We make communication not only visible, we aim to make it socially valuable and tangible by connecting it to real life.
Our design approach searches for g e s t u r e s
to underline communication with stories. Therefore we work succesfully over 15 years to establish and accompany unique identities, campaigns, printed matters or websites. Commercial or cultural. The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger is echoing today's Zeitgeist by playing out accurate visual references.
Manuel Bürger is regular guest professor and member of Arts of The Working Class design department. His art direction for Tegel Media is distinctive since 2017. With transmediale festival he pushed new approaches of its visual identity based on storytelling and community building.
CONTACT
Recent projects:
Arts Of The Working Class, No.34
Artdirection & Design
International Dance Festival München
Identity, Art Direction, Design
Bochum Ensemble AI Typeface
Concept, Identity, Art Direction, Design. Programming: Simon Knebl.
BO-Books
Concept, Artdirection and Design of a digital publishing plattform for Schauspielhaus Bochum.
With Emma Geslot.
transmediale 2021/2022
Art Direction & Festival Design. With Simon Schindele.
John Sanborn - Between Order and Entropy. For ZKM Karlsruhe and Hatje Cantz
Art Direction, Exhibiton- and Book Design
Open Ground
Identity, Art Direction, Design. With Mark Ernestus.
Arts Of The Working Class, No.34.1
Artdirection & Design
Music Is The Answer, Seminar at HfG Karlsruhe
Teaching
b+ Website
Art Direction, Design
German pavillion, Architecture Biennale Venice, 2021
Identity, Art Direction, Design.
2038xAWC
Art Direction, Design
RIBOCA. Riga Biennale of Contemporary Art 2020.
Identity, Art Direction, Design. With Simon Schindele.
Arts Of The Working Class, No.21
Artdirection & Design
Ritournelle, Blitz Club
Art Direction, Animation, Design
House Europe
Website and Identity Development
HEK - Haus der Elektronischen Künste, Basel
Identity, Website, Design
Entangled Realites - Living with Artifical Intelligence, HeK Basel 2019.
Book Design
transmediale website
Identity, Artdirection, Design with Bárbara Acevedo Strange
transmediale festival 2019
Identity, Artdirection, Design with Simon Schindele
Please explore the tag system and get to know
more about our thoughts & design work:
Lost in Connotation
Institutional Narration
Attention Economy
99%
1%
Forever
Meme
High Level Folklore
Slippery Design
Arial
Times
Newspaper
Corporate Identity
"So, hier ist es. Das Stadttheater unserer Zeit. Es steht in Bochum, der alten Ruhrpott-Provinz, nicht in Berlin, Frankfurt oder Wien." Simon Strauss, FAZ, 05.11.2018
Featured projects:
💬 Together with Studio Arno Brandlhuber and their students, we were developing an online TV station at ETH Zürich. Working in a time-based medium forces us to think about and see architecture as more than an object. station.plus uses different episodic formats to convey arguments to a wider public.
💬 How can one develop a logo that corresponds to the transitory identity of the intercultural practice itself and the eponymous cultural program in the Ruhr area?
Read about developing the Interkultur Ruhr CI and the latest project Pizza Pangaea:
💬 The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
> Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, 1848.
Working on Volksbühne Berlin with Chris Dercon:
💬 We want to enable greater freedom and flexibility through collective ownership than would be possible through individually owned private property, making housing function more like an information good. And for that to work, it need not feel like a political revolution; it just has to work better than what it’s an alternative to – which is real estate markets that concretise a fundamental antagonism between renting and owning.
> New Eelam
In cooperation with Christopher Kulendran Thomas and Annika Kuhlmann we developed the look and feel of New Eelam:
Further projects:
Agnieszka Polska – The Demon's Brain.
