Making Of Slanted Magazine #40—Experimental Type

Posted on by Juliane Lipp

Slanted Magazine #40—Experimental Type is in production and will be published end of October! This issue is all about experiments with type—offering a glimpse into spaces that were explored by pushing conventions, limitations, and thoughts to the next level.

Printed and finished by our long-time printing partner Stober Medien, the Slanted Magazine #40—Experimental Type impresses with a beautiful double hot foil stamping on the deep black cover named Black Magic. The whole issue has been printed offset in CMYK—the glossy arto® gloss and premium uncoated lona® art alternate every 16 pages throughout the issue.

The partly used spot color from HKS in the essays and appendix makes a great contrast to the beautiful blue paper Pop’Set aqua. All papers have been supported by Inapa Deutschland.

Moreover the issue is thread-stitched and bound with silver cloth as a Swiss brochure by Spinner Buchbinderei.

The magazine can be pre-ordered now and will be shipped at its release—or just subscribe now, save money and never ever miss an issue again (and special edition, if you like) 🙂

Enjoy the photos and get your copy!

Büchertempel

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

Libraries are so much more than collections of books. They are archives of knowledge, sources of inspiration, places of equal learning, encounter, and free education. At the same time, their extraordinary architecture represents the societies and eras from which they emerged. Büchertempel celebrates the world’s oldest, most extraordinary, and most ambitious libraries: from baroque palaces to UNESCO-protected adobe buildings to futuristic private libraries, this book explores the stories, architecture, and changing mission of libraries worldwide. Büchertempel is a declaration of love for the book itself, a book for book lovers, and for anyone who believes in the power of ideals.

Büchertempel

Publisher: gestalten
Author: gestalten & Marianne Julia Strauss
Release: January 2022
Format in cm (w × h × d): 24 × 30 × 3
Volume: 304 pages
Language: German
Bookbinding: hardcover, stitch bound
ISBN: 978-3-96704-025-8
Price: € 49.90
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Raskal

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

Raskal is a visual statement. Its design digitally translates and transforms handwriting and hand lettering’s most exciting elements. Although it has a lot in common with “script fonts,” Raskal’s relationship to handwriting or formal script styles is not as close as what you see in revival typefaces or ones based on a famous calligrapher’s oeuvre. The trip Raskal took between its initial concept and the final product was not straightforward. Emmanuel Rey could have arrived at many different kinds of type designs instead. While Raskal doesn’t look like its other typefaces, the way it came about illustrates how the foundry works.

Raskal is a digital typeface. Of course, the font is a digital file for use with digital applications. But the font’s design process was primarily a digital one. For many years, all its design and form-finding experiments were drawn digitally without resorting to sketches made by hand. Which might sound an aberration for a typeface inspired by calligraphy. However, very late in its development, Rey began making quick sketches on paper to help determine how some of its final glyphs might look best.

Raskal started as a script-style extension and accompaniment to the original SangBleu OG typeface. For a while, the design had two weights, one of which featured heavy strokes and a lot of contrast. The idea was to create new styles to add to the SangBleu family, with unexpected appearances and feelings. While going about this, he tested ideas that offered formal complements to the existing SangBleu OG fonts rather than what designers typically expect font families to contain.

One determining point in Raskal’s development was Rey’s decision in 2018 to turn it into a monospace-style font. After working on the script font for four years, he felt like he wasn’t getting anywhere. That sensation forced Rey to reconsider his self-inflicted brief. Aesthetically, the challenge of turning Raskal into a typeface looking like a contemporary script was far from resolved. He was even getting feedback that suggested he should abandon his initial desires and finish the typeface as a simple digital reinterpretation of a historical writing style. But that was not satisfying at all.

To force himself toward new and refreshing visual perspectives and to think outside of the box, Rey applied a tactic he had often been pleased to offer students in workshops if they were ever stuck in a creative rut while working on a piece of design. He told himself to add an irrational parameter to the brief, a challenge that seems impossible to solve, something that doesn’t even make sense if you try to define it with words. For Raskal, that was “to make a script font monospace” and channel handwriting’s freedom into small boxes with identical widths. While the final typeface is not completely monopaced, the monospace-style was a way to integrate the mechanical aspect of typography into calligraphy. That brought a new language to the typeface since each letter would have to occupy the same spacing box. Lowercase letters like e, i, l, and s needed new solutions to fill in their own space without breaking the flow of the script—which is the most important visual aspect of this type of design. The inclusion of the three-story lowercase e, which appears as a natural solution when designed on the computer, gave the new and definitive direction Raskal would finally take. Released from any classical design expectation and totally free of agreed type design or calligraphic rules, Raskal was born again.

Raskal

Art Direction: Swiss Typefaces
Design: Emmanuel Rey / Swiss Typefaces
Font Development & Technology: Benedikt Bramböck / Swiss Typefaces
Text: Dan Reynolds
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Background illustration: Gaël Corboz

FURE Magazine

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

People are reading, everywhere. There is more text in this world than ever before. Because humanity writes and reads more than ever before: books, reports, newspapers, blogs, tweets, and even WhatsApp messages. The logical conclusion must therefore be: Reading ability can’t be in a bad way after all, and the constant warning of a decline in reading literacy is perhaps more the lament of a pack of cultural pessimists. There is also discussion in the industry about what to do with those who have been lost, who no longer want to buy books, but in a country that puts about 90,000 new publications on the market every year, one can hardly speak of a reading emergency.

Reading is a cultural technique that needs to be practiced. What is currently being practiced, however, is: above all, short-range reading. The small-part reading. And mostly digitally. Quickly checking emails, quickly skimming the news, whoever reads faster is finished faster, faster somewhere else … People still read an incredible amount, but in a different way. Researchers from all over Europe have studied what this does to our reading ability in recent years and recently published their findings in the Stavanger Declaration. The most important, but somehow unsurprising finding: people who read on paper are better at remembering content. Especially longer and complex factual texts that require great concentration are better understood when you have them in front of your eyes on a sheet of paper rather than on a screen. In addition, when reading digitally, readers tend to overestimate themselves, or as the researchers call it: There is an ‘overconfidence in one’s own ability to understand.’ You just think you’ve got it all figured out.

