For the second year in a row, we were the designers and art directors of the yearly Graduation Show of Design Academy Eindhoven. Both of us enjoyed our studies here as well, so we know the drill.

We know that the Graduation Show is both a challenging and exciting project to work on. As always, our aim is to create an exhibition in which every individual and their accompanying work is presented to the public in the best way possible. We worked with 181 projects in the 9000m2 Campina factory. Quantity, both of the space and projects, were thus both our friend and enemy during this process.

After last year’s show, we knew we had two things we wanted to change.

The first one was to come up with a way to make the exhibition more accessible and manageable. We decided to do so through a curatorial set up of the exhibition. This means that the projects were no longer categorised by their department but by ‘new worlds’ and ‘characters’ created by the curatorial team.

Secondly, we wanted to focus even more on material circularity. The result is that this year we covered the exhibition displays with particleboard. This choice might seem visually radical, but with the knowledge that particleboard is the only sheet material that is 100% continuously recyclable, we knew it was the right and thus only choice for this exhibition. So after last year’s introduction of ‘the angled’ platform it is another exciting, but well considered and conscious design choice.

That said, we look back at another year of the beautiful and exhilarating madness called the Graduation Show.