Ruam Mitr Type is a font family that collects each character from different old signs from places around Bangkok. Some letters are reminders of demolished landmark architectures.
The font was introduced at Bangkok Design Week 2023 as an interactive installation that invite users to input their own words to generate letterings with randomized characters. The digital font family is sold with a sticker set of three styles.
Inspired by legends and evil spirits, this font experiment has become the epitome of prickliness and mystery. Iridescent colours, like the skin of a snake, frightening sharp shapes and at the same time flowing forms. «Вне себя» (eng. «beside myself») — hypnotic feeling of poison, simultaneous despair and delight.
Float or sink? A question we usually ask in science class about objects is here posed about humans. People who are trying to cross the sea in search of a better life. And on the other margin, in Europe, governments treat them as objects, and numbers. They let them drown instead of float and be welcome here. The life jackets are often fake, they don’t actually float. I confront us with a question about people that usually we ask about objects, to show how senseless is the way we Europeans treat them. I express this question with typography that literally sinks or floats.
In 2001 I travelled to New Zealand. I was on a Demi Pair Program with English lessons, and started with a host ‘Mum’ who in fact had no children! When Wellington finally became too much, I felt drawn into nature. I dropped out of the program and set off: Into the void and found a Maori Community.
So began my year-long journey across New Zealand and I photographed my journey with my Nikon FM2. I collected all negatives of this time from 2001 and 2005 in New Zealand and found them again in 2021 at the lockdown period. I got funding from VG Bildkunst and Neustart Kultur and started the book project with Krautin Verlag in Berlin.
Our world, societies and what constitutes them are in constant evolution.
People migrate, technology evolves, science progresses, and economies and politics are unpredictable but what about nature in all of this chaos?
Until now nature has shown us tolerance.
Forza (Italian translation of strength) symbolizes the presence of nature under the concrete.
As much as we keep building, nature will always be the basis and if the basis breaks everything above will too.
If tomorrow the Earth says enough and revolts through natural disasters as never before, nothing and no one will be able to stop it.
FORZA is a reminder that nature is unbeatable.
“Look after the land and the land will look after you, destroy the land and it will destroy you.” is an Aboriginal proverb. Despite being an ancient saying, it couldn’t be more relevant to our world today. We are still destroying the planet, our land. And if we don’t change course, it will destroy us humans soon. I decided to write this saying with earth, not only because it is the material that most closely describes our land, the Earth, but also because of its vulnerability. It can be easily destroyed or transformed, by the wind, by the rain, or by us…
Type design and ironsmithing both require a lot of time, knowledge and precision.
In the past, the blacksmith made his own ironwork that is identical and therefore traces back to the maker, such as in facade anchors found in old buildings. By examining, dissecting and then reconstructing the forged facade anchors according to the method of the two disciplines I want to show how our work methods can combine. Finding the perfect shape for each character where I can execute the designprocess both digitally and physically. This typeface is an intense collaboration between the world of pixels and raw physical materials.
Being an artist, i have to offer a part of myself. It may not be perfect, but it has to be true, a little spark of natural inteligence. So i dug deep into my box of leftover electrical parts, and created this leaflet. I hope you enjoy.
This book is a Study of the Arabian Nights. Then I choose the seven voyages of sinbad to be my focal point of research to recreate a fairytale. That was based on the refugee crisis in Syria. And how they were traumatised after this crisis, that lead to memory loss in some people.
In the words of Leonard Cohen, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. We all have flaws, things that were never perfect, others that were broken during our lifetime.
It is by owning our own cracks and learning how to live with them that we discover they are what makes us unique among all the other 8 billion people.
Budapest – Invitational Poster for Tschutti Heftl sticker album for the FIFA World Cup 2020 – 2021
Poster for the personal art book Budapest Cretio. Presented at the Anatomy of Design exhibition.
Creme not De la Creme/ Fatafeet Al Sokar is a book of a collection of different short stories describing the water shortage problem in Cairo based on field research with direct people who lived it. The characters are kept anonymous to be relatable to everyone who reads it. The book is an illustration based to narrate those people stories through a sarcastic way. The inking was the chosen medium to deliver the feeling of the mess and chaotic environment those characters had to deal with.
The Punk Nouveau typeface, designed by Kanaka Raghavan, is a response to ordinary and unremarkable typefaces. Despite its friendly and blobby appearance, it is not for the faint-hearted. The typeface was created in a punk style, collaging three elements from designers Alvin Lustig, Karel Martens, and M/M Paris to create an intense yet elegant design. The typeface incorporates ornamentation and geometric accents, embracing chaos and celebrating the absurd. As a display typeface, Punk Nouveau is best used to challenge convention, such as in band posters, protest banners, fanzines, anti-establishment flyers, and logomarks.
