For those of us in the gear industry, the concept of gear design is all about involutes, ratios and diameters.

Alexander Kirberg has a different vision of gear design, and his creativity brought him to the forefront of Sigma Pool’s competition to show gears in a different light. With the contest, Sigma Pool hoped to acquire a visually unique piece to display artwork that would energize visitors at their EMO booth.

Kirberg was a photography student at Fachhochschule Dortmund and was the winner among the 14 participants from his class selected to create new and artistic ways of seeing gears.

The then 27-year-old student used mechanical processing to dramatize his black-and-white photography to the point where it resembled classical painting. Kirberg hoped viewers could optically experience the power of gearing.

“My pictures orientate themselves to the original colors of the company in order to later achieve presentation and correlation. Gear cutting—thematically seen—results from the combined or overlapped arrangement of photography, technical drawing and corporate design,” he explains.

Unlike the design students vying for the top spot on “Project Runway,” the winners of the Sigma Pool contest didn’t get a chance to sell their line at Macy’s. But he did find himself 2000 DM richer and his work exposed to EMO’s audience of thousands of the most discerning gear designers anywhere.