Not only what we read changes us. But also how. We still know too little about how we can sensibly shape the transition to the new technology.

What new roles can print take on in times of digitalization? What ideas and possibilities are there for digital reading? How does this change our reading behavior? How can reading assert itself against other cultural techniques such as playing, listening, or watching? The FURE creates space for statements, visions and positions not only from designers … but also for designers.

FURE Magazine

Editors: Rüdiger Quass von Deyen, Patrick Marc Sommer
Concept, Design & Layout: Fenna J. Flucke, Patrick Marc Sommer
Cover Design: Rüdiger Quass von Deyen
Price: € 19,80
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Picture ©: Marie Rime

Babyn Yar

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

“These are, as of the date of publication, the 28,016 known names of those killed in Babyn Yar:” In the center of the book Babyn Yar — Past, Present, Future, the 39-page core, these names form narrow columns, in tiny, silver lettering. The research project of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center examines the inconceivable that happened on two days in September 1941 not far from the center of Kiev: the mass murder of more than 33,000 Kiev Jews by the Nazi occupiers.

Not only historical texts and photographs are documented; one gets an impression of today’s Memorial Park with its places of remembrance. Future architectural installations are being planned.

The many white pages in the essays are by no means merely empty. They create spaces of the unknown, of pausing, of silence, of speechlessness—in short: of remembrance. Irritating white spaces are also encountered on the picture pages. They cut into the street views of today, as if a superficial layer was being removed. On the following page there is an old photograph that fits perfectly—the transition to historical pictures. Here and there they overlap, as mental collages, in a sense. On a black background, key moments are reconstructed in modern, almost archaeological-looking visualizations.

In the immediate vicinity of the Ukrainian Holocaust Memorial, Russian missiles struck on March 1st of this year. This, too, is now part of the history of this place. One cannot remember conclusively.

Babyn Yar

Authors: Nick Axel, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, Nicholas Korodody, Martin Dean
Publisher: Spector Books, Leipzig
Editor: Nick Axel and the Holocaust Memorial Center 
Design: Larissa Kasper, Rosario Florio, Samuel Bänziger
Workmanship: Gutenberg Beuys Feindruckerei, Langenhagen
ISBN: 978-3-95905-506-2
Price: € 42.–
Buy

Pictures ©: Pixelgarten, Frankfurt am Main

Exhibition 60 Years of Forte

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

On September 28th, the opening of the exhibition 60 Years of Forte, which honors the typeface of the same name, took place in Vienna. Forte, this living typeface, has been used, abused, and often overused for over six decades, since it was published by The Monotype Corporation in 1962. Its designer, Karl Reißberger, has been little known until now. The exhibition 60 Jahre Forte—Die Schrift, die alle kennen (60 Years of Forte) traces the genesis of the “typeface everyone knows” through Reißberger’s early posters, original designs, and advertising materials.

“I am pleased that with this exhibition and publication we have been able to give Forte, probably Austria’s most widespread cultural export worldwide, the recognition it has long deserved. Toshi Omaragi’s revision of the typeface for Microsoft will ensure that it continues to find global use over the next 60 years.” — Tom Koch (Editor)

The exhibition can be visited at designforum Wien until October 26th.

Find the publication finding Forte here.

60 Years of Forte

When?
September 28th–October 26th, 2022

Where?
designforum Vienna Q21/MQ
Museumsplatz 1/Hof 7
1070 Vienna
Austria

Picture ©: Stephan Doleschal

Weltformat Graphic Design Festival 2022

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

Six exhibitions, a symposium with international graphic artists, a competition for newcomers and panel discussions sum up this years edition of Weltformat. Already for the 14th time the Weltformat Graphic Design Festival 2022 takes place in Lucerne. With the pictorial representation of the theme Never Not Moving, the organizers want to introduce a broad audience to the art of motion design on the one hand and allude to the infinite variety that moving graphics offer consumers on the other. At the same time, the exciting diversity of the nine-day event picks up on digital as well as analog trends in design.

The Importance of Motion for Graphic Design
Underlying all graphic design is the same goal; it wants to move. Static productions achieve this through strong symbolism, emotional motifs, or even optical illusions. Films and animations tell stories. Motion design, on the other hand, transforms images, shapes, surfaces, and music into moving image formats. Every blank page presents the design team with the challenge of which technique to use. How much sensation does the job need? Which impulses are to be generated? Who is in focus as viewer and what should be perceived?

These diverse aspects of Never Not Moving are united by Weltformat. With the support of numerous creatives from the international as well as the Swiss graphic design scene, the Graphic Design Festival offers a place for encounters and aims to inspire, inform and motivate.

Weltformat Graphic Design Festival 2022

Program

Saturday, Oktober 08th

  • Opening day: symposium and lunch with curators, team and contributors
    Start 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Stattkino in Bourbaki, Lucerne
  • Vernissage of the main exhibition “We like to move it” at 4:30 p.m. in the Kunsthalle im Bourbaki, Lucerne
  • Opening of the exhibition “100 beste Plakate” with award ceremony Newcomer Award and Apèro 6 p.m. in the Kornschütte, Lucerne

Wednesday, Oktober 12th
Evening event with Florian Krautkrämer at 6 p.m. in the Rex cinema (HSLU Viscosi), Emmenbrücke

Thursday, Oktober 13th
Evening event with round table discussion at 6 p.m. in the Rex cinema (HSLU Viscosi), Emmenbrücke

Friday, Oktober 14th
Evening event with DIA Studio at 6 p.m. in the Rex cinema (HSLU Viscosi), Emmenbrücke

Saturday, Oktober 15th
Graphic bazaar with market stalls of graphic artists, art craft sale from 12 a.m.–6 p.m. at the Bourbaki, Lucerne

Exhibitions
From Oktober 8th to Oktober 16th, 2022: open daily from 12 a.m.–6 p.m.

