Imagine what a fashion magazine would look like in 400 years. In a world with no natural resources left, transformation and recycling are the only way forward. Our Rags Magazine is a collaborative project by Aimée Zito Lema and Elisa van Joolen, that investigates transformative processes, proposing new forms of collective production aimed at the reuse of discarded clothing. The project questions consumer behaviour and its relationship to the world in which we live. Further expanding the potential of recycled material, Our Rags Magazine is a magazine where the pages not only show clothing, but actually are clothing. Published by Warehouse/ Graphic design by Elisabeth Klement.

An inherent grid structure is established by placing a monospaced letter on a page. Type sizes are only doubled or halved to ensure the stringency of the grid as a vessel for individual expression within each essay, while meshing them into one publication. Furthermore, the grid is a technical tool to enable the incorporation of additional fonts, drawings, etc. The layout adheres to a stack of paper aesthetics, embracing a flat hierarchy. Maintaining focus on the essays, the publication avoids a cover, keeps extraneous elements to a minimum. The colophon, positioned outside, acts as a bracket. Page numbers are placed to be seen from outside, serving as a navigation system throughout the book.

How I Feel When You is a data-visualization fanzine about feelings: each square represents, through an infographic of gradients, the emotions felt in a given situation shared with a significant other.

Despite the reunification of Vietnam almost 50 years ago, the people from South and North Vietnam is still fractured by the Vietnam war, leaving them with a deep divide that still exists today. Nam Bac Mot Nha is a final year project at LASALLE College of the Arts that celebrates all memories of the Vietnam War — especially those that have been suppressed, or ignored by the general public. As part of this project, a series of books were created, including the Bleed Notes. As its name suggested, the Bleed Notes were designed and cut out from the leftover parts of the main Brand Styleguide book, highlighting a side of Vietnam’s history that has often been marginalised but still bleeding.

The book OFF/ON STAGE is the product of a workshop held in 2018 at the Bauhaus Dessau. Students of the typography class at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, under the direction of Zora Asse and Ludovic Balland, were asked to develop six screenplays for the theatrical festival “Bühne Total”. The book documents the project’s complex method of staging, translating and transforming texts. 
OFF/ ON STAGE is an invitation to play. To understand it, the reader has to accept this invitation. Its ultimate aim is to demonstrate that every book, or typographic materialisation of a thought, is a performance. The book, as a stage, is no longer a metaphor, but becomes reality on these pages.

“Der Wal stirbt” (The whale dies) is a book written and illustrated by Ulla-Britt Vogt.

The illustrated book tells the story of a dying whale’s last journey. The slightly macabre subject matter is juxtaposed with brightly coloured underwater scapes, printed in fluro Pantones.

The book is A4 size, has 64 pages, and is printed in 5 Pantone colours. It is available in German and Dutch. The book is self-iniated, self-financed and self-published.

This device stores many precious bits, but since it is obsolete, i can not access these anymore. So i converted it to a book and now it stores a wonderful piece of literature that you can access with a single Phillips screwdriver.

Color in Books showcases 3 years of work in the field of Editorial Design. Exploring color as a fundamental mean of expression, all of my work values uniqueness, typography, printing and research, using color as a mean to create interest and visual appealing for a younger generation that starts viewing books as not important.

The publication brings together the texts, artistic works and visual exchanges of the first Covid-19 pandemic semester 2020 of one painting class. The exclusively digital created content is translated into a new format – an analogue exhibition space. The three parts of the objectlike book represent the new digital collective forms of work, which should not embody an imitation of physical presence, but constitute new formats. Accordingly, the design also quotes and translates the digital origin. The books are offset printed, the foils are screen printed and the different parts are joined together with magnets.

Two-volume publication documenting “Margaret van Eyck Academie,” an ongoing, collaborative art and research project at the intersection of feminist intervention, institutional critique, and the politics of (re-)naming, initiated by book designer, editor, and researcher Hagen Verleger during a 2017/2018 residency at Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. 4 ¼ × 7 inches and 184 pages each. Published by Peradam, New York.

Book design and typography for “Der fremde Ferdinand: Märchen und Sagen des unbekannten Grimm-Bruders” (Heiner Boehncke & Hans Sarkowicz), volume 428 of Die Andere Bibliothek. Hardcover, bound in marbled paper with gold embossing, with a removable slipcase. 12.1 cm × 21.3 cm, 448 pages, limited and numbered edition of 4,444. Published by Aufbau Verlag, Berlin. (Photo credit: © BANK™)

Sophie Schmidt’s monograph “How Much Venice Water Do You Carry In Your Legs, Still? How Much Taipei Water Do You Feel In The Fields, Now?” documents artistic works and texts which were made in 2021 as part of two residencies (German Centre for Venetian Studies, Venice, and Taipei Residency Program). Schmidt’s artistic engagement revolves around questions of being in the world as an existential, physical and psychic exploratory process into spaces of one’s own and spaces of the strange and unfamiliar. Published by Hammann von Mier, Munich.