In 2022, (supported by a Stimuleringsfonds grant) I researched the possibilities of a multi-purpose typeface, concentrating on the letter shape modulation and animatics between its text and display form within a single font file. The research resulted in design proposals of 4 variable fonts (out of 18 initial directions) with a personality axis ranging between text and display letterforms. During my research, I focused more on the irrational side of variable fonts, a non-sequential axis that creates a personality transition where you can specify your own level of weirdness.
Sculptor Shinae Kim is fascinated by measuring her world. By recomposing these measurements, numbers turn into objects with a soul. Moreover, for her even a simple pencil line is a spatial object, as it leaves a tiny graphite layer on the paper. In consequence, the book was designed as a 3-dimensional space on its own by arranging the original artworks into new layers and compositions.
Karletto is an experimental project that explores the “topography” of typography and what makes letters legible or illegible. It is a variable “unicase” typeface with four axes: the “Top” axis controls the overhang of curves at the top of glyphs; the “Bottom” axis controls the overhang of curves at the bottom of glyphs; the “Left” axis controls the elongation of letters on the left; the “Right” axis controls the elongation of letters on the right.
The typeface is named after “Carletto the Prince of Monsters” (a Japanese manga and anime published in the 70s), who, like our typeface, is elongated and playfully monstrous. In addition we are currently developing a fifth axis for weight.
Pulp and Pigment – Sculptor Raphael Grotthuss is pushing the boundaries of paper. He’s exploring and inventing methods of paper manufacturing. His work is an interplay of his own artistic concept and skill, whilst embracing the unpredictability of paper as a living work material. Thus, using the same method in the same manner will inevitably produce varying outcomes.
“Afronaut” as a main typeface showcases this tension through its mix of constructive and organic letter features. With the documentary shots of photographer Louisa Marie Summer, Book Designer Dominik Schwarz created the rhythm of the book, following the process of the artist: Exploring, Experimenting, Exhibiting. Repeat.
A number of letterings were created to be used as chapter titles in Pavin Chachavalpongpan’s book, “The Alien”. The deliberately outdated and bizarre designs of these letterings aim to communicate people’s mixed feelings of awkwardness and fierceness. The intention of this experiment is to portray a subject that has always been taboo in Thai society, similar to how most Thai people feel when they hear or react to Pavin Chachavalpongpan’s critique of the Thai monarchy.
griptype is a collection of funky, weird, lovely, incomplete typefaces. Our fonts are inspired by skate culture. Skateboarding empowers individuality, encourages, selfexpression and is a lot of fun. There are no rules. griptype is an attempt to bring the ease and serenity of this culture to the word of typography. Our fonts are open source licensed and therefore free to use and modify. Feel free to get creative with them if you like.
INDEX is a print publication made by a continual remix from a shared repository of writing, photography, and drawings— our own and from the public domain.
Our process encourages chance operations; each designer is free to modify and reuse elements from each other’s work. After three consecutive edits, the result is published via print-on-demand, inviting imperfections and variations in the final copies.
Issue #2 ‘Free’ explores what we observe as enabling, inhibiting, using, and defining the idea of ‘free’ and related qualities of living today. We address the concept of freedom as a brand— for those with immigrant backgrounds and those living and working within it.
Valerian Typeface is inspired by Peruvian street art called “Chicha Culture.” These hand-lettering-based posters started as promotional campaigns for folk bands and singers. They are, to date, plastered around the streets of Perú as a cheap medium of advertising.
The organic shapes informed the construction of this typeface. The letterforms have a big personality with several cluttered details. Charged with vernacular symbolism of an underrepresented culture in the graphic design field. Through the visibility of cultural experimental typefaces, designers feel inspired to show their heritage through graphic design.
The project is an attempt to further process a gardening manual printed in 1912. The designer sees the book as a valuable artifact already, yet attempts to add to the book, without harming its essence. In the end 10 custom illustrations in clear PDV foil were binded into the book. The illustrations portrait plants from the manual, and are hand cut from vinyl sticker, keeping a raw appearance, to create contrast with the refined art nouveau style book. The clear foil lets the illustrations interfere with the content, without damaging it. The end product reflects on the practice of working with graphic design history, as well as the family heritage of the designer.
“Stereotype” is a cross-space confrontation of questions about structural inequalities and personal experiences through language and type. It demonstrates the political power as well as the intersectional representational potential of typography from a feminist perspective to help forming social change. Linguistically and visually, type communicates equally on multiple levels and thus also defines the spaces in which we operate. Augmented reality expands this physical space and makes the unseen visible.