Johnson / Kingston and Yet no Yokai
Photo: Michael Kühni
Johnson / Kingston: Ivan Weiss (1981) and Michael Kryenbühl (1985) founded their studio Johnson / Kingston in early 2012 after a 6-month residency in New York as part of the Swiss Design Awards. In New York and other residencies, they focused on self-initiated projects at the interface of design and technology. In independent projects and commissioned work, as well as in teaching, lectures and workshops in Switzerland and abroad, they explore experimental, contemporary forms of graphic design, type design and programming. Based on these explorations, they won the Swiss Design Award for the second time in 2017 with their work for the B-Sides Festival. Since 2017, they have been teaching as part of their professorship for communication design at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, specialising in digital and networked media. The designer duo, based in Bern and Lucerne, has been joined by Massimiliano Audretsch since 2019.
Photo: Thomas Seidmann
Yet no Yokai: The Lucerne trio of Samuel Birrer (percussion), Simon Pfister (bass guitar) and Thomas Seidmann (guitar, vocals) won the m4music Demotape Clinic Awards in the rock category with their darkly enraptured, primal psychedelic sound. Above all, they like to rock live, playing at the Winterthur Music Festival Weeks and the PALP Festival, as well as supporting established musicians such as Tinariwen, L'Epée and Klaus Johann Grobe. There were also concerts for the ears via radio airplays, including on Radio SRF3, SRF Virus and Couleur3. From songwriting, recording and mixing two EPs, artwork, music video production to the release through their own label Fuzztronaut Records, everything was done in-house. Despite the pandemic and the resulting cancellation of many gigs, Yet No Yokai have not gone quiet. In addition to a third, soon-to-be-released EP, they are working on an album production for 2021 and continue to embark on their dark, progressive, psychedelic krautrock odyssey.
Project
The coaching with Johnson/Kingston focuses on strategies and methods to promote visual self-reflection. The live performance and the overall appearance of Yet No Yokai will be analyzed and then specifically improved. Various forms of collaboration between the band and designers will also be practiced. In this way, the band will be sustainably trained to be able to create and maintain a uniform appearance in all media in the future.
Together with Johnson / Kingston, a clear concept for the visual appearance of the band Yet No Yokai is developed. Involved in this process, the band learns to articulate itself visually and to act independently beyond the project.
The project will be divided into two phases: On the one hand, the initial focus will be on the live shows, which will be redesigned for the upcoming residency concert at the Südpol in Lucerne. On the other hand, the visual signature of the band will be addressed. It should be in symbiosis with the music and formally reinforce it.
As part of the coaching program, the teaching of creative qualities plays a central role, as does the exchange with creative people and the formation of a network outside the actual music industry.
