BRANDING
THE CHANGE,
HOW DO I WORK?

Challenge: 

In 2021, the Amsterdam Fashion Institute was broadly in the news with stories and reports about the unsafe learning environment. The current graduates feared that this would negatively affect their graduation work, and thus their careers.

 

Solution: 

It was clear that the AMFI graduates needed special treatment. AMFI immediately adopted the insight that they must take a separate position and in this case must literally distance themselves from their students. AMFI acted as an anonymous supplier, all design decisions were based on the student's perspective. The invite didn't mention Amfi, the exam exhibition poster featured only the names of students. 

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To take a step aside, the exam exhibition had to be placed outside the institute. Therefore a well-known abandoned factory site, on the outskirts of Amsterdam was chosen. To empower the students even more, the curation was done backwardly, which means that the 5 overlapping themes were chosen after reading all the theses.

 

The spatial design is based on a simple do-it-yourself layout of scaffolding material, which gave the students enough space to do their own thing. The accompanying exhibition copy mainly consisted of text samples from their own theses. To stick the themes together, adhesive tape with the names of the themes printed on it was used. This tape connected the various walking routes to the different factory buildings and acted as a silent guide for the visitors.