A unique fashion book in a very limited series designed with different papers and a slide cover where the print text changes thanks to the effect created by the 45° texture on the polyvinyl acetate cover.
Wurmcode Serif
I created this book to showcase my typeface »Wurmcode Serif«, which is part of the exhibition »Punktpunktkommastrich« at DLA Marbach. The typeface is based on woodworm holes, especially on a branch with painted worm holes by Eduard Mörike (which is also part of an exhibition at the literature archive).
I created this type specimen by laser cutting every single glyph out of the pages and gluing the laser cut pages back on thicker paper. The chosen paper is embossed with a wooden texture.
Slanted Magazine #41—Amsterdam
The Slanted team went to Amsterdam to check out the design scene and fell for the charm of the city’s century-old “bruine kroegen” (brown cafes). Seeking refuge after bike rides to design studios, they were quickly won over by the cozy ambiance, dark wood, old-fashioned decor, and the aroma of fried croquettes. Now we are glad to announce the launch of Slanted Magazine #41—Amsterdam.
Color and form play an important role in Amsterdam’s design, which is egalitarian and serves the masses. Design is ubiquitous in Amsterdam, from the bike path to the police cars and even the city crest. The maze of canals and the upcoming neighborhoods are characterized by muted tones, dominated by black cobblestones, and dark brick. Behind the facades it rattles. The Dutch have always let it rip. The orange is more intense, the red more luminous, the black more brutal. Design is radical, it crashes, it vibrates.
There are few places where color and form play such an important role. Design is innovative, modern, functional, and spiced with a pinch of humor. Design is about egalitarianism, not reserved for the wealthy elite. Design serves the masses. And so it happens that everything is professionally designed. The bike path, the kebab stand, the tax return form, the police cars, the park benches and trash cans, the vegetables.
In its 41st issue, Slanted gathers a selection of Amsterdam’s most brilliant minds and provides deep insights into their work and values in the magazine and in the numerous video interviews. Illustrations, interviews, essays, and an extensive appendix with many useful tips and an overview with the latest Dutch typefaces complete the issue thematically.
Beside the issue two very limited special editions have been published: A black long sleeve designed by graphic designer and creative coder Vera van de Seyp and silkscreen printed with fluorescent green by Everpress in an edition of 100 pieces only + a bundle with a DTF transfer print produced by express-transfer.de with which you can get creative 🙂
A thousand thanks to all those who took the time to meet us and share their views on the world and design with us and who are now part of the issue! Many thanks also to our supporters and sponsors, without whom the magazine would not have been possible in this form. Thank you very much!
Featured contributors: 75B, Athenaeum Boekhandel & Nieuwscentrum, Maarten Baptist, Blast Foundry, BNO, Irma Boom, Brût Homeware, Building Fictions, Mélanie Corre, Vanessa van Dam, DBXL, De Designpolitie, De Vorm, Javier Rodríguez Fernández, FreelingWaters, fw:books, Graypants, Hansje van Halem, Haller Brun, Olivier Heiligers, Juna Horstmans, Jeremy Jansen, Elisa van Joolen, Annabel Keijzer, KesselsKramer, Elisabeth Klement, Kooij, Lesley Moore, MacGuffin, MainStudio, martens and martens, Mass-Driver, Moniker, Michelangelo Nigra, nouch, Novo Typo, NXS WORLD, Moriz Oberberger, Our Polite Society, Revised, Charlotte Rohde, Rush Hour Music, Vera van de Seyp, Studio Jord Noorbeek, studioHendriksen, Sunne, Jolana Sýkorová, Terry Bleu, The Rodina, thonik, Kai Udema, Underwear, untold-stories, VANTOT, Jasper de Waard, Edgar Walthert, Julian Williams.
Slanted Magazine #41—Amsterdam
Publisher: Slanted Publishers
Release: April 2023
Format: 16 × 24 × 1.7 cm
Volume: 224 pages
Language: English
Printer: Offset printing, Stober Medien, Germany
Workmanship: Softcover with flaps, Swiss brochure, thread-stitching, offset printing with spot color
Cradboard: Crescendo CS1, 320 g/sm, distributed by Inapa Deutschland
Paper: GalaxiArt Samt 115 g/sm, Holmen TRND 1.6, 70 g/sm, Holmen TRND V 2.0 60 g/sm
ISBN: 978-3-948440-47-3
ISSN: 1867-6510
Price: € 18.–
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CORPUS
The 3D printed book does not need a pulp body to materialise, nor does it require edge cropping/trimming — it prints as it is — no distinction between the flesh and skin. When does the print become a page, when does it birth a book?