Poster ©
100 beste Poster: Verena Mack, Severin Weber, Phila Büdding & Jana Rzehak, Nicole Brugger, Neo Neo, Jamy Herrmann, Fons Hickmann, Daniel Peter, Claudiabasel, Bernhard Vögele
Newcomer Award: Zoe Boudreau, Zhou Xuejie, Wanda Dufner Fischbach, Vera Bräm, Ruslan Abasov, Paul Theisen, Manuel Bauer, Manuel Bauer, Luise Motsch, Julius Geyer, Jam Saint, Huapu Fan, Haochen Xing, Federica Zanetti, Darya Rzhepyshevskaja, Daniel Drabek, Daebong Jeong, Christoph Reinicke, Aurore Huberty, Alisa Truong, Adrien Jacquemet-Villebon

finding Forte

Posted on by mareneyra

Forte, this lively and friendly typeface that everyone knows, has been used, misused, and overused for over six decades now, ever since it was published by The Monotype Corporation in 1962. Well-known figures in the typographic world like Stanley Morison and Vincent Connare have stood in the limelight of this typeface’s sprightly lifelines. But the typeface’s designer, Karl Reißberger, remained little known. Until now.

finding Forte traverses the world in search of “findings” such as Reißberger’s early posters, original designs, and advertising materials to trace the origin story of the “typeface everyone knows.” Sixty years after Forte’s first appearance, it has found new life as Toshi Omagari’s revised typeface, Forte Forward. Its release accompanies this book. 

Also finding its way into this book on Forte are the artistic visions of thirty-one contemporary artists who have examined Forte’s formal language in dialog with its historical outlines. The interpretations of these international creatives open up new approaches to typography.

finding Forte

Editors: Mara Reissberger, Tom Koch
Publisher: Slanted Publishers
Release: September 2022
Format: 17 × 24 cm
Volume: 224 pages
Language: English, German
Workmanship: Hardcover with glossy spot varnish, thread-stitching, full color
ISBN: 978-3-948440-42-8
Price: € 29.–
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Typeface of the Month: Rockhopper

Posted on by Juliane Lipp

October’s Typeface of the Month: Rockhopper is designed and published by Jeremy Tankard Typography.

Rockhopper plays with the idea of two typefaces in one. Firstly, it’s a rounded Sans with a softness designed to function well on high resolution screens. Its extended character set handles all manner of text with ease whether this is on-screen or off. Secondly, it explores the potential of cumulative swashes—from single to overkill. A single swash can be used to enhance a word, or many swashes added to visually push the bounds of legibility and expression. Never boring, Rockhopper presents itself with a subversive glint in its eye. A printed specimen is available free here.

1. Rounded Sans
As a simple sans serif type Rockhopper creates a soft text image through its choice of core letter shapes, such as the simpler forms of a and g together with more rolling forms in the Italics (such as e and v). There are no straight lines in Rockhopper, all the stems swell a little at their centre and flow smoothly and seamlessly to their soft rounded terminals. The range of weights stretches from an elegant ExtraLight to an eye-catching and engaging Black.

2. Decorative extremes
Beyond its quiet ability to set beautiful text, Rockhopper can turn up the volume and blur its silhouette through the increasing addition of swash elements. These were designed to allow for a huge range of expression and have been systematically considered through the idea of a ‘swash cloud’ that surrounds each letter. From which, one, two, three, or more swashes can be applied, often resulting in clashes which are expected and encouraged to create a visually rich texture.

The full character set is available to view online, at Typography.net where you can also test drive the fonts and download the Font info PDF.

Design information at StudioType.com
More information about the design of Rockhopper can be found at Studiotype.com and in Footnote 40 at typography.net/publications.

Typeface of the Month: Rockhopper

Foundry: typography.net
Designer: Jeremy Tankard
Release: 2022
File Formats: OTF, WOFF, WOFF2
Styles / widths / weights: Roman and Italics each in 7 weights (ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, ExtraBold, Black)
Price per style / family: a single font from £80 GBP with additional fonts from £60 GBP / family of 14 fonts from £560 GBP
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NaN Success

Posted on by mareneyra

NaN Success is the latest release by Jérémy Landes at Berlin-based label NaN. The three sub-families—Success Titling, Success Sans, and Success Text—all answer, separately and together different questions and challenges raised by typography. It carries without shame the many idiosyncrasies that can make an interesting titling typeface today. Jérémy Landes drew on his obsession with organic curves and his affinity for stylistic contrasts, a kind of Frankensteinian type monster family.

Late Art-Nouveau inspired typefaces, De Vinne, Louis Jou, mixed with a healthy amount of alien goo, he brought the master Success Titling sub-family to life. This display sub-family is packed with an insane 280 ligatures for both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. In that, Success is an out-of-the-box titling machine for designers. But because this wasn’t enough, Success Titling was augmented with innovative multi-width ligatures and alternates, meaning that compressed and wide glyphs are mixed in with its ligatures providing an inimitable hand-lettered feeling.

As a whole, Success stands as box of tools that might as well never been used together, but that can deliver surprisingly diverse tones of voice.

15% of Success revenue is donated to the NGO ClientEarth, which advocates for climate justice by bringing leaders and major corporations to speak the partnership with ClientEarth ensures that climate action is mindful of inclusion and equity, giving real hope for meaningful results.

To help bring legal action and address the root causes of the environmental crisis, the foundry has decided to offer a 100% discounted license to use Success for any conservation, sustainability, or environmental justice project.

