The Unheard Archive

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

The Unheard Archive is the outcome of an oral history project initiated by Zara Arshad in May 2019. This project entailed reflecting on graphic design practice in South Korea today via conducting interviews with numerous locally-based graphic designers. It draws particular attention to the experience of women designers, those engaged or working with marginalized communities (e. g. LGBTQ+ and physically-disabled groups), emerging designers, and other underrepresented voices in design history.

The Unheard Archive website is a storytelling platform—an online catalog, rather than a repository of oral history materials. It offers just a sense of some of the conversations that have taken place between the researcher and narrators.

Materials from each interview session (comprising audio files and transcripts) are in the process of being prepared. These resources will eventually be deposited at an institution that will make them available for public use. This will include material from interviews conducted with the following designers: Lee Jaeyoung, Lynn Kim, Shin In-ah, Yang Meanyoung, Kim Somi, Woo Yunige and Sunny Studio.

The Unheard Archive was created by Zara Arshad, a researcher, curator and design historian. Arshad has previously held roles at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Design History Society, Beijing Design Week and Icograda Beijing. She is currently a PhD researcher at University of Brighton/V&A.

Image captions
– Poster designed by Sunny Studio for Shin Ji-ye, 2018 Seoul mayor candidate and representative of the Green Party.
– Park Ji-sung (left) and Park Chulhee (right) of Sunny Studio.
– Drag workshop for a local queer parade. Credit: Lee Kanghyuk.
– #MeToo #WithYou’ signs at Doing Cafe (2019). Photo by Zara Arshad, taken during a research trip to Seoul, which entailed investigating new ‘safe spaces’ for women. Many of the stops I made are listed in this article by the New York Times.

Absolute Egypt

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Absolute Egypt book is a documentation of the local visual culture through the lens of graphic design in the local older areas of Cairo and takes the reader on a tour in our local streets by presenting a collection of its most mesmerizing vernacular graphic designs.

The book was originally Moataz’s bachelor thesis in the German University in Cairo. Then after the completion of the bachelor, the book underwent further refinement for almost two years, under the supervision of lecturer Philipp Paulsen and the guidance of publisher Khatt Books (with the editing of Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès and Edo Smitshuijzen), resulting in this final published version.

Raghda Moataz wanted to make sense of her local environment, to investigate those local vernacular graphic designs and understand their spectrum in a research-based book, and not just look at their aesthetics in a brief encounter. Therefore, when the author studied graphic design, she could see beyond the visuals and organize the designs to understand the underlying skeleton of how people live through graphic design and how those graphic designs tell the story of our culture.

Raghda Moataz graduated from the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Arts at the German University in Cairo (GUC). She is a writer, researcher and graphic designer, with a deep love for practicing and teaching design. Moataz became one of the youngest authors in her field when she published her first book Absolute Egypt. Her work especially revolves around researching visual culture and reusing its meanings to produce new visuals that are relevant and powerful. In regards to work, Moataz was a graphic design instructor at Kemet Arts & Design, was the art director of Hundred Best Arabic Posters (100/100) competition round two and was among the founding team of Hasala donations services. She was also an Adobe Achievement Award semi-finalist, listed among the 100/100 competition round two winners, featured in the HGB book fair 2018 in Germany and a three-times excellence award winner for high academic achievements at the GUC.

Absolute Egypt

Author: Raghda Moataz
Publisher: Khatt Books
Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-94-90939-19-9
Pages: 240
Format: 18.5 × 20 cm
Edition: softcover (with flaps)
Languages: English & Arabic
Price: € 29.50
Buy

BEYOND Filmfestival 2020

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

At the 9th International Symposium-Future Design and Film Festival-Climate Change from July 23rd to 26th BEYOND Filmfestival 2020 will stage a triad of science, art and technology with the aim to create a better future.

Both events, Film Festival and Symposium will be broadcasted virtually, live and online worldwide. Take a look at the program here.

The climate crisis and the crisis of imminent ecological collapse not only affect the nature we live in, but our economic, political, social and technological systems. The climate crisis is a crisis of contemporary global civilization and therefore also a task for art.

