This year’s Open Daycampaign revolves around two key symbols: the starfish, representing the preparatory and bachelor programmes, and the star, symbolising the master’s programmes. The Open Day takes place on 29 November, 10.00-16.00.
Starting a new study, perhaps even in another country, is exciting. As a new student, you are beginning a new chapter in life, one that requires strength, perseverance, and the confidence to find your own way. That is why the starfish is the central symbol for the bachelor posters: it represents resilience and the ability to navigate through life’s challenges, even when the waves get rough.
As a master’s student, you may already have a clearer sense of what you want in life, but you’re seeking more exploration and a deeper understanding of your practice and skills. Stars are therefore the key element of the master’s programmes. In ancient times, people used stars for guidance and navigation, making them a symbol of direction, discovery, and finding one’s path in life.
For the 2025 Open Day campaign, we designed a unique poster for each study programme. In every poster, the starfish transforms to reflect the essence of that specific field. Each design is paired with a short text that explains the imagery and how it connects to the programme. Find the texts displayed below the images.
Campaign by Mahtab Zamanifar & Evita Bruin
1. Preparatory Year
You wouldn’t recognize a starfish from its larvae1, they are extremely tiny and look nothing like a star. By drifting with ocean currents and constantly changing shape, the larvae ensure the survival of their species and eventually grow into full-fledged starfish. This illustrates the Preparatory Year: within one academic year, you will explore the workshops and all the study programmes at KABK, before choosing your own direction and emerging as a designer or artist who knows what truly fits you.
2. Orientation Course
A starfish can take many different forms and shapes. They can be thick or thin, with skin that is either smooth or textured. During the Orientation Course, you will explore the different bachelor’s programmes at the KABK and discover the techniques and tools that help you shape your own work. Like a starfish with five arms, and countless tiny fingers, you will reach out in different directions to find out whether an art study is the right path for you.
3. School for Young Talent
This is a brittle star, also known as a serpent star, named after its snake-like arms. A brittle star’s limbs break off easily, but they can also grow back. These flexible, serpentine arms allow it to move swiftly across the seabed, faster than ordinary starfish. Just like the brittle star, you will learn to be flexible, resilient, and curious in your creative process. As a pupil at the School of Young Talent, you will experiment with different materials and techniques, creating works that reflect your own observations and fascinations.
1. ArtScience Interfaculty (Bachelor)
The underside of the starfish is covered with hundreds of tube feet, which it uses for walking around. The bulb at the top of the tube foot is called the ampulla. Both the ampulla and the tube feet are all connected to the water vascular system1. This system plays a vital role in the movement of starfish. This mirrors the essence of the ArtScience programme: exploring movement, making connections, and inventing new forms of art.
2. Bachelor Graphic Design
By selecting and showing just one part of a booklet or a sketchbook that still must be created, one can give a glimpse into the creative mind. That is what happening in this poster. These images are together a little collage of different sketches of a starfish, cut out of a book. The starfish takes different shapes, just like design can do. It could be the start of a research at the Graphic Design department.
3. Bachelor Interior Architecture & Furniture Design
A starfish comes in many shapes and structures, and it is incredibly resilient. When it loses a limb, it simply grows a new one. At the Interior Architecture and Furniture Design department, you will also learn resilience: working with different materials and structures and adapting to challenges. Here, architecture and design are tools to shape environments that respond not only to human needs, but also to those of other species, just like the starfish.
4. Bachelor Interactive/Media/Design
These two snapshots are from a study into new species of starfish. The study reveals the previously unrecognized new species which is commonly distributed off the Pacific coast of Japan. For the first time, a special grinding technique was used to visualise complex internal features. At the Interactive / Media / Design department, new technology cannot be missed. You will learn to analyse critically and creatively, and you will develop new kinds of interactive design solutions to meet the challenges of the future.
5. Bachelor Photography
Just like anything else, a starfish can be photographed from different angles (of approach). The image on the left shows its front, the one below its back, or is it the other way around? And where are a starfish’s eyes actually located? The Photography programme is about exploring such questions: creating and interpreting images, and learning how to communicate them to the world. You will define your specific interests and solidify your photographic voice.