Exhibition Design, Book Design
transmediale festival "face value", 2018
Identity, Artdirection, Design
Nuit Blanche Paris, 2017
Artdirection, Design
Morteza Hannaneh - Tchashm-e-Del, Collapsing Market, CLPM003, 2017
Artwork, Design, Photography. In cooperation with Thomas Jeppe
Perks and Mini, 2018
Logo Design
Cory Arcangel, Olia Lialina – Asymmetrical Repsonse, Koenig Books, 2018
Book Design
Ensemble Shooting, Schauspielhaus Bochum, 2019
Artdirection
transmediale festival "afterglow", 2014
Identity, Artdirection, Design
Duck House Theory, Essay & T-Shirt, 2013
Artdirection, Design, Writing
BIEST, 2015
Identity, Web Design
Theory Of The Bench, 2014
Benching, Writing. In cooperation with Thomas Jeppe
Interkultur Ruhr Ci, 2016
Corporate Identity, Workshop
The Brutalism Appreciation Society, HMKV, 2017
Artdirection, Exhibition Design
Internationales Sommerfestival, Kampnagel, 2017
Artdirection, Design
Datafied Research, University of Hong Kong, 2014
Workshop, Newspaper Design
FFIXXED STUDIOS, Shenzen/ Hong Kong, 2017
Logo Design, Web Design
transmediale festival "conversation piece", 2016
Identity, Artdirection, Design
Kitjen Records, 2015-now
Artdirection, Design
Olia Lialina - MBCBFTW, HeK, 2016
Book Design, Exhibition Design
Poetics and Politics of Data, HeK, 2015
Book Design, Exhibition Design
Cosmic Dancer, #FUTUREMYTH at 319 Scholes, NY, 2013
Research, Design
Slide for the Critical Visions Symposium, University of Cincinnati, 2011
Presentation, Talk
Slippery Design defies balance and order, leads into the void and shows us worlds. Slippery Design creates fields of meaning, mimeses in relationship, building lines to oppositions. Slppry Dsgn masters the game of semiotic scraps; it speaks in syllables not sentences. Slippery Design relies on dissemination through irritation, mutation, failure ~ causes discourses to falter. Slippery Design is the true soul of the meme, the virtuosity of any amateur.
Manuel Bürger - Slippery Design
Research, Essay
Thomas Jeppe - Compass Trouble Again, Sazmanab, Tehran, 2015
Research, Design
transmediale magazine #1, 2013
Artdirection, Design
transmediale festival "CAPTURE ALL", 2015
Identity, Artdirection, Design
Corporate Identity for HeK Basel, 2014
Identity, Artdirection, Design
Digital Folklore, Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied (Ed.), 2009
Book Design
transmediale festival "in/compatible", 2012
Artdirection, Design
The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger /
Collaboratoires MB /
El laboratorio de Manuel Bürger
Way beyond Design
Berlin - Paris - Valencia
Contact
OUT NOW: MB-SYSTEMS-001 / Again
Learn more about this webpage: How it works?!
Website-Programming: Dragan Espenschied
Theory of the Bench - Omonia / Athens Edition, 2017
In cooperation with Thomas Jeppe
BERLIN – PARIS –
New: VALENCIA
Identities
Art Direction
Design
Teaching
COLLECTED QUOTES ABOUT OUR WORK
"Dissensus is always a good thing, Indifference is the worst!"
– Charlotte Laubard, Curator [reacting on Nuit Blanche’s virals]
“It’s not about aesthetics, it’s about ethics. A sensibility, but also the sense of responsibility tackling the core problematic of how to communicate.”
– Jack Self, Architect & Publisher
It is possible to design and develop digital technologies and practices not aligned with hegemonic and neocolonialist models.
– Oulimate Gueye, Curator & Writer
"His veins are coursing with tiger blood."
– Jon Rafman, Artist
"How to communicate visually: be very but not only funny, adopt things you really like and change it, combine small gestures to one grand story line."
– Joost Bottema, Designer, about Manuel Bürger
Contact our studios in Berlin / Paris / Valencia
via
E-Mail
Short Bio, Manuel Bürger:
- Education: 1. Master of Arts in European Media, University of Portsmouth, UK. 2.German Diploma in Communication Design, Merz Akademie, Stuttgart
- Teaching/ Lectures: HfG Karlsruhe / Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle / ETH Zürich / Merz Akademie Stuttgart / UdK Berlin / Bauhaus Weimar / HGK Basel / University of Cincinnati / Libros Mutantes Madrid (among others)
- Work Experience:
- Sagmeister Inc., NY, 2010
- Karlssonwilker Inc., NY, 2006
- Hort, Frankfurt, 2005
- Clients:
transmediale Berlin, Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel, Kampnagel Theater Hamburg, Interkultur Ruhr, Schauspielhaus Bochum, Ruhrtriennale, arte tv, Aarhus University, Merz Akademie Stuttgart, ETH Zürich, Chaumont Design Festival, Galerie Conradi, raumlabor Berlin, Dummy Magazin, De-Bug, Lodown, Biest Berlin, New Eelam, b+, station+, Arts Of The Working Class, Open Ground Club, International Dance Festival Munich
About the Logo from 2007:
All rights reserved
by Manuel Bürger, 2025
Website-Coding by
Dragan Espenschied