NaN Success

Foundry: NaN
Designer: Jérémy Landes
Release: 2021–2022
Format: ttf, woff2 (Autohinted)
Weights and widhts: Compressed, Narrow, Extra Wide, Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Black
Buy

Forward Festival Berlin 2022—Recap

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

We were lucky enough to be invited to the Forward Festival Berlin 2022 and spend two inspiring days in Berlin from September 22nd to 23rd with great people at KINO INTERNATIONAL. We had a booth there with other exhibitors where we could sell our publications and present them to the interested audience from the whole creative industry.

Forward returned to Berlin and expanded to a two-day event! It was a program full of highlights ranging from international heavyweights to local heroes of the creative industries, more than 30 speakers on two stages, exclusive side-events, workshops, an interactive expo area, and much more.

For this special occasion, Forward went from afternoon to morning after to unite industry-leading and emerging creatives. As speakers, graphic design legend Eike König, Boogie, Anthony Burrill, galerist Johann König, Erik Kessels, and many more were taking the stage at KINO INTERNATIONAL during day and night.

It was a great two days and we thank the whole Forward team for their great work and look forward to the next time!

Yearbook of Type #6 2022/23

Posted on by Juliane Lipp

You know the scenario: You just want to find a fitting series or movie on your streaming platform—but you can’t find what you are looking for and keep doom-scrolling—until you turn off the computer. 

The same often happens when looking for the perfect typeface for your design. You know, the one that not only conveys the mood you are longing for, but also needs to fulfill all necessary requirements. In a mess of countless open browser tabs, bookmarks, lists, and folders, the right typeface and foundry—characterized by smallest details—is hard to find.

The Yearbook of Type #6 2022/23 is a collection of the latest published typefaces that helps you find the one—from a browse through the book, or quick look in the index that neatly sorts typefaces by class, designers, and foundries. Each font and font family is presented on a double page. On the left page, the font is applied; inspired by this year’s theme of film and drama. To the right, the typeface is described in detail; with all its features, as well as information about the designers and foundries. A complementary online microsite features all fonts with direct links to respective foundries and purchasing options.

The publication is rounded off by a series of essays, interviews, and tutorials on the subject of type design and contemporary typography. The Yearbook of Type #6 2022/23 provides clarity in a world of constant streaming, scrolling, and aimless browsing. Find the typefaces you’re looking for—and maybe even the right movie for the evening!

– Detailed presentation of 208 recent typefaces
– Ample background information
– Index of typeface classifications
– Index of all 200 type designers and 107 foundries from 33 countries
– Explanation of all OpenType features
– Introduction by Matthieu Salvaggio
– Essays by Karen Ann Donnachie, So-Hyun Bae, Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer, Andy Simionato, Jeremy Tankard, Martin Tiefenthaler, and Lies Wolf
– An microsite online links the typefaces directly to the foundries’ websites

Presented type foundries: 205TF, 3type, AG Typography Institute, AinsiFont, Alanna Munro Type Foundry, Apex Type Foundry, Atelier Brueckner, Atypical, Balibilly Design, Bastarda Type, Blaze Type, BLKBK Inc., BrassFonts, Bureau Sebastian Moock, Canada Type, Cape Arcona Type Foundry, Commercial Type, Connary Fagen, Inc., CRU Brand Consultancy, DSType Foundry, Fabio Haag Type, Fable Type Foundry, Face2Face, Finaltype, Formula Type, FSD, FSdesign, Gradient Type, Gregorij, Hanken Design Co., Hoftype, Horizon Type Foundry, HvD Fonts, In-House International, indestructible type*, Jeremy Tankard Typography, Julien Fincker, Kilotype, Kimmy Kirkwood, KOBU Foundry, Kontour, LA BOLDE VITA, Latinotype, Lazydogs Typefoundry, Lift Type, Los Andes Type, LuxTypo, MACHALSKI.WTF, Mark Simonson Studio, Mark van Leeuwen, Mass-Driver, MB Intl., Michal Tornyai, Monkey Type, Monotype, Morisawa.Inc, Moshik Nadav Typography, Mostardesign Type Foundry, NEW LETTERS, Nico Inosanto, Non Foundry, Nouvelle Noire Type Foundry, Nova Type Foundry, Occupant Fonts, Order, Our Polite Society Type, Pangram Pangram, Paratype, Peregrin Studio, PFA Typefaces, Posterizer KG, PSY/OPS, Quicknap.zzz, R-Typography, Road to Venice Type, Rosetta Type Foundry, Schriftlabor, Serpentype, Sharp Type, Skrr Type, Slow Fonts, Stan Hema, studio4oo2, Studio Rene Bieder, Studio Thonik, sugargliderz, Synthview Type Design, The Designers Foundry, The Foundry Types, Tour de Force Font Foundry, TYPE BY, TYPE DEPARTMENT, TYPE FIRM, Typejockeys, TypeMates, Typerepublic, Typerotation, TypeTogether, Typogama, Typotheque, Ultra Kuhl, Viktor Nübel, VivalaType, W Type Foundry, Wannatype, Wiener Schriften, Zetafonts

Our sincerest thanks goes out to all participants: Thank you for being a part of this project and your support and trust in us! You and your typefaces are amazing!

