It was the shop signs, inscriptions and murals — painted mostly during the 1920s and 1930s – on the facades of buildings that inspired graphic designer Verena Gerlach. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Verena, who was a student of visual communication, explored East Berlin, specifically Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte. She took photographs of facades and shop signs in the 1990s, which found expression in her creation of a unique typeface, FF Karbid.
At a talk held last week at Jaaga’s new space at Richmond Road, Verena spoke of her career thus far and of her book Karbid, Berlin—from lettering to type design . “First, I just took photographs of East Berlin, after the fall of the wall. I worked only in black-and-white, because we got black and white photographic paper and films for almost no cost, all the eastern companies had closed down then.”
Verena chose to study at East Berlin Art School because the institute was foremost in typography, and it was there that she developed FF Karbid, which has been, in later years, re-designed and extended.
Among Verena’s pioneering work was doing lettering for Berlin, for example Absinth Depot Berlin. “The Absinth lettering I designed and painted was one of the first hand-made sign paintings in East Berlin after the change. About 40 to 50 years, people just didn’t use this technique.”
India’s sign painting and lettering is world famous, says Verena. She was so inspired by it that it led her to spend two months in the Goethe bangaloREsidency. For her research, she visited Ramanagaram, the silk city in Karnataka. “Since I’m obsessed by all kinds of lettering, I am of course, just amazed by the variety of great signs you can find in India. As a very important part of my project that is related to the sign painting tradition in India, I chose to work with young women in Ramanagaram, who are part of an education programme by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. I never worked with embroidery before, and I’m very glad that this time, I didn’t use a printing technique, which is what I normally work with. In this programme, the young women are trained in embroidery, which is normally a male-dominated craft, and they learn to run a little embroidery business. Their skills are just stunning, and I decided to work with this very traditional Indian technique to produce my posters. These posters are inspired by the words on the shop signs, Kannada and English, which I combined into a new meaning, describing the needs of young women at the outer edge of Indian society.”
On June 1 at Rangoli Metro Art Centre, MG Road, 12 noon onwards, there will be a display of poster-scarves, photographs Verena took while working with the craftswomen and the silk production and embroidered accessories of the Minchu Accessories.
