Christiaan Erlank Van Der Westhuizen

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Lecturer in graphic design, specialising in multimedia and web design. Typography is his passion. He was appointed in February 2007 in the School of Communication Studies after teaching graphic design for 3 years at Vega, the Brand Communications School in Johannesburg. During his last year at this institution he was head of the department of multimedia. Before joining the academia, he worked in the industry for 4 years where he designed multimedia projects for clients such as Unisa, Daimler Chrystler and Namibian Breweries. Mr Van der Westhuizen has also produced music videos for, among others, Running With Scissors and Perez. Group exhibitions include The NSA Gallery in Durban and Aardklop National Arts Festival in Potchefstroom.

PROJECT

Title About February
Medium Paperback novel printed on acid-free archival paper
Dimensions 130 mm wide, 217 mm high, 138 pages
Edition Unique
Price -

After quite a traumatic accident where I broke my jaw in February of 2009, I realised a few things that made me aware of my surroundings and my interactions with people around me: my family, friends, career and ultimately my new-found love life.
As a lecturer, verbal communication is the main source of income-generating activity for me, and this made the situation slightly more sensitive as the possibility of my speech being affected by the broken jaw could have bought a staggering end to a very successful teaching career.
At the same time my personal situation changed as my father had to undergo a serious triple heart bypass, and his health was put in the balance and mercy of other peoples’ hands.
I found this period to be one of the most confusing and challenging experiences that I had to deal with. Especially since I’m usually very calculated and logical about my day-to-day work and design processes, this period contradicted this tendency in myself in so many ways, and posed so many new questions that I decided to try and capture this confusion in a graphic design paperback novel.
For the first time I purposefully blocked my rational and logical approach to design and tried to depict the confused state of mind I experienced during the month of February 2009 that inevitably led to an entirely changed lifestyle and approach to critical design thinking.
The novel is as confusing as the momentous year 2009 was for me.
Be advised, strong language use occurs in the novel. Not for under 16s.