If Clemens Kogler could sum up his work in a manifesto it would be, succinctly, “That Thing I Do.” It doesn’t get any more complex and it doesn’t need to be. For the Linz, Austria native, the best route to expressing the all-encompassing is the simplest.

That tendency toward the KISS principle by no means indicates that the University of Art and Industrial Design Linz student cuts narrative corners. On the contrary, Kogler’s interest in creating “graphical microcosms” has seen him tackle the weightiest of issues, like endeavoring to answer all of life’s questions with a PowerPoint presentation.

The result, “Le Grand Content”, uses infographics, charts and diagrams to form a grand “association-chain-massacre” that somehow finds a way to chart a hamster’s relation to death and the Tooth Fairy as the first point of contact with religious doubt.

“The single diagrams are mostly from or inspired by [freelance copywriter] Jessica Hagy’s website thisisindexed.com,” explains Kogler. “The idea to construct an all-knowing PowerPoint-like presentation was inspired by one of my first jobs for a big German industrial company. They were quite keen on using diagrams in their presentations. They hired me to animate some of their presentations and with time I got the impression that people tend to give animated diagrams some sort of authority.”

Part of Kogler’s approach is to work with just a single image and use camera moves to create motion. So with “Le Grand Content”, the diagram grows from scene to scene, but if you were somehow to zoom out, says Kogler, you would see one large diagram. Sort of like if there was just one eye in a frame, you’d know that if you were able to zoom out, you’d see an entire face.

Up next for Kogler is a short about his childhood growing up in the ’80s, a subject that congeals nicely with his self-described “retro, computer graphics aesthetic that tries to find the human touch”. But when he turns his eye toward the future, Kogler sees graphic design also moving more toward the simpler side of things.

“I see graphical trends only in [terms of] bonding with social trends,” he says. “I see a trend to a more eco-friendly, natural lifestyle and a tendency towards more individualist, self-made businesses. [I see] a new digital lifestyle where everybody can do with his single computer what once required a whole organization.” Q

> The artist on the art
“This kept me busy the weekend after this interview.”

www.clemenskogler.net