Non-normative letters for a non-normative future.

Bud Rodecker — Design Direction, Design
Alyssa Arnesen — Design

Graphic excerpt from a soon to be released uplifting identity.

John Pobojewski — Concept, Design Direction, Strategy, Design
Nick Adam — Design

One of three distinct brands designed to emphasize the differences of lifestyles in a new tower in Chicago. This op art 23 is designed with a brutalism feel that relates to the loft’s architecture and attitude.

Nick Adam — Design Direction, Designer
Avery Branen — Designer, Illustrator

Unselected identity direction for a new restaurant that is reinventing Nashville Hot Chicken in Chicago.

“Stripes Vertical” is a monospaced display font that I designed earlier this year.
The founder and developers of a start-up focused on industrial IoT solutions I work for introduced me to free software, open source technology and the pioneer hackers spirit. So, designing the brand identity of the company, I used a visual style that recalls the graphics of the first personal computers and the dawn of the internet. I used the “Stripe Vertical” font for the title, numbers and acronyms in two one-sheet-only pdf presentations. Soon I would like to digitize and share it for free.

Bud Rodecker — Design Director, Designer
Alyssa Arnesen — Designer, Typeface Designer

Southwest Sans is a display typeface that was designed for residences in the Southwest of the United States. The monospaced-letterform build from Southwest motifs with a uniform geometry.

Pasto is a fun and charming display type family of two styles and four weights each. The first one, Print, is a textured irregular stamp style, and Sharp is a straightforward soft-edged type with clean strokes.

This type family provides three alternating alphabets that are automatically replaced in turn repeatedly to avoid the same letterforms and textures appearing next to each other, once more referring to its natural uniqueness inspiration.

Perfectly suited for graphic design and any display use, Pasto has very large language support! Special characters and currency symbols are also available.

Earthpass 20XX invites the reimagination and speculation of the world.
20XX indicates that this concept is a wishful dream for this century.
This luminescent keychain is made of laser-cut acrylic and reminds of official identity documents.
Earthpass 20XX believes that no one should be excluded by its gender, race, ability, or anything other, and expects these values from its holders.
“NO GENDERS. NO BORDERS.”
As the world seems filled with horrific news every day, this seems like a far-away utopia of a speculative, yet hopeful future.
The team of Earthpass 20XX donates its profits to Ukrainian Refugee Aid and Free Palestine.

(Photography: Elisabeth Thoma, Product Shoot: Sibylle Hornung, 3D

Nick Adam — Design Direction, Design
Avery Branen — Design

Two identity directions for an outdoor, neighborhood arts space for public exploration, expression, and exchange.

John Pobojewski — Concept, Design Direction, Animation, Audio
Zach Minnich — 3D, Animation
Leah Wendzinski — Animation, Cinematography
Alyssa Arnesen — Design
Nick Adam — Typeface Design

Type Cast is a short digital play performed as a constructed dialogue between two individuals, each wearing typographic clothing in conversation with each other.

Conceived and directed by John Pobojewski, the piece explores the relationship between letters, personality, emotion, and stereotype. Throughout the dialogue, the two actors challenge each others’ expectations, and begin to lose faith in their mental image of what each other stands for — both for the good and for the bad.

OpenType technology allows for multiple variations of the same glyph to be embedded in one font and then displayed semi-randomly when typeset with Contextual Alternates active. What happens when these variations are from commonly available typefaces that are similar yet different – such as the four common san serifs: Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica, Arial, and Univers? How do the subtle variations in the visual characteristics of each typeface scan when bodies of text are set in this mix of glyphs? Do the hybrid font and the derived typography reveal the differences and similarities of the original typefaces? And what are the copyright implications? For more info: ianmitchell.online/common

A Bilingual typographic visualization of the sound of Rocks “Booming” and Water “Splashing.” With the word BOOM being the sound of rocks crashing in English and the word TISH (تش) being the sound of water splashing in Arabic, the letting and composition explore the different dimensions of these Bi-Scriptural and Bilingual contrasting sounds and words through organic forms, 2D, 3D and Motion.

Qanik type is an ever-changing font design project. It was born to combine order with chaos.
Geometric and archaic glyphs of different manufactures change as you write. The order is identified in the design that composes the letters with simple and modular, but almost never parallel lines. The shapes of the letters are inspired by rock carvings.
The chaos is given by the almost random alternation of the weight of the letters. Qanik means “snow in the air” in the Inuit language. The QanikType Snow variant is like a snow storm and you don’t understand what you write.

