Cutting, printing and working with spaghetti: Ine Meganck blends analogous design techniques with the digital

Ine Meganck, a graphic designer based in Ghent, says that her path into the medium was one that made perfect sense. She grew up in Pollare, a small village between Ghent and Brussels, and went on to study graphic design at LUCA School of arts. “Amazing years”, she says, recalling her enjoyable times spent as a student. “My surroundings, the students and the assignments were very inspiring. It was also in art school that I met my husband, Valentijn Goethals.”

After this, the two of them went on to study for a master’s at Werkplaats Typography in Arnhem, The Netherlands, and Ine experienced a sense of self-doubt; she thought she was too young to be there. “Although it was probably the most inspiring time of my life, thanks to my fellow students and the reachers of the programme,” she continues to tell It’s Nice That, “I learned to put more focus on my self-initiated projects instead of only doing commissions.” This includes the launch of Phantom Radio with Velentijn, a radio station distributing sound-related projects for artists and students. Not to mention collaborating with Karel Martens on an issue for Oase magazine. “I didn’t always want to become a graphic designer,” she says, surprisingly, even though she knew she wanted to work within the field of arts. Ine’s parents weren’t keen on her studying the subject, especially theatre, which Ine thought she wanted to pursue at the time. They were, however, fine with her opting for design: “I never felt any regrets on those choices.”

And rightfully so, considering the fact that not only does Ine now teach at the Graphic Design programme at Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, she also continues her work with Phantom Radio, and takes on on various design projects and and commissions. This includes working on a logo for Gaar, magazine design for RektoVerso, and publication design for NewSkin/Levitations with Chloé D’hauwe, and typeface development for the poster design of Hi Baubo, also created alongside Chloé. Whatever the brief, Ine always makes sure to develop a concept and aesthetic from the content given to her, “and never the other way around,” she adds, cementing the fact that her portfolio “only exists” because of the various commissions she’s been given. All of which are within the cultural field, and she’s never had any commercial clients. “Although my clients are a complete mix, I love working with people from my generation; our practices can, in those conditions, grow and develop together.”

When getting started on a concept, Ine works predominantly with InDesign – even though she’s never properly learnt how to use it. Self-taught, she explains how this is the reason for a few of her “strange techniques” and “personal inefficient” methods of using the program. “But I’m able to realise my ideas,” she reassures. Oftentimes she’ll work analogous before scanning and bringing it into the digital sphere – a technique evident within the logo design for Gaar, whereby Chloé and herself played with boiled spaghetti until they settled on the shapes. “Then we scanned the spaghetti and used them to create the logo,” she says. “But I’m very perfectionist if it comes down to font sizes, leadings and the layout on the page. So I often spend days with printing, cutting, adjusting and repeating the cycle again and again – until it feels right.”

Having fun is a key factor that drives most of Ine’s (and Chloé’s) work. They collaborate regularly, and in doing so impart a lot of humour on any given project. Jokes and laughter come in abundance, but rest assured that they will never miss a deadline. It’s precisely these humorous moments that ignites creativity in the two of them, which can be seen in a recent show at Ravisius Textor in Nevers, France, where they ended up designing a jacket that fits them both (at the same time), with pockets big enough to fit all their publications.

Another project was the publication design for New Skin/Levitations, made together with Chloé for performance artist Hannah De Meyer. The idea for the design came directly from the performer, who’d asked them to collect her texts for her two performances (titled New Skin and Levitations) into one concrete publication. As such, it became a book with two covers and two reading directions, featuring gentle nods to the stage lighting, a smoke machine, as well as an inverted page to reference the “moments the light went out”. Meanwhile, holes were created in the text to add in extra information, and pictures were added by artist Dries Segers.

What’s more is that Ine designed the new issue of Rekto Verso, a quarterly Belgian magazine focusing on culture and criticism, launching this month. This year, Ine became the new graphic designer, and is excited by the prospect of going deep into a specific project for the next few years. The issue beholds many wonderful details and the design takes inspiration from the magazine’s name, meaning “the two sides of the paper,” says Ine, whereby the logo was created by printing, cutting, folding, curling the letter, then re-scanning. This signifies entirely what we love about Ine’s work – that being an apt blend of both digital and analogous techniques that all in all create a creative, utterly unique and experimental contribution to the world of design.