This year, BEYOND Film Festival Future Design therefore focuses on climate change and its effects. National and international films that deal with ecological and social problems, films that force society, politics and companies to think and above all to act, films that create new narratives and ideas for the 21st century and design alternative futures are welcome. Discover all movies here.

The symposium will be translated live into several languages using the artificial intelligence Lecture Translator developed at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).

BEYOND Filmfestival 2020

When?
July 23rd to 26th, 2020

Where?
Online

Get your ticket here

A Shift in Perspective

Posted on by leoniekaltenegger

The discipline of visual communication, similar to many others, underlies a great deal of pressure, as it involves a high need for surprising, unconventional ideas: creative solutions. A Shift in Perspective: An Investigation into Creativity from Constraint examines not only whether or how one can influence creativity but also whether constraints can promote the creative process. Furthermore, since creation is often associated with freedom, this thesis intends to change how the creative process is perceived. While several psychologists and philosophers have widely studied creativity, much uncertainty regarding the correlation between creativity and constraint still exists. Divided into two parts, this thesis addresses the framework behind creativity from theoretical and empirical perspectives. Conducted as self-study, this small-scale observation aims to resolve the main research question and provide a better understanding of the creative process.

The empirical self-study, which includes an in-depth analysis of creative constraints along with the daily creation of a poster, intends to shift how society understands the creative process. When one considers creativity, terms such as ‘freedom of creation’ and ‘boundless possibilities’ often come to mind, as well as an open space for spontaneous, informal creation. However, this experiment proposes that rather than being unlimited, the creative process necessitates constraint, which opens creators to new perspectives and allows them to explore unknown spaces that might have never been discovered otherwise. The experiment was conducted over six months, with an overall duration of 168 days. With the idea of limiting herself for that time, the designer introduced a new constraint every 14 days. The selfstudy was organized into twelve chapters: six months of daily creation divided into 12 categories, one for each constraint.

Leonie Kaltenegger is an Austrian designer with a strong focus on visual communication—creating brandings, corporate identities, visual concepts and editorial content, currently based in Salzburg. Her practice combines diverse fields of visual communication and is often characterized by the use of extreme contrasts and bold typography. Driven by a subtle, abstract visual language, she aims to reveal the essential characteristics of a brand or project. Besides her studies, she works on selected projects on a freelance basis and enjoys to collaborate with other creatives. Aiming to shape and create, giving thoughts a figure.

A Shift in Perspective

Editorial, Concept, and Layout: Leonie Kaltenegger
Project: Bachelor Thesis, University of Applied Sciences Graz
Release: February 2020
Volume: 255 pages
Format: 25.7 × 20 cm
Language: English
Production/Finishing: Book, Softcover, refined with a color cut in black
Print: Aichfelder Druck GmbH
Binding: Buchbinderei Papyrus GesmbH & Co. KG
Paper: Curious Matter Goya Black Truffle, Munken Kristall Rough
Edition: 10 (not for sale)

Moholy-Nagy 125

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

László Moholy-Nagy, the great intellectual and technical innovator and world-famous Hungarian artist was born on July 20, 125 years ago. His oeuvre is well known in many countries around the world, his works are auctioned at record prices and have been exhibited in recent years in the largest museums in London, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles attracting huge audiences. However, few are aware of the roots of this decisive, experimental, innovative creator of the 20th century, namely that he was Hungarian.

On the occasion of the anniversary, the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME), named after the artist, created an unusual audiovisual campaign, which will be presented on July 20th, on László Moholy-Nagy’s birthday, by Hungarian media service providers, online platforms and foreign Hungarian institutes.

On this occasion, the university pays tribute to the timeless validity of Moholy-Nagy’s ideas by releasing an audiovisual package online on July 20th at 10 a.m. together with the Moholy-Nagy 125 report film, by Moholymotion a 125-second animation, dozens of interviews and video messages, as well as an interactive website.

The initiative features such prominent figures of Hungarian art and cultural life as art historian Krisztina Passuth, artist Dóra Maurer, Julia Fabényi, director of the Ludwig Museum, architect Zsófia Csomay, József Fülöp, rector of MOME, István Orosz, graphic designer, a member of Hungarian Academy of Arts or Károly Gerendai, cultural manager. In addition to members of the Moholy-Nagy family, renowned professionals from the international art world contributed to the commemoration such as Karole P. B. Vail, director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and Annemarie Jaeggi, director of the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.