6. Bachelor Textile & Fashion
Just like in textile and fashion, the structure of a starfish is an important feature. The middle layer of the skin consists of honeycomb-like structures1 composed of calcite microcrystals arranged in a lattice. This structure together with the natural elegance of the starfish could be seen as a form of self-expression through appearance. At the same time, we can no longer keep up appearances. The Textile and Fashion department educates a new generation of critical designers who are aware of urgent issues such as climate change.
7. Bachelor Fine Arts
Artistic research and experimentation are at the heart of an artwork created in the Fine Arts department. The outcome may take many forms: a painting or drawing, but also a performance, installation, or something entirely new. The Fine Arts programme introduces you to a wide range of techniques and technologies, giving you the tools and freedom to create your own artistic language and to choose how you want to tell your story.
1. Master Non Linear Narrative
With the telescope invented in about 1600, stars were finally brought into view. In 1901, the invention of a 100-inch telescope added nearly 100.000.000 stars, some of them lying beyond the boundary of the universe as at that present known. There were also smaller telescopes which were being used by specialists from al kinds of fields, such as philosophers. The universe was hence researched through practice and from different perspectives; this is also at the core of the Master Non Linear Narrative programme. Just like in astronomy, you are challenged to put all the bits and pieces together and explore new ways of storytelling, and you will never know where it ends.
2. ArtScience Interfaculty (Master)
Humans have a long fascination for the sun’s magnetic field and starspots. The Sun is made of hot plasma that is constantly in motion, generating strong magnetic fields. Sometimes, these magnetic fields become tangled due to the plasma’s movement, which slows the upward flow of hot gases in certain areas of the Sun’s surface. As a result, eruptions take place. This mirrors the essence of the ArtScience programme: exploring movement, making connections, and inventing new forms of art.
3. Master Artistic Research
Artistic research into mythology involves both the study of myths through art (for example, the depiction of myths in painting) and the use of the artistic process itself as a way of exploring mythological themes. This can range from analysing mythological symbolism in classical works, such as The Pleiades, to creating new artworks inspired by ancient myths and legends to shed light on contemporary issues. This illustrates the Artistic Research programme; it offers support for research-based creative enquiry. It is designed for artists who want to explore how artistic-intellectual production can enrich their response to our complex present.
4. Master Interior Architecture (INSIDE)
Space, in its broadest sense, lies at the heart of the Master Interior Architecture programme. Time and activity can define a space, yet not everyone experiences it the same way. In this master’s, the world itself is understood as an interior. Gradually, this perspective expands beyond the physical interior, proving relevant in diverse places where people live, meet, and form communities. Which can be even the Milky-Way with all its stars.
5. Master Photography and Society
Halley’s Comet is the only known short-period comet that can consistently be seen with the naked eye from Earth, reappearing roughly every 72 to 80 years. Because of its rarity, it can only occasionally be documented. Such documentation often becomes material for research and is reimagined in other media, for instance, its appearance as a star-like symbol in the Bayeux Tapestry. At the Photography & Society master, you will learn to work in a similar way: moving from concept to creation, and presenting your work in innovative and often unconventional forms, looking for impact.
6. Master Industrial Design
When two stars are close to one another and far enough from external influences, they form their own system. Bound together by the force of mutual gravitation, they create what is known as a double star with a binary system. In a similar way, the Master Industrial Design programme is built on the belief that design, too, exists within systems bound by conventions, yet capable of transformation. Rather than limiting itself to consumer goods, aesthetics, or usability, the programme explores what industrial design can become when it crosses its traditional boundaries.
7. Master Type and Media
Kepler’s problem in classical mechanics describes how two bodies move under a central force, such as gravity or electrostatic attraction. This motion gives rise to the elegant orbital patterns of the stars. In a similar way, the design of typography is guided by balance, rhythm, and proportion. Contrast, rhythm, proportion, and weight serve as the defining forces. Combined with a deep knowledge of type history, font technology, technology, and tool development, these principles form the foundation of the Type and Media master. A place where new stars are created in the form of new typefaces.