We are used to conceiving typography as a visual system made of two-dimensional black shapes and this both on paper and screen. Recent technologies make it possible to easily act on this two-dimensionality by forcing the very concept of writing in favor of a more expressive and experimental approach to the typographic form. it is therefore more and more common to see letters move in space, deform, change color, become 3D. Serendipity is an animated poster generated from 2D letters. Like vases made on a lathe, the letters rotate on themselves, creating solids with pure shapes, almost anthropomorphic sculptures. Typography thus becomes a three-dimensional object with new formal connotations.

My practice is about abandoning control and accepting the uncontrollable. My poster is a word cloud of obsessions that includes unwanted thoughts, urges, worries, and doubts. It’s from different analog methods of chance and unpredictability (IE., soapy paint bubbles, pastel dust, collage, or shaving cream with food coloring).

Pexi pexi is an experimental tool where the user can create shapes thus type on a grid with basic modules like squares and circles but also emoji and reform the grid axis stretching the modules. The idea started from my intention to learn somehow code but also from the ability of code to create interaction with the user.

Kinetic letters is an ongoing study and experimentation upon the movement of type along time. How type can be more expressive and have a character by moving but also how type can change form, along the time sequence. The particular letters are also part of the 36days of type challenge for this year, a challenge that its purpose is to experiment and push further what we consider type.

The LetterOne has its origins as a stencil font that allows one to draw each letter and each digit with only one stencil. The resulting font was digitalised and then converted into a modular letter system for letterpress printing. For this purpose, the stencil was produced as a mould into which six different acrylic-glass elements can be inserted. This system is also modular in the sense that several of these modules can be combined to form extended or condensed typefaces. LetterOne thus takes the path from an analogue stencil font via a modern font for digital use back to the analogue, historical technique of letterpress printing.

My interest in experimental type design lent itself perfectly to a project I recently did for Nottingham Light Night 2022 where the city was lit up across two days, showcasing various light-based projects. My project, ’A Rebel City in Motion,’ came to life as a projected piece, exploring the rebellious spirit of the city through type and animation. By playing with form, colour, texture and legibility, my project sought to challenge the way we perceive information in a dynamic and rebellious way. The project brought together type and animation which are two important components of my work and the type itself spelt out different positive associations relating to the theme of being a rebel.

“AEON” is a highly experimental poster/artwork design. It express a fear, anxious feelings to the infinite future with twisted and liquefied types.

»fighting for the truth«
80cm x 80cm
acrylic, dispersion paint & thread on canvas, framed
©2022

»how quickly things can change II«
30cm x 50cm
acrylic & dispersion paint on canvas, framed
©2021

»pretending«
50cm x 50cm
acrylic & dispersion paint on canvas, stitched, framed
© 2020

»very well«
30cm x 50cm
acrylic on canvas, stitched
© 2017

Series de collages tipográficos que alteran la posibilidad de lectura del texto. La forma tipográfica oculta su lectura en la visualidad de las figuras. El material base, rescatado de una bolsa de la tienda Forever 21, de pruebas de impresión, y de restos de afiches callejeros, dan nombres a las series y dejan mínimas evidencias de la función lingüística del texto. Los nombres de las series son: “fore-VER”, “M y R en negro y rojo”, y “Punto”.

The work is a typographic interpretation of the Red List of Threatened Plant Species of Germany. The topic of preserving biodiversity is not approached rationally, but through intuition and sensuality. First there was the idea that writing systems and plants have one thing in common: a limited set of characters or shapes. By repeating and assembling the individual parts, an infinite variety of compositions is created. Starting from an original shape – an oval, seven shape alphabets were constructed. Accordingly each of the seven groups of plants has a set of 26 figures – the components of its own language. Using these, the botanical names of 168 plants were set into abstract images.

Versatile and expressive, Autre Display is a contemporary two-axis variable typeface that offers full control over its serifs and oblique angle. Its meticulously crafted high contrast shapes, countless stylistic alternates and the ability to manually open or close its counters allow it to be used at any size and therefore make it a perfect fit for logotypes, visual identities or editorial projects.

Autre Display was designed by Christian Gruber and is the first part of the Autre type family which is currently under development.