The Urania National Film Theater, Budapest will host the film premiere screening at the opening night to the series of events on July 16th. The film produced by MOME will be accompanied by the Hungarian premiere of The New Bauhaus, an American documentary about László Moholy-Nagy.

The online commemoration on July 20th will be followed in the fall by further events on MOME’s new, world-class campus opened last September.

The commemorative series was created in collaboration with MOME, the Hungarian Academy of Arts, the National Film Institute, the National Office of Intellectual Property, and the Urania National Film Theater.

Moholy-Nagy 125

Concept by/Producer József Fülöp, Tamás Kollarik
Producer: Zsuzsanna Vincze
Co-producer: Tamás Gergely Kucsera
Creative producer: Viktória Szabó
Line producer: Györgyi Falvai, Dóra Csányi
Communication: MOME Brand Office
Finance: Mónika Mayer, Andrea Nagy
Film staff: Annamária Maronics, Kristóf Pajor, Krstan Petrucz, Barbara Keserű, Dániel Firnigel
Animation: Melinda Kádár, Bori Mákó, Lili Korcsok, Éva Darabos
Layout, microsite: Balázs Vargha and Gábor Réthi
Released by the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, July 15th, 2020

When?
July 20th, 2020
10 a.m.

Where?
Online

Shape Grammars

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

How can unique pieces be mass produced? Or: How can the computer take over and support creative work? Sol LeWitt writes in his Sentences on Conceptual Art: “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. […] There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.” A form is removed from the status of pure art as soon as it is filled with unambiguous information or applied utility. Its poetic function as art is thus weakened, its practical function as design is strengthened.

With the right system, an idea can also become a machine that produces design instead of art. This is then called generative design. However, this form of design is primarily used to display complex data sets or to fire off overwhelming visual spectacles.

Based on the work of Sol LeWitt, graphic designer Jannis Maroscheck has designed and programmed his own production systems that can draw an unlimited number of individual graphic shapes.

The result is a systematic catalog—a kind of dictionary of shapes—for browsing and exploring geometric systems, in which one can always discover something new.

Shape Grammars is intended as a handbook for graphic designers for the design of fonts, logos and pictograms, which, in addition to 150,000 generated shapes, shows some potentials and limitations of generative design. At the same time, the work serves as a basis for further research on more complex systems and artificial intelligence. The computer can thus already function as a dialog partner in the creative process.

Shape Grammars

Editor, Designer: Jannis Maroscheck
Publisher: Slanted Publishers
Release: July 2020
Volume: 836 pages
Format: 18.5 × 23.4 cm
Language: English, German
ISBN: 978-3-948440-09-1
Price: € 45.–
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George Hardie Exhibition

Posted on by work-in-process

At a dinner party some years ago a fellow guest asked George Hardie what he did for a living. The acclaimed English Illustrator, Professor of Graphic Design, replied, “I’m an illustrator, designer, and teacher.” Unsatisfied, his table mate pressed, “No, what do you really do?” Hardie is an unflaggingly polite, but most of all, modest, English gentleman. So, after a lengthy pause he responded, “I notice things and I get things noticed,” a fairly unassuming assessment of a five-decade-old career as, he semi-ironically claims, that of a ‘jobbing illustrator.’
– The rules of the game, Daniel Nadel, Eye no. 58 vol. 15, 2005

George’s work is visible world wide, anyone with a poster or an album cover of Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin is likely to be looking at one of his designs. Regularly among the world’s top ten favorite album covers is his prism for Dark Side of The Moon (designed with and for Hipgnosis) also his phallic Zeppelin crash for Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut album. His work has been exhibited widely with exhibitions that have included one-person retrospective at Brighton, Barcelona and Ljubljana. His books have been shown at The Pentagram Gallery in London and in Nagoya, Japan. George Hardie has enjoyed a 51-year-long career, one which includes many international commissions from a wide variety of clients. He gained widespread notice through his stamp designs for the Royal Mail including Channel Tunnel stamps for the Royal Mail and La Poste in 1994. He also created illustrations for the Magic stamps produced in 2005. George has been awarded by D&AD, the global association for Creative Advertising & Design: four 1970s D&AD silver awards with Hipgnosis, and a fifth silver award for his Millennium stamp. He was elected a Member of the Art Workers Guild (1997) and subsequently became Master of the Guild and a Royal Designer for Industry.