It does not crumple, cannot carry dog ears, and ages slower. With the ability to quite literally print beyond the bounds of pages, it questions not just what a book is, but what a book can be.
How does 3D-printing process the ‘death’ of print? How do you kill what does not (need) bleed?
Type matters
Fax experiments without the fax machine – playing with thermal paper, stencils, and chemical reactions.
Much of my work explores mixing analogue and digital tools as a creative process. When I deploy analogue techniques, it’s about me adding noise and getting some feeling back into the work. Digital can just be so clinical. Sometimes I like that, but at other times I want grit, a depth or texture that’s ‘real’, not a coded imitation. It feels like I’m trying to dirty things up, break them, and get them to a point where they feel used, like an old record or book that shows signs of use.
Type Play
Fax experiments without the fax machine – playing with thermal paper, stencils, and chemical reactions.
Much of my work explores mixing analogue and digital tools as a creative process. When I deploy analogue techniques, it’s about me adding noise and getting some feeling back into the work. Digital can just be so clinical. Sometimes I like that, but at other times I want grit, a depth or texture that’s ‘real’, not a coded imitation. It feels like I’m trying to dirty things up, break them, and get them to a point where they feel used, like an old record or book that shows signs of use.
Typeknitting Posters
With Typeknitting, Rüdiger Schlömer explores the graphic potential of various hand knitting techniques, opening a dialogue between digital typography and the analog craft of knitting. In Typeknitting posters, he brings the knitted typography back to a visual surface, using the knitting as an image/type production tool.
PLAY
Type play
Typeface created for #36daysoftype 2023 edition
I took part in #36daysoftype 2023, the tenth edition of the social media sprint to design a full alphabet and number system at a rate of one character per day. I created a system for designing the characters using the same basic shapes (square, triangle, circle) rearranged in multiple possibilities.
Risograph design experiment for Georges Perec’s ‘A Void’
I have a great love for Risography, a beautiful Japanese printing technique halfway between silkscreen printing and photocopying. On spec, I have designed a new series of Georges Perec editions for Vintage Classics. I Risographed my designs in vibrant neon inks. My ideas stemmed from the contents of the books – ‘A Void’ is written entirely without the letter ‘e’, which features at the very centre of my vortex design.
Frankenstein Itself
Frankenstein Itself is a typographical reinterpretation of the wide-known literature. Taking a thorough and extreme method, the book was designed from scratch. Structured from an odd typeface where the letters are displaced, mixed and reorientated, the book approached itself with a content-wise self-awareness.
Fin Desierto (Desert End)
Fin Desierto (Desert End) takes the shape of an accordion, so that every reader may begin where they choose. But, when fully opened, it takes on a representational form, suggesting that of the endless desert. Inspired by Mario Montalbetti’s poetry, it is a book in which, somehow, content dictates form. I designed it while working in Studioa in 1995, and I like to think that it has stood the test of time.
i Still Believe in Celluloid
In the design of a book about Antoni Pinent’s iSBiC experimental film project, the focus was on conveying the essence of celluloid revelation through paper and graphic design. By selecting a fine paper and using double-sided printing, a typographic effect was created that visually resembled analog processes.
Joseph Binder Award
The Joseph Binder Award is an international competition for graphic design and illustration. It is named after one of Austria’s most outstanding graphic designers.
Joseph Binder once said, “The process of creation is unknown, we wish to find out.” Bringing this process to the forefront, we highlighted three aspects well known to all designers: CURIOSITY, FOCUS and FAME.
Based on his iconic poster designs and special use of color, form, and perspective, we take these three aspects of the creative process and place them at the center of our design for the Joseph Binder Award 2022.
Lowlands Display
A display font inspired by The Netherlands. The Netherlands are part of the Low Countries (an area where the land is at, near, or below the level of the sea and where there are not usually mountains or large hills — usually plural). This peculiarity creates unique formations in the land, in which, bodies of water are concentrated and they often resemble letters.
Risograph Experiments Vol.01
A publication that incorporates a collection of missprints occured through the process of producing A3 risograph prints and experimenting with the technique. It acts as an alternative specimen for Risograph printing as it a. showcases a wide range of colours and papers b. highlights the possibilites of overlapping two or more colours (risograph ink is transparent) c. uses examples of how riso translates data from vector graphics, real objects, textures or photographs and last d. embraces mistakes and imperfections.
