, I loved seeing well known and classical artists pieces of work like Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh side by side with modern art and photography by the likes of Andy Warhol and Litchenstien.

 Celebrating International Women's day with free roses from a hotel nearby the museums.

 Amsterdam // Jordaan

As a separate brief to the trip, we were asked to create a poster advertising the trip to students next year, inspired and influenced by our experience there. I was mostly fascinated by their creative use of typography and duel language which I saw in streets, galleries, museums, shops, cafes etc. I wanted to take inspiration from the Dada movement on display within the Stedelijk Museum, and create a typographic poster. I choose to translate the well known saying 'It's all Dutch to me' and with an interesting use of colour and layout to hide the quote, allowing the Dutch language to be the main focal point.

NAP x