PUNCH – A visual story

PUNCH is a photography book by Jürgen Bürgin. It’s an intimate and revealing journey into the world of boxing in New York, Berlin and Lisbon.
It’s an immersive and dark visual narrative that follows boxing fighters and clubs from the training and preparation phase to the thrill of the fight, and the moment of victory. A dramatic, evocative and emotional look into the vivid details of a classic sport, whose enormous influence on popular culture grants this work a universal and timeless appeal.

Void Book

This is a book that could be read within void and is in search of its own emptiness. Whatever seen within the margin of the void becomes the content of the book. The part required to be internal to book is here completely external; what is out is invited inside the book.

Marginal Notes. Parallel Culture of Samizdat Publishing in the Soviet Union

“Marginal Notes. Parallel Culture of Samizdat Publishing in the Soviet Union” presents a selected history of self-publishing within the Soviet Russia, and contains a number of examples of underground publications and its designers from the past century. The production of samizdat has a certain connection to the work of graphic designers. This book is a collection of interviews, essays, and memoirs, and an attempt to explore and present the samizdat publications, techniques and distribution strategies and to build a connection to graphic design. It was released 2021 as a graduation project of University of Applied Arts in Vienna.



Safar

Safar is an annual bilingual design and visual culture magazine published in Beirut, Lebanon. The name Safar is Arabic for “journey” and refers to the notion of communication, especially across disciplinary, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Safar was launched to address the lack of critical writing on design in the Global South, and aims to recognize designers as active participants in cultural production.

From a focus on visual design, the magazines’ themes revolve around big, difficult stories of politics and social justice, with a particular focus on Lebanon and the Arab world in general. Because design is culture, and culture is what reflects and moves society forward. It’s also about moving the conversation about design and visual culture away from a fixation on the global north.

Safar is published by Studio Safar. Which was founded by designers, writers, and editors Maya Moumne and Hatem Imam. Maya Moumne was kind enough to answer a few questions about the magazine:

Where do you get your motivation for the magazine?
I think we’re motivated to make the magazine because, quite simply, we get really excited about regional graphic design, both past and present, and we want a space to share, document, read, and write about it. We see publishing Safar as a way to assert that design and visual culture are significant and powerful cultural, and even political, players. They affect—and have historically affected—very real change. We are also motivated to publish Safar because we, as a team, enjoy collaborating with different thinkers, writers, and designers—each new issue is a chance to engage with new thinkers and their ideas.

How do you find the topics for it?
Often it’s very spontaneous. Someone thinks up an idea in the middle of the night and it just clicks. Our entire design team meets regularly to propose and consider different theme and article possibilities, different directions, and formats for those articles. It’s a collaborative and exploratory studio project.

Is the role of women particularly important to you, and if so, why?
The roles of women, trans, and non-binary people are particularly important. Beyond gender, we strive to publish work by people and communities who have not had the same opportunities to write, publish, and speak. It’s definitely a priority for us to elevate and create space for historically marginalized and silenced voices.

Safar

Publisher & Design: Studio Safar
Language: English & Arabic
Format: 21 × 27.5 cm
Price: $ 26.–
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More information on their website or on instagram!

 

KONTOR

Christian Dietz work circles around a mixture of digital design tools and analog printing techniques, what he likes to call NEOANALOGUE. Modern typography is rooted in analogue letterpress printing. Experimental type design, in particular, opens an historically based playground for today’s hyper-digital design tools in harmony with analog printing processes. To do this, Chris designed a typeface based on circles only, sawed 20 ct coins, glued them on a wooden block and printed them by hand. The technique of analogue printing was involved in the entire design process not only as a background idea, but also as a style-defining factor for an experimental design approach.

myu

An interactive typographic exploration of the text ‘myu’ written by Thomas Sharp. myu is a hypnogogic surrealist recording of the thoughts of the universe over one second in 1913. It’s about prophecy and shamans and revelation. myu was seen and transcribed by Thomas Sharp in a series of Active Imagination sessions between January and June 2020. Visualised by MATA at tobebeginningless.com

LOVE YOU

LOVE YOU is a graphic design student’s exploration of computer processing. The experimental type of LOVE YOU evokes wondrous and expressive forms via the open-source program Processing. LOVE YOU aims to break the rigid and clean design rules of both graphic design and computer coding.