George Hardie was the tutor of the exhibition designers and curators, on the Masters course at the University of Brighton from 2007–2009. These being the last years as head of the masters course and his teaching career, they were quite blessed with getting to work so closely with him and acquiring a great awareness of their role as thinkers, makers, and designers. The designers had been wanting, for a while, to have the space to present his work to audiences outside of the UK to show the great breathe and range of his other less famous works so that they too could get some recognition just as his work for music album covers has had. For them, George Hardie is an essential artist in the history of British graphic design. A humble/modest/discreet English gentleman, endowed with great finesse of mind and remarkable kindness, George is also a great collector of everything and anything, to the great despair of his wife Avril. His work unfolds like his collections: by associations of ideas and forms.

The exhibition has been categorized in 13 sections that allow one to discover the great variety, thoroughness, and facetiousness thanks to an abundant graphic vocabulary that George has developed for more than 50 years. There are 217 pieces of work gathered in this exhibition. For the scenography, the designers color coded the sections, choosing colors that George uses most often; a birds eye view of the room show you that the central picture rail forms a ‘G.’ A wink to George’s signature, which he often slips in his productions and which takes the shape of the staircase which leads to his studio of work. The exhibition poster is also a tribute to the isometric style of George’s work while playing with the concept of movement. They wanted the exhibition to take up the basics of George’s work: form, volume, color, multiple levels of reading …

George Hardie Exhibition

Exhibition design and curation: Maison des éditions and work in process
Poster design: Benjamin Lahitte

When?
The exhibition is in a summer break and will continue from 26.08.2020–12.09.2020

Where?
Le Bel Ordinaire
Les Abattoirs
Allée Montesquieu
64140 Billère
France

Slanted Special Issue Rhineland-Palatinate

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Above all, Rhineland-Palatinate stands out for its wine with 65 percent of German wine being produced there. But what about design? Following the Special Issues of Babylon (2013), Marrakech (2016), and Rwanda (2019), we were curious to find out more about our Heimat Germany and highlight regional differences in the Slanted Special Issue Rhineland-Palatinate.

The first destination of our journey took us right across the Rhine, to Rhineland-Palatinate. In its state capital Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg invented letterpress printing and delivered the first printed Bible in 1456, and probably drank a pint of wine on it. The state was formerly founded from the French occupation zone after a referendum on the state constitution on May 18th, 1947, two years before the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany. The black, red, and gold of the flag of the Hambach Festival, the first democratic demonstration, are still the colors of the Federal Republic of Germany today.

The state has a long tradition of arts and craftsmanship, supported and kept alive by a strong middle-class as well as strong regional institutions and cultural drivers. Awards such as the State Prize for Arts and Crafts promote, amongst others, outstanding gem and jewelry designers, ceramists, silversmiths, carpenters, barrel makers, and textile designers of the region.

With the help of descom—Designforum Rhineland-Palatinate we sourced designers, photographers, illustrators and makers—all people who love their region and are passionate about what they do. So yes, beyond beautiful landscapes with vineyards, rivers, forests, and castles, Rhineland-Palatinate is a shining example of design in Germany, that moves with time while sticking to its roots.

Slanted Special Issue Rhineland-Palatinate

Editor, Publisher: Slanted Publishers
Release: July 2020
Volume: 128 pages
Format: 16 × 24 cm
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-948440-08-4
Price: € 12.–
Buy

Supported by descom—Designforum Rhineland-Palatinate

Schwarzdenker

Posted on by Laura Nadvornik

Schwarzdenker offers a wickedly self-deprecating view of today’s creative industry. For designers, for all the future potential designers, and for their parents trying desperately to prevent that.

