Katja Grosskinsky is this year’s Design New Talent Category winner for her project “Magister Ludi”.

Katja Grosskinsky

With Magister Ludi I explored the social aspect that a piece of clothing can offer. I wanted to add an extra purpose to clothing, besides providing protection, safety and warmth. So I took them out of their common context to see what else they can be – clothing as a toy. Every garment of Magister Ludi is an invitation to get in contact with the people in your surrounding and to make other people part of what you are wearing. The Magister Ludi collection consists of various different pieces. All of them are a game in itself taking place in their own theme world. Every garment can be played by two players. But they can also be connected with each other to expand the game and therefore can be played by even more people.

Brief
Magister Ludi is my graduation project from the Art Acadamy Miverna (NL). Thinking about this project beforehand I figured it would be great to include as many of my personal interests in it as possible to keep it as exhiting as possible for myself. To name a few: for instance my curiosity for human behaviour and interaction, nature, animals, fashion, screenprint or illustration. Plus the idea of adding an extra purpose to an object of everyday life triggers me. So I used this as my starting point.

Research

I did research in the eld of fashion and technology. I was curious what future clothing could look like and what there is to add to its original function. I watched lots of documentaries but also played and experimented with materials.

Materials

Illustration & Design; At first I thought of using many different materials but the final idea started with a series of loose pencil sketches which I merged together to create a final big sketch. Afterwards I worked them out in Photoshop and prepared the designs for silk screen printing.

Process

Looking at my project in retrospect I can tell that my process was divided into four different important phases. Each of them followed by a moment to evaluate my progress. The first phase was focussed at thinking about the concept by reading lots of books and articles plus watching movies about the meaning of playing in history, design and humanity. The second phase was aimed at experimenting a lot by taking all my written thoughts and starting to draw illustrations, little card games, collages, making risoprints, comics or drawings on clothes. The third phase was directed at altering all the work I had done so far to get to the essence of everything I learned and did in order to come up with final design and illustrations. In the last phase all my ideas, experiments and designs were put into realisation by producing the Magister Ludi collection.

Obstacles

In the beginning of the project there were no limits except the timeframe in which it had to be done. So I had to set all limits myself. Because of the seemingly endless possibillities that was a bit of a challenge.

Insights

I learned not to underestimate the importance of the balance between the moments of intense work and the moments of taking the time to re ext on what you did also together with other people.

Distractions

When I sit at my desk and look outside I can see my neighbors garden through the window. On the opposite side there is a house where doves meet on the roof. Always chit-chatting I am guessing. At the peak of my project, it started to become summer. It was blooming. The sun was taking me and my friends outside a lot.

Numbers

The big number of new muscles I developed while screenprinting everything by hand.

Thanks

I am very grateful for this award! I would like to thank my lovely family, close friends and tutors for being so supportive.

Katja Grosskinsky

About Katja Gossikinsky

Katja Grosskinsky is a German Illustrator and Designer. Born and raised in Berlin, currently living in
the Netherlands. She has a Degree in Design (Lette-Verein, Berlin, Germany) and finished her Bachelor of Arts in 2017 (Academy Minerva, Groningen, Netherlands). Katja loves being outside, observing animals and people, practicing Yoga, taking pictures, swimming in the sea and cooking. She enjoys merging materials and different design disciplines.

See her winning project here