Yearbook of Type #6 2022/23
Movie Edition

Publisher: Slanted Publishers
Creative Direction: Lars Harmsen
Art Direction & Managing Editor: Juliane Nöst
Graphic Design Assistance: Saehyeen Shin, Clara Weinreich
Proofreading and Translation: Vicky Blake, Lies Wolf, Julia Kahl
Publishing Direction: Lars Harmsen, Julia Kahl
Microsite: Kolja Buscher
Release: September 2022
Volume: 464 pages
Format (w × h × d): 16 × 24 × 4.5 cm
Language: English
Specials: Hardcover
Color: Printed with 10 HKS Spot Colors, HKS Warenzeichenverband e. V.
Printing: Stober Medien GmbH
Bookbinding: Buchbinderei Klotz GmbH, stitch binding
Cover Material: Peydur neuleinen, 135 g / sm, peyer graphic gmbh
Paper Inside: Holmen TRND 2.0, 80 g / sm, Holmen Paper
Endpaper: SURBALIN seda, 115 g / sm, Pastellblau, peyer graphic gmbh
ISBN: 978-3-948440-41-1

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Tsunagu Mono Gatari—Verbindungsstücke

Posted on by ferdinandulrich

On the occasion of the ten-year anniversary of its artist residency program at Villa Kamogawa, the Goethe Insitute in Kyoto, its director Enzio Wetzel and curator Michael Hirschbichler invited former residents to submit “connecting pieces” (Japanese: tsunagu mono gatari, German: Verbindungsstücke) of Japanese-German cultural exchange for an exhibition and catalogue named Tsunagu Mono Gatari—Verbindungsstücke.

Berlin-based typographers Toshiya Izumo and Ferdinand Ulrich developed the visual concept of the bilingual catalog Tsunagu Mono Gatari–Verbindungsstücke. Their multi-script design is centered around a playful, unconventional approach to the different directions of reading: from top to bottom, left to right, and vice versa. 73 artist cards and a 60-page brochure of essays are held together by two wrappers. Their colors follow a palette selected by textile designer Nari Haase, printed letterpress by Daniel Klotz/die Lettertypen.

All text is set in Alessio D’Ellena’s Laica and in Akira Kataoka’s MaruminKatura, selected to complement each other. In addition to this convergence, the titling face Ribaasu offers a connecting element between the different scripts of both languages. Type designer TienMin Liao exclusively donated her unreleased yet award-winning typeface to this project. The printed catalog is photographed by Norman Posselt with hands of Robyn Steffen.

Tsunagu Mono Gatari—Verbindungsstücke

Publisher: Wasmuth & Zohlen
Volume: 73 artist cards, 60-page booklet
Format: 13 × 21 cm
Languages: Japanese, German
ISBN: 978 3 8030 3416 8
Price: € 28.–
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Dinamo Font Customizer

Posted on by Dinamo

Dinamo believes that customizing fonts should not be an exclusive thing that people need to pay lots of money for. Everyone should have easy access to modifying their own font toolbox! Over the years, the foundry has received numerous emails from customers asking for small changes to their fonts. Mostly, designers fall in love with some of the alternates included in their designs, and they reach out to them because they’d like to make them their new font’s default. In response to this regular inquiry, the Dinamo Font Customizer makes font customization free, quick, and easy for everyone who purchases Dinamo typefaces.

After choosing your typeface, and right before completing the checkout process, you can launch the customizer and select which alternate characters you’d like to make your new font’s default.

Say you’re buying Diatype and would like the double story “a” as your default rather than the single story “a”: You can now simply select that option before checkout and our website will generate personalized font files for you on the fly. The foundry likes to think of it as just as easy as customizing your own trainers on the web portals of personalizable trainer brands.

One more thing! You can also combine the Dinamo Font Customizer with the Custom Font Naming tool to create bespoke font files containing both your preferred alternates and personalized name. When you install the font, it’ll appear in your menu with your chosen name and default characters in all design applications (even WORD 😳).

Dinamo Font Customizer

Convince yourself of Dinamo Font Customizer

Pictoplasma 2022

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

We had the pleasure to attend the 18th Pictoplasma 2022 conference in Berlin on Thursday, September 15th. On the premises of Silent Green met a colorful crowd of friends of character design, illustration, game designers, and leading animation filmmakers.

It was a great day full of inspiring moments on the screen and in conversations with the high spirited participants and hosts. It was noticeable that everyone was very grateful and happy about the reunion after a long time.

The program of the conference was very varied and entertaining with talks, panel discussions, PechaKucha presentations, animation screenings, workshops, and exhibitions.

We especially liked the atmosphere at the puppet workshop of the Austrian artist and illustrator Claudia Six. During her talk before the workshop, she shared with the audience the visions she has had since childhood. Perceiving ghost-like figures in her environment inspires her work as a puppet designer for performances and stage designs for theater and opera. The workshop offered the participants of the conference the opportunity to become creative themselves and to design and present their own puppets in an open environment.

We are really looking forward to the next festival!

Here you get an overview of the entire program of the event.

Typedesign Experts Share Their Knowledge

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Have you ever wondered whether digital typography needs different rules than typesetting on paper? Or why some brands’ logotypes don’t really look convincing? These and many other questions will be answered in a jam-packed workshop with two respected type designers from the Monotype Studio.

On the fringes of the outstanding type exhibition Finding Forte (September 28th – October 26th, 2022) at designforum Wien, Monotype is inviting communications experts to the three-hour type design workshop Typedesign Experts Share Their Knowledge. On October 6th, starting at 4 p.m., up to 50 participants will learn everything about new trends in type design, what characterizes a good, contemporary typeface, and how a professional word mark is created.

The two-part event will begin with a presentation by Emilios Theofanous, Creative Type Director at Monotype, who will examine the current and future challenges in written communication: technology, aesthetics, values and globalization. This will be followed by an interactive logotype workshop with Friedrich Althausen, type designer at Monotype. He will talk with participants about consistency and form relationships, contrast, proportion and spacing. Afterwards, wordmarks will be designed on paper and then digitized using the best method.

Typedesign Experts Share Their Knowledge 
Type 3.0 & Logo Workshop

When?
October 6th, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
get-together afterwards

Where?
designforum
Quartier 21
MQ Museumsplatz 1
Vienna
Austria

Participation is free of charge. [CTA] Apply here for one of 50 places!

