Manu Burghart (*1968)
The Austrian illustrator and art director Manu Burghart (born 1968) has lived in Cologne since 1999. A trained artist, she had previously worked as a designer for Calvin Klein in New York. Fashion still provides the main focus for the versatile designer who supports international fashion labels in their search for a contemporary identity with a body of design work stretching from logos and catalogues to textiles and accessories. Rather than being a crime, ornament is, for Manu Burghart, an ideal means of emphasising connections and differences, rules and variations, conformity and individuality. Patterns and silhouettes, contours and surfaces provide the elements of an elegant visual world which, for all its perfection, remains constantly open to directness and disruption. Her illustrations for the business magazine brand eins act as visual summaries of entire essays which are not shy to cast light on the negative. The same is true of Manu Burghart’s work in the area of culture which includes the graphic content for “Liebe Deine Stadt”, a book about the forgotten post-war modern buildings of Cologne and the collage-like design of a float for the Carnival Monday parade which she used as a means of protesting against deep cuts in local cultural funding.