Making of Slanted Magazine #47—Digital Tools

Coming Soon 🚀 Slanted Magazine #47—Digital Tools is in production, and it’s set to explore the systems, scripts, and software shaping today’s creative landscape!

This issue dives deep into the tools behind contemporary design—revealing how digital instruments influence not only what we create, but how we think, experiment, and communicate. From open-source platforms and custom-built scripts to essential everyday utilities, Digital Tools showcases the evolving ecosystem that continuously expands creative possibilities and challenges established workflows.

Spanning disciplines such as graphic and type design, illustration, 3D, web, generative design, and creative coding, the issue brings together a wide range of voices from across the global creative community. Through in-depth interviews and thought-provoking essays, designers, artists, and developers share how digital tools shape their aesthetics, authorship, and imagination—offering personal insights into processes that are often invisible yet fundamental.

In the making of this issue, materiality plays a key role: carefully selected papers create a tactile counterpoint to the digital themes explored throughout. Printed in spot colors (HKS 243N, HKS 13N, Pantone 802N) by Stober Medien, the magazine uses uncoated premium ZETA diamant extra glatt 120 g/m² and the new semi transparent IBO TWO 80 g/m² by Reflex Paper. Cover printing and finishing by Gallery Print. Bound as a Swiss brochure with flaps and open thread stitching by Buchbinderei Spinner, it embraces both structure and openness—mirroring the hybrid nature of contemporary design workflows.

Get ready for an inspiring exploration of workflows, experimentation, and the future of creative technology. Whether you’re a seasoned designer or just starting out, Slanted Magazine #47—Digital Tools invites you to rethink your process and discover new ways of making.

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Slanted Magazine #47—Digital Tools

Publisher: Slanted Publishers
Editors: Slanted Publishers, Jacob Tessmann
Design: Slanted Publishers
Release: May 2026
Format: 16 × 24 cm
Volume: 224 pages
Language: English
Printing: Cover and finishing details were printed by Gallery Print, Offset printing full color with spot colors by Stober Medien,
Paper: EFALIN 108 hochweiß feinleinen 280 g/m² (Cover), ZETA diamant extra glatt 120 g/m² and IBO TWO 80 g/m² by Reflex Paper
Workmanship: Swiss brochure with flaps, open thread stitching by Buchbinderei Spinner
ISBN: 978-3-948440-96-1
ISSN: 1867-6510
Price: €24.– (DE)

Preorder your copy of Slanted Magazine #47—Digital Tools here.

15 Years of Beyond Tellerrand in Düsseldorf

The Düsseldorf edition of beyond tellerrand 2026 positions itself where the event has been rooted for over 15 years: between design and technology, analogue craft and digital presence. A program that doesn’t separate disciplines, but deliberately brings them together.

A majority of the line-up has already been announced, including book designer Chip Kidd, film and prop designer Annie Atkins, interface designer Oliver Reichenstein, and Bramus Van Damme from Google’s Chrome team. The line-up is further complemented by voices such as type designer Kimya Gandhi, Signalnoise founder James White, web audio pioneer André Michelle, software designer Lauren Celenza, and politically engaged designer James Victore.

The spectrum ranges from editorial design and film-related work to digital product development, as well as code, sound, and cultural discourse.

With much of the program already confirmed, it becomes clear that beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 2026 is less a traditional design or tech event, and more a platform for diverse perspectives and disciplines—situated somewhere between book, film, and digital space.

More information and tickets are available here.

When?
April 27–28, 2026

Where?
Here you can find the different event locations
in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Visual Voices for Change

Visual Voices for Change—Global Typographic Posters is an international publication exploring how typography can become a powerful tool for positive change, empathy, and social reflection. Conceived as the fourth annual volume of the Fight for Kindness campaign, the book brings together a selection of more than 600 typographic posters created by designers from all continents and exhibited in more than 20 exhibitions worldwide to celebrate World Kindness Day: a powerful collective statement on kindness as a universal value. Structured as a dialogue among various protagonists in the creative industry, Visual Voices for Change brings together contributions from designers, art directors, educators, and cultural producers who view visual culture as an instrument of social engagement.

This year’s edition is also supported by a distinguished lineup of international guest artists who contributed exclusive original posters. With a foreword by Steven Heller and endorsements from renowned figures, magazines, awards, creative events, and institutions in the global visual culture scene, the book documents the evolution of the international typographic campaign Fight for Kindness, launched in 2022. Rather than presenting design as a neutral discipline, the book argues that every visual decision carries meaning and consequence. It invites readers to reconsider the role of the designer in today’s interconnected and media-saturated world.