About Monotype
Monotype creates brands that matter with type, technology, and expertise. The company partners with leading foundries to deliver the broadest inventory of high-quality typefaces in the world. Further information

About Emilios Theofanous
Born in Cyprus, Monotype Creative Type Director Emilios Theofanous, has a soft spot for quality Greek and multilingual typography. Since joining Monotype, Emilios has worked on many custom typeface projects for clients across fashion, banking, retail and automotive sectors. More about Emilios

About Friedrich Althausen
Friedrich Althausen is a type designer based in Monotype’s Berlin office. After his studies at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Friedrich worked as a freelance designer with a special interest in book typography and letter drawing. More about Friedrich

FRUIT EXHIBITION X

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

Fruit Exhibition X turns ten and announces its latest edition: the international festival and market of independent art publishing returns from September 30th to October 2nd, 2022, in its original structure: a three-day market that brings together the best examples of independent publications and a program of meetings, film screenings, exhibitions, and workshops dedicated to the world of publishing.

For this important final act, Fruit Exhibition has chosen DumBO, a temporary urban regeneration space a few hundred meters from the center and the Central Station, ready to welcome the proposals of almost one hundred Italian and international exhibitors including micro art publishers, self-publisher, graphic designer, illustrators, and artists, contemporary graphics publishing houses, magazines, music labels, artisan printers: on display, the public will be able to find artist’s books, catalogs, graphic design, zines, sound editions, illustration, photography, new types of traditional, and digital printing and publications.

Two focuses this year: Invitation to travel, curated by Chiara Capodici, book designer and founder of the Roman bookstore Leporello-photobooks et al., which underlines the importance of the dimension of travel, first of all interior, in its transcultural meaning , historical and visionary; Drawing (r) evolution, curated by Andrea LoSavio (gallery D406) and Cinzia Ascari, instead investigates the growing interest in contemporary drawing in recent years, not only as a medium at the service of publishing but also as an autonomous and always accomplished artistic form most appreciated in the art market. 

Ten workshops dedicated to training and creativity, ranging from traditional techniques such as lettering, screen printing, and letterpress, to digital publishing and new technological frontiers. There will also be a rich program of screenings and talks designed to bring the public closer to independent publishing through interviews, conferences, and presentations of unpublished projects.

Fruit Exhibition is a Crudo project in collaboration with Arci Bologna with the support of Regione Emilia Romagna, Comune di Bologna, and Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna.

FRUIT EXHIBITION X

When?
September 30th to October 2nd, 2022

Where?
DumBO 
Via Camillo Casarini 19
Bologna
Italy

Timetables
Friday, September 30th: 5 p.m. – 1 a.m. (market closes at 10 p.m.)
10:30 p.m. concert by Stefano Ricci
Saturday, October 1st: 11 a.m. – 1 a.m.
10 p.m. dj set
Sunday, October 2nd: 11 a.m. – 1 a.m. (market closes at 9:30 p.m.);
9 p.m. closing party

Admission
(Ticket valid for three days)
€ 9.– for ARCI 2022/2023 card holders
€ 14.– admission + ARCI 2022/2023 card (membership at the entrance)
€ 20.– admission for non-members
Pre-membership recommended

The program may undergo minor variations, for updates it is advisable to consult the website of Fruit Exhibition X.

Presale

Exhibitors of Fruit Exhibition X:
5X Letterpress (Italy), AIAP (Italy), Alvorturazine (Italy), Almanacco Press (Italy), Anita Scianò (Italy), Anna Giuntini-Iroiroworld (Italy), Anomali (Italy), Anonima Impressori (Italy), APRI (Italy), Archivio Magazine (Italy), Baco About Photographs (Italy), Beauroma Books (Italy), BEKKO (Italy), BOLO Paper (Italy), Cabin Boy Studio (Italy), Calluna Cartilegi (Italy), Canicola (Italy), Checkpoint Charly (Italy), Cicuta (Italy), Collettivo Canederli (San  Marino), Collettivo Franco (Italy), Compulsive Archive (Italy), Condylura+Xong (Italy), Costanza Coletti (Italy), Curatela Placebo (Italy), Damocle Edizioni (Italy), Damiano Boldrini (Italy), Dito Publishing (Italy), École supérieure d’arts & médias de Caen/Cherbourg (France), Eki Magazine (Italy), Elfi Seidel (Germany), Federico Blu di Prussia (Italy), Flow Photozine (Italy), FranZine (Italy), FRUTE (Italy), Fuori Formato (Italy), Galleria D406 disegno contemporaneo (Italy), Galleria Disastro (Italy), Giada Fuccelli (Italy), Giorgiabaloo (Italy), Howphelia (Italy), Illustation (Italy), Inferno 5 (Italy), Ivana Spinelli (Italy), KABUL Magazine (Italy), Kristian Ujhelji (Austria), Le Palle (Italy), Leporello-Photobooks et al. (Italy), Libri Finti Clandestini (Italy), Libri Tasso (Italy), Lievito Creative LAB (Italy), Lisa Gelli (Italy), Lök Zine (Italy), Lucangelo Bracci (Italy), Maaterials (Italy), Marcello Ruvidotti (Italy), Marco Brancato (Italy), Margotmao (Italy), Marisa Ventura (Italy), Mel The Sketcher (Italy), Memorial Paint (Italy), Mia Martì (Spain), Mira Mink (Finland), Mulieris Magazine (Italy), Noi, libreria progetto TATO (Italy), Nerofumo680 (Italy), Numero Cromatico (Italy), Obsolete Shit (Italy), Officina del giorno dopo (Italy), Officina Typo (Italy), Officine Amaro (Italy), Papièl di Carmine Luino (Italy), Panopticon (Italy), Polenta Malgazine (Italy), Press Press (Italy), Rapso (Italy), Red Lab Edizioni (Italy), Robida (Italy), Rollingsteel (Italy)  Saleh Kazemi (Iran/Italy), Salvatore Liberti (Italy), Sigaretten Edizioni Grafiche (Italy), Studio Boîte (Italy), Studio Makebu (Italy), Studio Saor (Italy), Suppergiú Magazine (Italy), Suren Hash (Mongolia), Taller Trez (Colombia), Testa Imperfetta (Italy), Valeria Cardetti (Italy), VIAINDUSTRIAE (Italy), Vincenzo Sparagna (Italy), Virginia Elena Patrone Illustrations (Italy), Zanna Dura (Italy).