“Something Like A Phenomenon” is the first monography about visual artist Sharon Van Overmeiren’s work. Van Overmeiren’s artistic practice of freely referencing a broad variety of historic and contemporary sources that are being transformed and amalgamated into her works is applied to the sphere of book design: The layout of each section typographically references an already existing book that is related in one way or another to the artist’s specific process and body of work. Including three essays by Koen Bulckens, Václav Janoščík, and Paul de Lange, as well as a ‘book soundtrack’ by Elko Blijweert and an A2 poster by Kabinet Studio. Published by Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels.

Helvécia, a Black village community in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, owes its name to the plantation from which it originated. It was founded in 1818 by Swiss and German settlers, and the coffee grown on its vast estates brought them great wealth. This would not have been possible without exploitation: in the mid-19th century, for every 200 white settlers, there were 2,000 slaves of African origin. With great sensitivity and in dialogue with the inhabitants, Swiss-Brasilian photographer Dom Smaz searched Helvécia for traces of the past. His compelling images capture the vibrant village and the life of its inhabitants while essays explain the historical circumstances.

The accompanying exhibition featured more than 700 works from the museum’s collection to explore arts and crafts from a contemporary perspective at the intersection of art and design. The design reflects different aspects of arts and crafts, one of which is materiality. All objects are shown in their original size to highlight their three-dimensionality and surface texture. The book itself consists of three papers with different gloss levels and thicknesses. A transparent paper printed on both sides is used for the intro to raise the question of what arts and crafts can be. The cover was partially printed with a glittering pigment-infused transparent varnish.

LISTENING: Music – Movement – Mind is a conceptual and practical book about the creative relationship between mind and body in the context of music and martial arts. Musician and composer Nik Bärtsch, founder of the so-called Ritual Groove Music, has developed techniques that offer musicians and martial artists useful and surprising tools to support, focus and simplify learning and creative processes in many fields of artistic activity and daily life.

This is the first book-length monograph to examine the reception of Blossfeldt’s work. Drawing on unpublished materials, it analyzes the photographs’ replication in teaching materials, pattern books and art books, and also in the pages of the illustrated press. The six chapters of the richly illustrated study trace the paths Blossfeldt’s legendary plant motifs described as specimens, illustrations, patterns, analogues, models and abstractions from 1890 to 1945. Thematic excursions into the present, illustrating the rediscovery of Blossfeldt’s motifs in design and architecture over the past twenty years, offer a contemporary perspective on the famous German photographer.

On the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica, Antarctic Resolution offers a high-resolution image of this hyper-surveilled yet neglected continent. In contrast to the fragmented view offered by Big Data companies, the book is a holistic study of the continent’s unique geography, unparalleled scientific potential, contemporary geopolitical significance, experimental governance system, and extreme inhabitation model. A transnational network of multidisciplinary polar experts – represented in the form of authored texts, photographic essays, and data-based visual portfolios – reveals the intricate web of growing economic and strategic interests, tensions, and international rivalries.

On the initiative of the lighting company Zumtobel Group, architectural photographer Iwan Baan and architect Francis Kéré set out to capture how the sun’s natural light cycle shapes vernacular architecture in Burkina Faso. Iwan Baan’s pictures are accompanied by architectural sketches from Francis Kéré, who grew up in this light environment and whose architecture is inspired by it.

The book traces the history of Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild’s famous art collection. It not only provides the latest research findings on the provenance of 132 objects from the original collection, but it is also the first to contain a large number of historical photographs depicting most of the 1,500 items in the collection. The format, paper, layout, and typeface reference encyclopedias of the last century with modern means. The 132 objects of the accompanying exhibition are presented as cut-outs—overprinted with a rectangle of transparent, glossy lacquer. This additional layer underlines the value of the objects and represents today’s view of their history.

The book presents a series of interviews with 12 protagonists of the book industry. Since the role of design in relation to the future of the printed book was not represented by any of the interviewees, the idea was to address this through the design of the book. As a “blue block,” it addresses the perception of a book as an object and questions the role of design through the mere appearance of itself.

The chairs in this private collection are not an assembly of objects of everyday use. They are a congregation of creatures often eluding their primary purpose as seating. Metaphorically exaggerated height and disassociation transform the chairs into individuals, or sculptures exploring the uncertain boundaries of physics. The book’s generous layout allows readers to immerse themselves in this cabinet of curiosities and give their imagination free rein. Nicolas Polli and Jean Vincent Simonet use their photographic essays to interpret the exhibits originating from well-known artists and designers. The texts illustrate the collection in terms of the friction between art and design.

The work of Marshall Brown demonstrates the power of collage as an architectural medium. The book features some forty collages, including a large foldout of one of his latest works. The book comes with three different covers, each featuring a work from Marshall Brown’s central collage series. The individually shaped title plates, which are glued in blind-embossed shapes, refer to collage as technique and medium.

After thirteen years of collaboration, Michael Riedel draws a line under his work with his New York gallery and publishes their email correspondence—whose ultimate intention was to sell works of art—in the form of banknotes. Abstract recapitulates the many years of correspondence by interweaving excerpts of the emails with a narrative layer—which is also visually comprehensible through different fonts. Text chapters alternate with image sections showing banknote bundles. Large-scale silver embossings transform each of the pages into a new banknote. Flipping pages resembles counting money.