“Typography isn’t just how we read words, it’s how we feel them. On a subconscious level, letterforms can add a powerful layer of expressiveness to the textual meaning of a message; they can create an empathetic connection, elevate values, and—why not?—trigger positive reactions to foster positive change.”
Debora Manetti, Program Director at TypeCampus and Co-founder of Zetafonts

Visual Voices for Change—Global Typographic Posters

Project: TypeCampus & Zetafonts, Debora Manetti and Shrishti Vajpai
Sponsor: Zetafonts Foundry
Creative Direction: Shrishti Vajpai
Book Design: Shrishti Vajpai, Alina Vytiaz, Sofia Bandini
Texts: Steven Heller, Debora Manetti, Pann Lim, Duy Nguyen, Birgit Palma, Ibrahim Zaki, Mat Voyce, David Oku, Vanessa Zúñiga Tinizaray
Release: February 2026

Format: 17.5 × 23 cm
Volume: 448 pages
Language: English
Bookbinding: Paperback with flaps
ISBN: 978-88-98030-93-4
Price: €35.– (DE)

A large preview is available for download at this link.
Buy here

ENERGY ENGAGEMENT

ENERGY ENGAGEMENT visualizes the moment a particle field intervenes in the flow of energy. The circular motif repeats consistently throughout the piece — appearing in type, texture, and form — as a visual constant that holds the turbulent surface together.

CURING(Original.ver)

CURING (Original ver.) is a commissioned poster for Gu Nahye’s solo exhibition. The artist works with illuminated hoses, so I pushed the poster’s exposure high — letting the surface wash out and glow, mimicking the way light bleeds from the material itself.

CURING(Meta.ver)

CURING (Meta ver.) is a meta-version poster repurposed from a client work. The original meaning of “curing” referred to hardening — a material process — but I reinterpreted it as healing. The poster sits between those two readings: something solidifying and something recovering, never fully one or the other.

DIGIWEB

DIGIWEB is a piece driven by my nostalgia for the Windows 95 era. I used visual elements from that operating system — system warnings, cursor icons, start buttons — but the real focus is less on the interface itself and more on the childhood memories tied to that time. Sometimes memories flashback.

EARTHLAND (Flat ver.)

EARTHLAND (Flat ver.) is about the things that surround us — everyday objects, nature, people — flattened onto a single plane as if everything exists at the same distance. Nothing is background; nothing is foreground. It all just coexists, layered and overlapping, the way life actually feels when you stop sorting it.

Cute Narcissism

Cute Narcissism is a piece about the small, harmless vanity of selfhood — the kind where you genuinely believe you might be sunshine. It explores the cute narcissistic streak we all carry but rarely admit to, like wanting to be called something other than your name. Sometimes I want to be an object. Sometimes a fruit. Mostly a tomato. “Dear. I am like sunshine. Medically proved.”

APOCRYPHAL2

APOCRYPHAL started with the title first. I sat with the word and asked what would fit it best — and landed on collecting photos from absurd, unbelievable news stories, redrawing them by hand. The title became a kind of wish: that these stories might be false, that they could be apocryphal after all.

FUTURE OF SILENCE

FUTURE OF SILENCE is a poster that addresses the disappearance of minority languages. By obscuring an already-made poster beneath layers of noise, I tried to express language fading away — and the small, floating title fragments scattered across the surface act as residues of those languages, still drifting but barely holding on.

MIRI PATCH(Ongoing Work)

MIRI PATCH is an ongoing work that takes source material from Miricanvas — Korea’s own Canva, a modern vernacular design factory — and reweaves it by hand. Templates, stock phrases, and promotional fragments are stitched together through a craft-based process, stripped from their original context and patched into new compositions. The interesting moments emerge when sentences that once meant something entirely different begin to generate unexpected meaning through recontextualization.

BONE GRID(Type.ver)

In this ongoing project, I use organic, taut lines as the grid itself — not drawn on a grid, but becoming one. The lines pull and release across the surface, creating zones of visual tension, condensation, and expansion. Text settles where gravity allows it; type drifts where the structure loosens. Every curve holds weight like a tendon under skin.

Youth Lab

Youth Lab is a poster for a startup open call. To express the outward energy and dynamism of young entrepreneurs, I visualized radiating waves through colorful, layered lines — each syllable pulses outward like a signal. At the bottom, running figures built from the same rippling lines carry that momentum forward, turning the whole poster into a single expanding gesture.

Soo Yoo Sangwhal

Soo Yoo Sangwhal is a poster for an apartment residents’ welcome party. I found the joints of mechanical parts visually interesting and used them as a graphic symbol — the way pieces connect, hinge, and hold together felt like a fitting metaphor for people forming a new community. The shapes scatter across the poster like neighbors finding their place, linked by shared structure but each one distinct.