60 Years of Forte

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

Forte, this living typeface, has been used, abused, and often overused for over six decades, since it was published by The Monotype Corporation in 1962. Its designer, Karl Reißberger, has been little known until now. The exhibition 60 Jahre Forte—Die Schrift, die alle kennen (60 Years of Forte) traces the genesis of the “typeface everyone knows” through Reißberger’s early posters, original designs, and advertising materials. It goes in search of worldwide finds and accompanies its revision as Forte Forward by Toshi Omagari 60 years after its first appearance. In dialog with the historical outline, a contemporary examination of the Forte’s formal language takes place on the basis of 31 artistic positions. With their interpretations, international creatives open up a new approach to typography.

60 Years of Forte

When?
September 28th – October 26th, 2022

Where?
designforum Vienna Q21/MQ
Museumsplatz 1/Hof 7
1070 Vienna
Austria

Opening hours
Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Saturday, Sunday, Holiday, 2 p.m. – 6 p.m. 

Program

September 28th, 6:30 p.m.
Exhibition opening

September 29th, 7 p.m.
Craig Winslow (tga lecture)
Augmented restoration: shining a light on faded ads
Light Capsules, an ongoing worldwide project

October 5th, 7 p.m.
Toshi Omagari (tga lecture)
Taking Forte forward
On behalf of Microsoft, Toshi revised Forte in 2022

October 6th, 4 p.m.
Typo 3.0 & Logo Workshop (Monotype)
With creative type directors from Monotype Studios
Emilios Theofanous (Studio London) reveals what tomorrow’s written communication will look like, Friedrich Althausen (Studio Berlin) designs a professional wordmark with visitors and digitizes it.
Free workshop, 50 seats
To the registration

October 13th, 3:30 p.m.
Typowalk and Curator’s tour
Buy tickets

Admission
€ 4.– / € 2.– reduced

Publication “Finding Forte”
Preorder here!
Also available at designforum Vienna

 

Showreel

Posted on by Tessa Breuer

HDMIHDGDL—or: shouldn’t audio-visual be called visual-auditory? Sabrina Zeltner aka Subrihanna has been on the road as a visual artist with various live video projects for years. In her artist book Showreel she makes the attempt to print her music videos, complemented by texts to reflect on her work by Kristoffer Cornils, Judith Grobe, Linda Weidmann, and Meera Theunert.

Sabrina Zeltner’s artistic practice is situated in the interplay between video, installation, audio-visual live performances, graphic design, as well as subculture and club culture. She nearly always works in collaboration, making the mutual exchange and cooperation with musicians, artists, and graphic designers into an important aspect of the overall dynamic of her artistic practice. As she says herself, shared moments provide a direction for impulses. The multi-layered, largely interdisciplinary projects are manifested in music videos, live visuals, and live video performances, in which visual worlds and aesthetic form are mutually influential—the live moment is always already anticipated in the videos or inspires them. This artists’ book draws on the visual content of these music videos and live video performances. Using an experimental approach, moving images are rendered in book form, translating something ephemeral into something permanent.

Showreel

Design: Philipp Dittmar at Complex Pleasures
Publisher: Verydeeprecords (VDR055, 2022)
Workmanship: Soft Cover, Thread Stitching
Volume: 456 Pages 
Printing: six colors
Price: € 23.–
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Picture ©: Maria Bayer

New Visual Identity and Website for Studio Algo

Posted on by illo.tv

Algo, a data-driven studio specializing in video automation, is in fact a sister company of illo.tv, the ten years old international creative studio focused on motion design, illustration, and art direction. The team of Algo was born as its tech division, running a platform that turns data into videos, at scale: it now has become an independent company, with a dedicated team of eight people. They now created a new visual identity and website for Studio Algo.

To reflect this big step of growth, the studio has decided to push further their online presence. The new visual identity is abstract, geometrical, and tied to graphic design roots, with bold colorful shapes, gradients, distortion effects, and custom glyphs bringing lots of character, while a strong grid and the use of typography keeps everything in check.

The new Tech page brings visitors behind the scenes of the technologies, showcasing how Algo uses artificial intelligence to create automated videos that are indistinguishable from human generated ones. The Toolkit page lets users play with the building blocks at the basis of every project, while the new Idea Generator (in homepage) helps widen the spectrum of project ideas, helping companies, and organizations discover what they can do with the Algo technology.

The new Air Quality demo showcases real-time pollution levels for the top hundred cities in the world, allowing you to download the video thanks to Algo’s serverless rendering technology.

The website was fully developed by the Algo team using Framer, the newest No-Code platform, a tool that lets users create a website with an interface similar to an editable Figma file—but with the power of an actual blazing fast website in React.

New Visual Identity and Website for Studio Algo

Design, animation, and development: Algo
Additional development: 7LInternational
Press kit mockup: generated with Dall-e

50U Book

Posted on by rea202610

50U is a book about the United Arab Emirates, the UAE. It was published on the occasion of the UAE’s golden jubilee: 50 years ago—December 2nd, 1971—the confederation of seven Gulf states was officially declared.

