Hi Schatz!

Take a look at this: Berlin thoroughly photographed from 1997 to 2009 through the eyes of Martin Eberle in his newly published book Hi Schatz! which is now available at Slanted Shop.

They document Berlin exactly as it actually was back then—beyond all official projections: unfinished, provisional, run-down, remaining, free, fantastic.

Above all, the public and semi-public spaces of the city at that time also function as carriers of informal communication—slips of paper that someone hangs somewhere, a love letter that gets lost, flyers that are passed on, something someone sprays on a wall.

The everyday and no longer consciously perceived surface of the city becomes a foil for the most private mini-messages, idiosyncratic design solutions, or sheer insanity.

Much of it cannot be deciphered without insider knowledge—or, more exactly, without being art savvy or familiar with the social environment. Always obvious, however, is an untamed creative force that appropriates the urban landscape in terms of an own interpretation. Niches and empty spaces are occupied, altered, and utilized to convey one’s own message, or a joke.

The photographs of these appropriations resurrect the Berlin of those years and portray the city as personal, dirty, vulnerable, and emotional, showing its many niches and lost corners, and the whole craziness of it. Martin Eberle has already made a name for himself by dealing with a similar subject in his book Temporary Spaces (Gestalten Verlag).

Hi Schatz! is supplemented by Heinrich Dubel’s so-called psycholinguistic miniatures of everyday life, short texts that can be subsumed under the catchphrase “hearing voices.” They consist of text fragments and utterings seen or overheard in public places—and provide, written down from memory, a special “background noise” to Eberle’s portrait of a big city.

The book comes with a flexi disc, which features an audio recording of Heinrich Dubel reading the eponymous letter Hi Schatz!.

Also, the book contains all the song lyrics of the Berlin band Jeans Team from 1996 to 2006, as well as additional photographs that were not included in the first edition, which is now out of print.

Hi Schatz!

Publisher: Fantôme Verlag
Photographer: Martin Eberle
Author: Heinrich Dubel
Language: German
Volume: 212 pages
Format: 22.3 × 32 cm
Bookbinding: Softcover, thread stitching
ISBN: 978-3-940999-53-5
Edition: 2nd edition (extended)
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Making Of Slanted Magazine #39—Stockholm

Slanted Magazine #39—Stockholm is in production and will be out end of April 2022! Not only are we happy to show you our impressions from the Swedish capital, but we also produce entirely on Swedish paper from Holmen. The wood for it grows in the Swedish forests—the material couldn’t be more fitting 🙂

It was printed in offset with blue spot color from HKS by our long-time printing partner Stober Medien. The magazine is still available as a discounted pre-order until its release on April 26th—or just subscribe now!

Enjoy the photos!

Creative Paper Conference

The past years have shown the true value of meeting others in person, of talking to each other, of sharing beautiful and inspiring moments. The Creative Paper Conference offers two days of real-life experiences for all senses.

If you are a professional creative or a print and paper enthusiast, then this invitation is for you: On July 26th and 27th, the team of Grafikmagazin holds inspiring lectures as well as a short lecture series and gathers designers and printing experts who will give an insight into their work. Additionally, there are numerous stands and opportunities to explore and experience paper up close.

Follow your curiosity and engage in inspiring conversations with others from the industry, learn about design, print, and paper, all while enjoying two summer days in the beautiful city of Munich.

Speaking of summer: As your safety is highly important to us, we decided on the July date instead of autumn, in order to minimize the risk of infection. That said, we will hopefully also benefit from pleasant weather and warm temperatures that will shift networking outside and into the neighboring beer garden. For those who cannot attend in person for whatever reasons, the conference will also be broadcast online for the first time.

The keynotes reflect the abundant perspectives on communication design, showing projects from corporate identities and packaging design to book design, from posters to illustrations. With regard to our conference’s main topic, print and paper, our respective speakers put an emphasis on how paper can be part of unique ideas and how it can sharpen a creative vision. The technical aspects of paper will be displayed too: how it can be manufactured from unusual materials or be optimized in its use through color management. Underlining these aspects, sustainability in design will also be central to the content at the CPC. All keynotes will be held in German.

Following designers and studios will grace us with their presence: Design Studio B.O.B. / Herburg Weiland / Mario Drechsler / Papieroffizin / Tintenfuchs / Studio Bruch / klee.steinberger / Hardy Seiler / Short lecture series

More about the Creative Paper Conference
The CPC has been held in Munich every two years since 2006. It is aimed at all those who are passionate about producing paper, printing it, and finishing it, or using it for their design projects. Creative people can be looked over their shoulders at lectures and the most beautiful papers and printed products can be discovered in the 700 sm exhibition area. The Creative Paper Conference is about inspiration, exchange, and communication with passion.