The topics of the first edition: a relentless introspection; a revelation of scandalous practices in competitive business; a look outside where others get along quite well without design; about the manners of how designers treat each other and customers; a biting satire about designers as a species and a razor-sharp criticism of their thinking; the eternal dilemmas “art vs. Design” and “fame vs. success”; about fashionable “denglish” (German and English language mix) and the eternal same; about today’s fake news and the good old days; with anger about design education and with confidence in the future, about sustainability in print and real problems in procurement practice, and last but not least about money.

Schwarzdenker

Publisher: Victoria Sarapina
Authors: Michaela Harnisch, Horst Moser, Olaf Leu, Kurt Weidemann, Silvia Werfel, Dr. Hans Jürgen Escherle, Jost Hochuli, Herbert Lechner, Rudolf Paulus Gorbach, Susanne Zippel, Christian Büning, Clemens Theobert Schedler, Peter Vetter, Joachim Kobuss, Bernd Weber, Christian Aumüller
Photographers: Kathrin Schäfer, Oleg Koscheletz, Dominik Parzinger
Illustration, Lettering, Infographics: Silja Götz, Frank Ramspott, Petra Wöhrmann, Peter Felder
Volume: 132 pages
Language: German
Format: 19 × 27 × 0.8 cm
Price: 13.– Euro
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Yearbook 2019: Position

Posted on by Burg Giebichenstein

The current yearbook of the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design provides insights into the institution under the topic “Position” and presents outstanding student projects from 2019.

The eighth edition of the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design yearbook is dedicated to the main topic of position on over 200 pages in German and English. To take and show attitude and to represent positions to the outside world is not only indispensable for artists and designers. To position oneself in the social context, to express oneself, and to become active is increasingly a task that educational and cultural institutions want and have to face. Against this background, the yearbook is at the same time a place of discourse for questions: What does it mean for an art school to develop a common attitude and to communicate this to the outside world? What role do art and design play in social contexts—or not? In four essays and an interview on the subject of “taking up a position,” professors, staff, and students approach the complex from different perspectives.

With this yearbook, the BURG looks back on the 2019 academic year and presents a variety of artistic and design positions of students, teachers, and graduates. For example, the exhibition is “open daily” with student works on theme “A für Alltag” or the farewell exhibition “Reportages” on the end of Prof. Ulrich Klieber’s teaching career. The exhibition “Bio, plastics—or both,” shown for the first time in Germany, examined bioplastics and their ecological relevance. In contrast, the exhibition “welt erfahren” on the other hand showed works that dealt with other cultures and life worlds. In autumn, BURG alumni presented their works in the guest exhibition Teilchenbeschleuniger (Particle Accelerator) at the Spinnerei Leipzig.

In addition, a comprehensive section of pictures and texts documents the works and projects of students and graduates who were selected for the Saalesparkasse Foundation Art Prize and the GiebichenStein Design Prize, as well as works created in the context of the graduate scholarship of the state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The graphic design of the new yearbook picks up on the topic of position by focusing on the seriousness of the statements, like a manifesto, through reduction. In this way, content and visual hierarchies in the text typesetting were kept to a minimum and images were ordered by a fixed design grid.

Yearbook 2019: Position

Publisher: Rectorate of Burg Giebichenstein University of Art Halle
Concept: Brigitte Beiling, Silke Janßen
Editors: Brigitte Beiling, Bert Sander
Design: Patrick Müßiggang, Arne Winter
Art Direction: Jonas Hansen
Printed at: University publishing house Burg Giebichenstein University of Art Halle
Format: 18 × 26 cm, 216 pages, paperback
Languages: German and English
ISBN: 978-3-86019-154-4
Sponsor: Saalesparkasse Halle
Price: € 7.–
Buy

The yearbook 2019 of Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle (Saale) was supported by the Saalesparkasse Halle.

Arpona

Posted on by Floodfonts

Arpona is a typeface for anyone who prefers to stand out from the crowd, than to go with the flow. It comes with small wedge serifs and a strong character, ideal for corporate design and all projects characterized by a sense of individualism—for example art, fashion, food, beverage, and lifestyle topics.

Arpona is inspired by roman letters carved in stone but otherwise difficult to categorize. It is neither a pure serif nor a sans but rather a symbiosis of different design concepts. Because of its display qualities, it’s a good choice for packaging, advertising, and editorial design and is well readable even in running text on screen.