OCHAESHINBO

OCHAESHINBO is an imaginary branding for a traditional Korean medicine brand, reimagined for a younger audience. The identity system — packaging, stationery, cards — layers vernacular Korean typography with lo-fi textures and halftone patterns, treating herbal medicine aesthetics not as heritage to preserve but as raw material to pull apart and reassemble. The goal was to broaden the visual experiment: what happens when tradition stops looking traditional?

DOTSTORM

DOTSTORM is made of four separate textures, each built from different glitch particles — scanning artifacts, pixel bleeds, signal noise. Every fragment transmits its own feel, but when combined into a single poster, they create a sense of movement within a still image. The surface shifts depending on where you look; nothing stays fixed. It breathes between signal and void.

SHAPE OF LOVE

SHAPE OF LOVE is an artifact engraved in stone, built from various symbols. I wanted to create something that carries an ancient feel — like a relic dug out of somewhere, not designed but found. The symbols are inspired by African motifs, layered and carved into the surface as if they’ve always been there. “Emotion leaves a trace even when its shape is gone.”

45 Symbols—Clay to Code

With 45 Symbols—Clay to Code, Slanted Publishers presents a publication that brings together artists and designers from around the world who explore visual language as a tool for inquiry. Drawing inspiration from the still-undeciphered, 3,700-year-old Phaistos Disc, the book reflects on how meaning is constructed, disrupted, and reimagined across time, cultures, and media. Through personal narratives and planetary perspectives, 45 Symbols—Clay to Code reveals how distinctive visual grammars emerge—shaped by experimentation, critical thinking, and bold storytelling. The publication highlights a diverse range of approaches that challenge established systems of communication while opening up new spaces for interpretation.

Read more about the book here.

To celebrate the release, we invite you to join an Across–Time Zone Global Book Launch—a distributed virtual event spanning three live sessions. Each session brings together contributing artists and designers in a dynamic format, featuring short presentations followed by moderated conversations and Q&A.

Participation is free and open to all with prior registration.

Session I
Tuesday, April 14 (45 min)
NYC: 11:00 · Berlin: 17:00 · Johannesburg: 18:00 · Bogotá: 11:00 · Taipei: 23:00
Program:
Clay to Code — Introduction I
Aslin (Yu-Heng) Lin — LGBTQIA+ in Taiwan: Linguistic Architecture of Inclusion
Raafia Jessa — /’lo.kwi:/ (loqui): The Synthesis of Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and Latin
→ Registration here

Session II
Thursday, April 16 (45 min)
NYC: 14:00 · Berlin: 20:00 · São Paulo: 16:00 · Mexico City: 13:00 · Nairobi: 22:00
Program:
Clay to Code — Introduction II
Lily Taggart — Dialectic Dancescape: Choreographic Notations for Central Park
Ricardo Vega — Chile Stamp: Marking the Land
Angelina Foos — Slavic Spirits Reimagined
→ Registration here

Session III
Saturday, April 18 (45 min)
NYC: 05:00 · Berlin: 11:00 · Taipei: 18:00 · Kyoto: 19:00 · Sydney: 20:00
Program:
Clay to Code — Introduction III
Farida Foda — Glitched: Digital Objects and the Extinction of Imperfection
Kiara dos Reis — St-uh-teh-rrr: A Visual Lexicon of Voice
Tracy Bassil — Urbic: Urban Studies as Arabic Script and Streets
→ Registration here

Meet the book and us in person
Berlin — A-Z Gallery, CounterSession #7 · April 23, 7pm
San Francisco — ATypI · May 28
Vienna — Design Forum · July 16–30

Find out more information about the events here.

Graphic Poster at DDP Open Curating vol. 34: The Shape of Letters in Sign Languages

The Shape of Letters in Sign Languages is an exhibition about a multilingual experiment involving Korean, English, and sign language.
Selected for the Seoul Design Foundation’s DDP Open Curating program and hosted by Gallery MUN at DDP, the exhibition presented research into sign language as a new typographic element, based on typography methods that use layout, color, proportion, and movement within a set system. I created the visual identity, translating manual gestures into graphic motifs.

2025 ARKO DAY

2025 ARKO Day, organized for the third time this year by the ARKO Art Museum, is being held under the name ‘The Long Tail.’ The name ‘The Long Tail’ is said to be inspired by the ‘Long Tail Law,’ which states that the majority of the non-mainstream, comprising 80%, create greater value than the minority of the top 20%. Accordingly, this poster was designed using a system where 20% of the page is left blank for characters, and content is filled starting from the bottom, with the long tail.

The Myth of Exnihilo

This work aims to raise questions about whether uniqueness is a tangible reality. AI, which generates text, images through learning, closely resembles the way humans create. However, I believe this can be distinguished from humans in that humans selectively choose from these learned images with an editorial intent. Accordingly, I input this narrative into Gemini to generate text, and based on this text and title, I designed a poster where I am influenced when designing.