Risograph Experiments Vol.01, 308 Pages (200 Colored), 13 Colors, Various Papers, Thread Stitching, Width (146mm), Length (204mm), One (1) Copy, Self Published, 2020-2021.
R E S E M B L A N C E S
Resemblances are images that resemble similar images of a similar thing or similar image, collected in cologne and in the world. The riso-printing of metallic-silver on finest italian black paper makes each image appear ever changing. Thus every single view of R E S E M B L A N C E S is nothing more than similar to the previous one.
PlayGround Typeface
As a child, the most common thing could give us superpowers or make us a hero. After school, we ran into the yard and became astronauts, princesses, scouts and doctors, playing on the playgrounds. A font inspired by the shape of soviet playgrounds, based on a combination of cold stability and childish dreaminess.
The Other Collection
At The Other Collection we have developed a unique and innovative technique combining the advances of modern typography with the quality and artisanship of centuries-old knowledge of book printing. Letterpress printing from metal type looks back onto five hundred years of history but has become impractical today. At TOC, we design digital layouts, then transfer the data to polymer printing plates, using our own lasersetter. Printing those plates on traditional letterpress machines combines the virtues of analog and digital processes, resulting in the best of both worlds: refined typography and a smooth analog reading experience.
Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Catalogue 2021
The DAE Graduation Catalogue 2021 is a guide to navigate graduation projects by themes, keywords, materials, and methodologies. Divided into four indexes, it offers references for potential connections between the projects.
A fluent layout allows to showcase each graduation project in the best possible way, keeping a main structure of a catalogue. It is an invitation to discover the innovative ideas, techniques, and visions of the next generation of designers.
Selected as one of the Best Dutch Book Designs 2021 in the student category.
Neither Confirm Nor Deny
Neither Confirm Nor Deny or LTR NCND in short is derived by Erik van Blokland from his font FontFont published in 1991. By developing new method for interpolating rough and textured shapes, the typeface has made the leap to variable fonts. It uses its seamless interpolations to create even lighter and heavier weights at the extremes and countless cuts in between. The LTR NCND can be used in animations to quickly create very different moods: from an unimaginable future to an impossibly hopeful one. From large, short words to complex and detailed text. It is ready to create exciting compositions on the web, in motion design and of course as an eye-catching headline.
For decades the mechanical typewriter was the central processing unit of bureaucrats, lawyers, dictators, and authors alike. It was the creator of all documents: contracts and diplomas, correspondence, ransom notes, invoices, and all the news. Its linguistic percussion was a signal: here we create facts and order!
Now we see only the shortcomings of this once-amazing apparatus: complicated to fix, heavy to transport, and where would you buy ribbons? Nonetheless, the typewritten word is anchored in our collective subconscious. This is a new chapter for this particular textured typewriter font.
The initial typeface, FontFont, was developed by Erik van Blokland briefly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The structured typewriter font was created when he, a boy from the West-side, met an East-side typewriter.
Neither Confirm Nor Deny
Designers: Erik van Blokland
Foundry: LettError Type
Release: April 3rd, 2023
Languages: European
Weights: Thin, Light, Medium, Heavy, Black
File Formats: WOFF2, Variable Fonts, Trial fonts
Prices: from € 50.–
Specimen PDF
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Patatoes Modular
Patatoes Modular is a typeface created with only two forms.
It is an experiment to see the limits of what is possible in terms of legibility.
This typography is also adjustable in width and height according to the spaces between its forms.
36 Days of Type
For the 3rd year in a row, I wanted to push the challenge a little further for the 36 days of type 2022.
Each letter corresponds to a word starting with that letter, so this word guided the creation of the letter.
Each letter transforms itself, creating shapes related to the word with a lot of humor and fun.
The goal is to play with the letter, making it alive and expressive. The whole typography resulted in a variable typography
AI (Furry Letters)
This project started with a curiosity about what AI could do typographically. I’d read about the amorphous “type” that AI generates currently (the technology improves exponentially seemingly daily) and I wanted to find the correct prompts that might lead to AI creating something recognizable. One only needs to request specific letters individually to bypass the odd alphabet renders, but what was interesting was that it could not create serifs or lowercase. I tried 3 different AI generators (Dall-E2, MidJourney & Craiyon), and none of them would follow my prompts. The results are beautiful but also an exercise in acceptance and being flexible for the sake of creativity and novel tools.