About Grafikmagazin
As the name indicates, Grafikmagazin is a print magazine focusing on all things graphic design. Primarily it’s aimed at professional creatives and design students from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and beyond. Every two months, Grafikmagazin presents outstanding work from the fields of graphic design, typography, illustration, photography, design theory, research, paper, and printing.

Creative Paper Conference

When? 
July 26–27, 2022

Where?
Alte Kongresshalle
Am Bavariapark 14
80339 Munich
Germany

Tickets
Price: 296.– Euro (day tickets and offers for students also available)

Early Bird: until May 25th
Creative Paper Dinner: July 26th, 75.– Euro (limited seats)
Language: German
Get your ticket now

Elmira

Elmira is a family inspired by the process that type goes through when being woven in industrial power looms. Focusing on textile labels, it is a 100% sans serif family, that features a grotesque for small typesetting and display layered fonts, that can be paired, juxtaposed and layered; giving a lot of choices for experimentation to the end-user.
The letters recreate the woven textile process found in clothing tags. Vertical and horizontal, front and back are the names found in the “looms” directly related to the direction and position of threads in the woven pattern. The font explores the notion of creating a type system that re-created the limitations and restrictions of weaving letters.

LIQUID TYPE

This is one of the first sketches for a typeface with a variable width I’m currently working on. “Flexibility” should appear as a liquid typeface. In order to obtain this characteristic, each letter is painted by hand in one flow. Just like spilled liquids or raindrops landings on surfaces and leaving wet trails.

Basic Instinct: House numbers

House numbers form a figurative object on every building. They are primarily used for orientation and to identify the district. Once installed, they are rarely exchanged or replaced. This is also the decisive argument for choosing recycled plastic. However, house numbers are also a means of personal expression, which is why the numbers were deliberately designed to be very “exotic” during the process. The typographic approach as well as the personal interest lies in the modular interplay of basic shapes such as the circle, the triangle and the rectangle. Due to the manufacturing process, no two numerals are alike, which gives the numerals an additional high design value.

OM Litho

OM Litho is a design experiment on variable font, inspired by crazy type composition from old specimen. The starting point was a light and bold style, both in condensed and expand versions. Then to each style a contrasted version was added and after that also a medium form, common resultant of all styles. To each style I also inserted round, slanted and backslanted form (both 45 degrees). Main goal was to keep maximum character contrast between light and bold and still have one medium version.
The design process was about fun and learning variable fonts at the same time.

Ciudadela

Ciudadela is a font inspired in urban fences. It’s part of a much larger design and research project, called, letra capital: type walks in Buenos Aires. As result of the inspiration found during these walks, Ciudadela takes after all the laborious blacksmith work we found.
It was built with one style and no lowercase, but it explores something else. It looks into how ornated and connected shapes can be in writing before they become a texture. Each word written in these heavily ornated version of Ciudadela explores unique letter connections, shapes, stroke, openings and endings, playing with this idea of a typeface turning into custom writing.

basic_form

basic_form is a typographic experiment, exploring the possibilities of grid-based letter systems. The visual form is taking inspiration from the early pixel fonts, but my focus was to look for different solutions and more abstract objects as an outcome, while working on two weights in both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. First presentations of the project were connected to this year’s 36 days of type and 33 letters for Ukraine action, but it is still a unit-based-system in construction, undergoing further development.

PL FUNKY 2

Design of the second instalment of EP series that compiles the most promising Polish club artists evolving from dubstep and funky.

To produce glitch/digital effect, animations of cover elements were created. The animations were displayed on a monitor and scanned on a flatbed scanner. Through experimentation with animation framerate and scan speed the final effect was achieved.

Weave Invert

My second submission is an inverted image of the underside of the paper weaving. The negative space created when the vertical strips of paper are pushed through to the front makes up the letterforms. I hadn’t focused on the underside when weaving the paper so when I turned the page over, it was a happy accident that the negative space had been created. The font has been created by experimenting with paper strips and allowing the paper to form the word.

Weave

I created my first submission by weaving vertical strips of paper through a horizontal loom. The style of type created and the word chosen references a digital format but has been created entirely by hand. The process of weaving each letterform forced me to think much more deeply about each form and the curves, lines and negative space that give a letter its character. The font has been created by experimenting with paper strips and allowing the paper to form the word.