The family has nine weights, ranging from Thin to Black plus corresponding italics. Each style includes 590 glyphs supporting all western-, eastern-, and central-european languages including four sets of figures and various currency symbols. Arpona is available on MyFonts and in the Adobe Creative Cloud.

Arpona

Foundry: Floodfonts
Designer: Felix Braden
Release: May 2020
Format: OTF, TTF, WOFF, EOT
Styles: 18, Thin to Black (incl. Italics)
Price per style: $ 49.–,  family: $ 495.–
Buy

For more information visit the Arpona microsite

Yearbook 100 Beste Plakate 19

Posted on by Laura Nadvornik

Every year the association 100 Beste Plakate e. V. presents awards to honor the most innovative and trendsetting poster designs from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The Yearbook 100 Beste Plakate 19 has fast become the go-to source for graphic artists, designers, and advertisers. Even today, the traditional printed poster is still regarded as the ultimate challenge in the graphic arts.

The 100 Beste Plakate yearbook focuses on how designs can be described verbally. What is the relationship between language and image? How can visual codes and phenomena or trends be captured in words? Thirty designers, curators, artists, architects, and theorists were invited to join the project and to describe the selected posters. The purpose of this exercise was not to come up with a standard jury statement, but to point out ways of interacting personally with the poster: either by offering an objective description or by delivering a subjective critique in the form of an essay.

Florian Lamm and Jakob Kirch, who created this year’s 100 Beste Plakate 19 yearbook, have translated this conceptual task into their design by dividing the catalog into two parts. While the thirty text contributions have been united in a booklet, a separate image section presents the corresponding posters.

Yearbook 100 Beste Plakate 19

Publisher: Verlag Kettler
Design: Lamm & Kirch
Format: 17 × 24 cm
Volume: 332 pages
Language: English, German
Workmanship: double Swiss brochure
ISBN: 978-3-86206-825-8
Price: € 29.90 
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Have a closer look!

Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design: Rundgang 2020

Posted on by kristina.pauli

Once again, the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design (ABK Stuttgart) is hosting the annual “Rundgang”—a diverse exhibition of the students’ most recent projects and assignments. This year’s Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design: Rundgang 2020 is taking place online from July 17th to 19th, in a new, digital format.

As the doors of the Campus Weißenhof must remain closed due to the current situation, the students’ work will be presented on the interactive online platform. Performances, artistic experiments, film, and seminar projects from the departments of Architecture, Art, Design, and Art History—Conservation can be seen via galleries, livestreams, and 360 degree videos and will form a virtual exhibition beyond the limits of the campus. Only the windows of the Academy will provide exhibition space for works of art at the ABK.

Additionally, residents of the Stuttgart area can explore further select locations that will accommodate student projects and make up the decentralized part of the exhibition. Students will present their work in shops, cafés, state institutions, and even on their own balconies.

The official opening of the event is taking place on Friday, July 17th at 6 p.m. on the Rundgang website. This will encompass not only the virtual exhibition but also a wide offer of live tours, award ceremonies, speeches, and much more. As usual, there will be merchandise available on the online shop.

The annual Rundgang is the highlight of the year for not only the students, but also professors and university staff of the ABK Stuttgart, who all work towards creating a unique and multidimensional exhibition for the visitors. This year, the Rundgang is focussed on digital content, making it more accessible than ever. Visitors from all over the world are invited to tune in and experience what the university has to offer, all from their own personal screens.

Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design: Rundgang 2020

When?
from July 17th to 19th (offical opening is on Friday, July 17th at 6 p.m.)

Where?
Online at the Rundgang website—Tune in!

Permanently Improvised

Posted on by Laura Nadvornik

Permanently Improvised: 15 Years of Urban Print Collage! The artist duo Various & Gould has been an integral part of Berlin’s Urban Art scene for a decade. In a playful and unconventional way, the two artists tackle major social issues and find new, specific forms of expression in each of their series.

Just in time for Various & Gould’s 15th anniversary, this bilingual monograph presents the full range of their work, enriched by essays by selected authors.

