Moving Types · Exhibition and app
An exhibition on a century of animated type at the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz: around 300 glowing cubes, each holding a film that only started on the iPad in your hands.
Media lounge, Mainz 2011 · Photo: Birgitta Loehr
01 / Starting point
Ralf Dringenberg and Anja Stöffler had spent years building an archive of animated type, from early film titles to TV idents and music videos, and had interviewed the designers behind them. For ‘Mainz – City of Science 2011’ the archive was to become an exhibition at the Gutenberg-Museum. There was a single room for it.
When our study project began in the summer of 2011, it was settled that the exhibition would happen, but not what it would look like. Six student groups from HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd and Hochschule Mainz worked that out in one semester, with the opening set for October.
I was in my fourth semester and spokesperson of the interaction design group. We were responsible for the technology, the visitor scenarios and the information architecture. With four fellow students I designed the concept and the screens of the iPad app; the studio metaminded developed it. I stayed with the project long after the semester. Its latest chapter is an app I rebuilt myself in 2026.
Six groups, one room
Group tasks as defined at the kick-off in March 2011.
02 / Cube field
Gutenberg’s letters could be set in any order. The exhibition treated films the same way: around 300 small white cubes hung on tensioned wires, each printed with a QR code. Nothing played on the walls. Visitors scanned a cube with a borrowed iPad, and the film started in their hands.
Around 300 cubes, three heights
Categories Art & Experimental · Commercials · Corporate Motion · Film titles · Music videos · Information graphics · plus Kids
Key insight
The cube field was the index, the iPad the projector. A code on an object made each film easy to find without a single screen on the wall.
Interior architecture students from Hochschule Mainz designed and built the curved, modular frame. Interviews with designers ran on screens along the back wall.
03 / Visitor journey
We designed the visit as one thread, from the desk by the entrance to a collection at home. Each step below is footage from the documentary film we shot in Mainz in 2012.
Visitors borrowed an iPad at the desk by the entrance, free of charge. The cube field glowed right behind it.
From our documentary film, Mainz 2012. · Original material
Documentary film, 2012
Three and a half minutes on how the exhibition worked, by Onofrio Di Franco, Adrian Jehle, Marcel Müller and me.
04 / App
Between April and July 2011 we presented four concept rounds to the curators, the other groups and metaminded. Two decisions shaped everything that followed.
Design decision
The same choice later made the catalogue possible.
Design decision
Films were stored on the iPads, so nothing had to load in the room. After 30 seconds without use, the app went to sleep and showed how to start again.
Code to film, film to code
Scan mode and library of the iPad app, 2011. Thumbnails show works from the exhibition. · Original material
05 / Catalogue
The same code works on paper. The catalogue consists almost entirely of QR codes, each illustrated in the style of its film. Scanned with the catalogue app, about 80 films play on the phone.
Five of the illustrated codes. Each one still opens its film. · Original material
I was one of seven students who designed the catalogue; the codes themselves were shared out among many more. In its press text, red dot called it one of the first catalogues with a ‘built-in cinema’.
The codes also connected the room with the web. I was part of the team that conceived, designed and built the exhibition website, where each personal QR code opened a visitor’s collection.
06 / Fifteen years
Planned for six months in Mainz, the exhibition stayed almost a year and then travelled. I stayed with it beyond the study project.
One exhibition, five venues, four app generations
Venues
Awards
App
My part
My part
Between venues I planned, organised and set up the exhibition with Ralf Dringenberg and Anja Stöffler.
In 2014 I redesigned the iPad app for iOS 7: the same structure, with flat controls and without the textures. metaminded built it from my screens, and I checked their builds against them with correction lists down to the pixel.
Outside · Media façade
In Mainz, both venues in Schwäbisch Gmünd and Dortmund, an LED façade carried the exhibition into the street. In Mainz, passers-by could send a text message and watch it run across the bridge between the museum buildings. It kept running for more than a decade. I developed the Mainz façade with Luise Pescheck and Adrian Abele and adapted the later ones with Ralf Dringenberg and Anja Stöffler. That story gets a case study of its own →
Four generations of one app
App 3.0 · 2025–2026
In October 2025 I started rebuilding the app from scratch, design and code, for the z zg. A month later, the previous version disappeared from the App Store, and the catalogues on people’s shelves went quiet.
App 3.0 is a native app for iPhone and iPad that also runs on Macs with Apple silicon, an Android version and a web app. Its new scanner is tuned to the illustrated, sometimes inverted codes in the catalogue. Since 20 September 2026 it turns the catalogue into a cinema again: more than 80 works, free, without an account, ads or tracking.
Get App 3.0
App 3.0 on iPhone: scanner and information. · Actual interface
One app, three platforms
A native SwiftUI app with onboarding, scanner, player and an introduction to the archive. It also runs on Macs with Apple silicon.
The same features in Jetpack Compose, with the design adapted to Material Design 3.
A web app that runs in the browser without installation, so the catalogue no longer depends on a store.
Reads only QR codes and is tuned to the catalogue’s illustrated codes, including the inverted ones.
Key insight
The printed code was the durable part. It outlived two apps; the interface around it has to be rebuilt whenever the platforms move on.
07 / What remains
Outcome
Gutenberg-Museum Mainz, Galerie im Prediger and Alte Post in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Dortmunder U and ACHT Frankfurt. In Schwäbisch Gmünd alone, more than 6,000 visitors in 2012, a record for the gallery.
red dot design award 2012, Designpreis Rheinland-Pfalz 2012 for communication in space, iF communication design award 2013; nominated for the German Design Award 2014.
In the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac, on Google Play and as a web app: moving-types.de/app ↗
How the visit worked, in English on Vimeo ↗.
Reflection
The strongest decision was the plainest: a visible code that any camera can read. It made the cube field, the catalogue and, fifteen years later, App 3.0 possible.
What I would do differently: plan the app’s upkeep from the start. Once an exhibition closed, nobody was responsible for the app, and twice it was lost when iOS moved on. And I would evaluate how the system was used. We never analysed which films were scanned or how many stickers were opened at home, so the visitor journey was never tested against real use.
An open question I still carry: how do you keep an interactive piece alive longer than the platform it runs on?
Next project
Text messages drifted across a museum as points of light and became words in one place — an LED façade that ran for more than a decade.