KYRA

The Typo „Kyra“ is characterized by its rounded details, which give it a soft, organic feeling. Every curve and bend has been carefully crafted to evoke a sense of fluidity, playfulness and grace. Kyra is in general made for headings, adding a touch of elegance and playfulness to any project it graces.

INTENTIONAL MISTAKE

Collecting the wasted/used paper left out at the printing studio and recombining them in a random manner, the idea of ‘INTENTIONAL MISTAKE’ creates a system of making mistakes ‘on purpose’, as a way to encourage the unexpected, to find a balance between something already existing and something unexpected. In the end, the system of rules that can be used or created to invite accidents into a positive role, and the outcome produced by the system becomes something beyond oneself. As a result, it encourages the unpredictable. The work was inspired by the approach of the Dadaist poem, thinking of these invented systems as something which encourages a kind of ‘self-less’ creative process.

Bloom

While Bloom began as a study of floral forms and floral typography, the fragmented and clustered nature of the floral design led to the idea of impermanence. Bloom visualizes the nature of flowers and of all living things: To bloom spectacularly for a moment, before time carries the fragments and petals away.

Cyano

This type is a study on nature and algae forms. Formed entirely from bezier curves, the lines stack upon each other against a dark background to invoke a glowing effect reminiscent of bioluminescence, as if one is looking at bacteria bloom at the bottom of the ocean floor. The name of the work itself is derived from cyanobacteria, blue-green “algae” that has become synonymous with life.

If It Can Happen to Mobb Deep It Can Happen To You

This is a typographical experiment using the Processing programming language. The piece shows a floral pattern fanned out and repeated to appear as bent rope or rebar at full scale with the phrase “Get It Twisted” spelled out. Highly irregular aspects of the radial floral design such as an atypical number of petals and 1/7th circular rotations are made to take what should be an elegant, natural, florid type treatment and turn it to a coarse and rigid structure in protest of an assignment I received where the pretty, fainty, and elegantness of florid patterns really wasn’t agreeing with me so I decided to change up the final look of the work as a whole. You might even say… I got it twisted.

Lily

I created Lily for a project in my Coding for Graphic Design course with the objective of combining type and a flower we previously designed. I used Processing, an open-source programming language created by Ben Fry and Casey Reas, to generate the flowers. I created the layout in Adobe Illustrator and imbedded it in Processing to combine flowers and type.

Roses “R” Red

“Roses ‘R’ Red” is composed using the processing computer language. Utilizing the Geomerative library, generative floral designs have overlayed this letter R. The type is meant to demonstrate growth and relationships in life. Each flower is unique at different stages, but they are all connected through the stroke of the R.

Growth

“Growth” is a series of floral type expressions created with Processing. the code utilized floral illustrations paired with type to form the letters. The designs thematically reflect the words, which center around celebrating beauty and new beginnings, just like flowers.

Series of 3D Foam Paintings

This series of paintings is created using a combination of spray and mounting foam, resulting in a unique and uncontrollable texture. To apply the foam to the canvas, the artist created a specialized tool. The foam produces an organic 3D surface with protruding, expansive forms. The paintings are then enhanced with fluorescent or metallic sprays that add depth and transform the foam into a new material altogether. The resulting effect is a fascinating interplay of different textures and colors, creating an innovative and captivating visual experience.

Hex Key Typeface

While working on a fun personal project which focussed on experimenting with type, I found some hex/allen keys and arranged them into a few letters. Using this one shape of tool forced limitations on me and I really enjoyed the problem solving process of trying to create letters from these with as few keys as possible. I loved the unusual look of these letters and decided to build them as vectors before developing it into a fully functioning font.