Permanently Improvised

Photographer: Boris Niehaus, Luna Park, Hans Friedrich, and others
Publisher: seltmann+söhne, Kunst- und Fotobuchverlag
Author: Various & Gould
Release: November 2019
Volume: 208 pages
Format: 24 × 17 cm
Language: English, German
ISBN: 978-3-946688-73-0
Price: € 35.– 
Buy

Universal Specimen

Posted on by rosetta

Universal Specimen is a new tool for previewing and evaluating fonts in multiple languages. It helps designers preview and evaluate their fonts in a vast number of languages (163 to be precise). It was developed by Rosetta Type Foundry, specialists in multilingual typography and global fonts.

Using sample text from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the specimen allows you to preview, typeset and adjust the typographic settings for multiple translations of the same text side by side.

Universal Specimen comes ready to use with selected fonts from the multilingual Rosetta library, but it also works with any font file you have on your computer. The app runs in the browser, so nothing gets uploaded to our servers and we don’t collect any information about the fonts you use; in other words, it’s safe to use with your current font licence.

The developers hope the tool will quickly become part of your typesetting toolkit. Expect this first version to be extended with more languages soon.

The Universal Specimen was developed by Rosetta, world typography specialists, publishers, and makers of original fonts addressing the needs of global typography. Their goal is to enable people to read better in their native languages.

Try the new tool now!

reGeneration 4

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Every five years since 2005, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, has staged an exhibition to review tendencies and look at perspectives in contemporary photography. reGeneration 4 accompanies the 2020 exhibition and features works by a wide range of emerging international photographic artists. In addition, the book includes statements from participants in the earlier exhibitions, commissioned by the curators-editors, about their individual artistic evolution, in which environmentalism, social equality and inclusion, digitalization, and securing their own livelihood appear as key topics and practical challenges. The book presents these insights alongside depictions of the works by all thirty-five artists selected for reGeneration 4, brief commentary texts, and an introductory essay.

reGeneration 4

Publisher: Scheidegger & Spiess
Editors: Lydia Dorner and Pauline Martin. With an introduction by Tatyana Franck and contributions by Émile Delcambre Hirsch, Lydia Dorner, Pauline Martin, Emilie Schmutz and Lars Willumeit
In collaboration with the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne
Release: 2020
Language: English & French
Finishing: Hardcover
Pages: 232 with 160 color and 6 b/w illustrations
Dimensions: 22 × 30 cm
ISBN: 978-3-85881-857-7
Price: SFR 59.– / GBP 50.– / USD 59.– / EUR 58.–
Buy

Picture 1: © Antonio Pulgarin, de la série Fragments of the Masculine, 2017.
Picture 2: © Cristina Velásquez, Los huevos en mi casa los puso mi mamá [Les oeufs chez moi ont été pondus par ma mère] (2019), de la série The New World, 2019.
Picture 3: © Émile Sadria, de la série Obsolete 2019, 2019.
Picture 4: © Erik Berglin, Tulip Variations #94, 2020.
Picture 5: © Jennifer Abessira, de la série #ElastiqueProject, depuis 2011.
Picture 6: © Jessie Schaer, de la série Perception, du vide à la forme, 2019.
Picture 7: © Karolina Wojtas, de la série Abzgram, depuis 2017.
Picture 8: © Léonie Marion, Sans titre (2017), de la série Soulèvements jurassiques, 2016–2019.
Picture 9: © Nathaniel White, Une tombe de réfugié en Sicile, Sicile (2018), de la série Routes, 2020.
Picture 10: © Piotr Zaworski, de la série Untitled, 2018.
Picture 11: © Raphaela Rosella avec Gillianne, Mimi, Rowrow, Tammara, Tricia et leurs familles, de la série You’ll Know It When You Feel It, 2011–2019.
Picture 12: © Rochelle Brockington, de la série Skin + Hair Stock photos, 2018.
Picture 13: © Sébastien Delahaye, de la série La Bête des Vosges, 2017–2018.
Picture 14: © Sheng-Wen Lo, Zoo Blijdorp de Rotterdam, Pays-Bas (2016), de la série White Bear, depuis 2014.
Picture 15: © Thandiwe Msebenzi, Indawo yam – Mon endroit (2017), de la série Awundiboni – You Don’t See Me, 2015–2017.
Picture 16: © Yuan Jin, de la série Grow from Elapses, 2016–2017.