50U tells the story of the UAE in 50 portraits of people, plants and places, painting an intimate picture of life in the Emirates, with the memories and expectations of its inhabitants. Over a period of just fifty years, they have witnessed the transformation of a partly nomadic, partly town-based community into a globally active metropolitan society. Interviews with a former minister, a fisherman, an astronaut, a fashion designer, an AI specialist, a female racing driver, a contemporary artist, a conservation expert, a Japanese baker, a tailor and many more tell first-hand what it is like to grow up in the UAE or to spend the better part of one’s life in the region. As one of the interviewees has it:

“In 50 years, the city has transformed from desert to high-rise buildings that pierce the clouds. We have gone from a handful of nationalities to over 250 nationalities. We have jumped from the industrial stage in growth to sector diversification, nuclear power for sustainable solutions, and selling start-ups to big companies. There is almost a story in every sector and industry to tell of the past 50 years.” — Salem Ghanem Al-Marri

An extensive photo essay by Charlie Koolhaas documents the present of ‘where the people are,’ while documentation of plant-life shows what an amazing variety of species the desert contains.

50U Book

Publisher: Archis
Design: Irma Boom assisted by Lulu van Dijck, Jan van der Kleijn
Commissioner: Yasser Bin Khediya
Initial concept: Yasser Bin Khediya, Roadha Bin Khediya, Irma Boom
Concept development: Ahmed and Rashid bin Shabib, Archis, IBO
Editors: Ahmed and Rashid bin Shabib, Anna Seaman, Arjen Oosterman, Francesco Degl’Innocenti, Lilet Breddels, Irma Boom
Project director: Khawla Bin Khediya
Managing director: Francesco Degl’Innocenti
Editorial assistant: Idil Gökgöz
English copy editors: David Cross Kane, Ban Kattan
Transcription and translation: Lien Sulaiman, Noor Refaie, Awad Mustafa, Asha Sherwood, Dana Alomar
Arabic translation and editing: Soul Sisters: Nour Sulaiman, Lien Sulaiman, Lojain Sulaiman, Badiah Ezzi
Arabic page setting: Huda AbiFarès
Volume: 352 pages
Workmanship: Softcover with Silver foil
Format: 24 cm × 17 cm × 3 cm
Print: full color 300 illustrations
Language: English/Arabic
Printer: Zwaan Lenoir
Printed and Bound in the Netherlands
Distributors: Jashanmal (MENA region), Ideabooks (rest of the world)
ISBN: 978 90 77966 921
Price: € 35.–
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Jacopo Valentini—Concerning Dante

Posted on by feder23

Over the centuries, the cultural significance of Dante’s Divine Comedy has gone beyond the purely literary sphere, influencing various aspects of society thanks also to a vast tradition of visual transpositions. Jacopo Valentini—Concerning Dante is a meta-project on the relationship between literary text and landscape, and on the evocative power of the Divine Comedy that, over the centuries, has shaped the perception of places to the point of characterizing them as ‘Dantean.’ Jacopo Valentini investigated a series of places in Italy mentioned by the Supreme Poet and, by relating them to other landscapes and still lifes with the same visual potency, created analogies for a Dantean geography. Valentini’s visual narrative unfolds around three symbolic places and three famous illustrations from Dante’s text, interweaving the Phlegrean Fields, the Pietra di Bismantova, and the Delta of the River Po—interpreted as the gateways to Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise—with the imagery of Federico Zuccari, Alberto Martini, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Jacopo Valentini—Concerning Dante

Photographer: Jacopo Valentini
Design: Federico Barbon
Editor: Humboldt Books
Languages: Italian, English
Volume: 92 pages
Format: 20 × 30 cm
Workmanship: paperback
Release: 2021
ISBN: 9788899385910
€ 19.–
Buy

Virtues of Wood

Posted on by UrsinaWirz

Bienvenue Studios discovered the remarkable deadwood sculptures at the center of their new collection at Hawkey’s Bay, a beach in New Zealand, and they immediately fascinated them. They once served as a habitat for countless organisms. A habitat that is threatened, but which is receiving more and more attention. Now they can be admired in the new collection Virtues of Wood as works of art created by nature.

Due to forestry and the increasing demand for energy wood, many animals and plants that depend on deadwood are threatened. “Rare and endangered are above all light- and heat-loving species as well as habitat specialists of biologically old development phases. One of the biggest deficits, especially in the urbanized areas, is the lack of diverse structures and the lack of deadwood and old trees,” says Dr. Rita Bütler of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape in an interview on their website.

“Presenting banal things in such a way that you can perceive them from a new perspective is important for our work. With our prints, we want to awaken interest in nature. Our work should inspire and create a certain tension.” says Oliver Hischier.

Bienvenue Studios creates visual culture from nature. An environment with natural elements has a positive influence on people’s health and well-being. Through Biophilic Design, Bienvenue Studios promote the desire for nature and integrate it into everyday life. This results in a series of art prints, postcards, posters, but also textiles.

Virtues of Wood

Take a look at their collection 

Boxhorn #38

Posted on by Ivana Baumann

The German University of Applied Sciences Aachen has recently published the 38th edition of the University’s local design magazine named Boxhorn. This issue: Boxhorn #38 analyses and discusses what the german term Zuhause (Home) means.

In conversations with designers, architects, self-employed people, complete strangers, students, photographers, illustrators, tenants, and many other folks, Boxhorn got to know different forms, definitions, and views and give them a space to thrive in the 38th issue—they give them a home.

The issue was edited by Delayne Kreutz, Gabriel Dukić, Hannah Stollenwerk, Ivana Baumann, Maret Van Stiphout, Sophie Leiwen, and Zeno Scheffel, under the supervision of Prof. Ilka Helmig. In an edition of 150 copies, 600 of the 900 individual booklets were bound by hand and, after printing with HP Indigo, finished with fluorescent red via risography printing.

Boxhorn #38

Published: July 2022
Pages: 116 pages
Dimensions: 195 × 280 mm
Price: € 15.–
ISSN: 1864 – 2535
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