 

ONE Hamburg

Posted on by Arndt Benedikt

Defying the current crisis with optimism: ONE Hamburg is a bright example. Since concert halls are closed, just like stadiums and stages, the new social TV platform offers news, interviews, podcasts and concerts, which can be followed via livestream from the comfort and safe zone of your sofa at home.

“We want to give people the stage they have unfortunately lost for the time being—and at least digitally connect the city and its people,” say the initiators about their motivation.

All those involved immediately picked up speed and commitment. And in just 139 hours, the project was taken from idea to go-live. Part of the team is the design studio Arndt Benedikt from Frankfurt. Not only did they create the brand and on-air design overnight, they also took over the rollout for all assets of the various communication media.

It was important to Arndt Benedikt to create a positive design that spreads clarity and optimism in these turbulent times. The strongly reduced design system is based on surfaces, typography and color only. The bright color spectrum gives the design a positive radiance, the reduction to running text and headline level brings the message of the individual TV formats into the foreground.

After the launch on March 18th, ONE Hamburg has been broadcasting daily since March 19th on channels such as Facebook, Instagram, or its own URL. All this set up to connect people who create and love culture despite the current crisis and to offer a digital stage. Stay Home. Stay Connected.

Creative Paper Conference 2020

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Since 2006, the Creative Paper Conference takes place every two years—an event that thrives on personal discussions, making contacts, and experiencing outstanding print products and fine papers at first hand. That’s why the organizers hesitated for a long time due to the Corona pandemic, haptics at a distance, they simply couldn’t imagine.

But now the Bavarian government has announced that trade fairs and larger events will be permitted again from September: Green light for the CPC 2020!

From October 29th to 30th, 2020, the Alte Kongresshalle Munich (“old congress hall”) will once again be all about printing, design, and wonderful papers. An exciting program of speakers has been selected, in a large exhibition area papers and print products can be experienced up close and, as always, personal exchange with paper specialists, print experts, and designers will play a major role.

Creative Paper Conference 2020

When?
October 29th to 30th, 2020

Where?
Alte Kongresshalle
Am Bavariapark 14
D-80339 Munich

Get tickets and the program here
The Early Bird rate is valid until July 10th

BERLIN Mural

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

At the top, the S-Bahn roaring to its next stop at Bellevue station, below the high vaulted ceilings draw visitors to the Buchstabenmuseum (“letter museum”) deeper and deeper into the mysterious S-Bahn arches. For 15 years, the museum has been collecting neon signs, illuminated letters, and lettering from public spaces to save these typographic treasures and their stories from destruction and oblivion.

In Berlin, the Buchstabenmuseum is almost still an insider tip, but so much has been reported internationally that guests from all over the world come to see the typographic Wunderkammer. The whole, colorful collection is a single invitation to take photographs, and there is no other way to cope with the inevitable enthusiasm for the variety of colors and shapes of the exhibits. But for its 15th birthday, the Buchstabenmuseum is getting another attraction—the BERLIN Mural—with an oversized wall design.

Chris Campe and Merle Michaelis will paint the word “Berlin” on the floor, walls and ceiling. Each S-Bahn arch has an area of around 150 square meters, the vaults are over four and a half meters high—the painted letters will be so large that they dissolve into an abstract black and white stripe pattern and can only be recognized as writing at second glance.

Accompany and follow the creation of the huge indoor murals at Instagram or Facebook.

This project receives no public funding and is made possible exclusively by volunteers and members—thank you very much! You also want to help? Support the BERLIN Mural with your donation.

BERLIN Mural

When?
Opening: July 2nd, 2020, 5 p.m.
Duration: July 3rd, 2020, until November 1st, 2020

Where?
Buchstabenmuseum
Stadtbahnbogen 424
10557 Berlin

S-Bahn Bellevue
U-Bahn Hansaplatz

Design Dedication—Adaptive Mentalities in Design Education

Posted on by Valiz Books and Projects

Design Dedication—Adaptive Mentalities in Design Education makes a plea for adaptive mentalities within design pedagogy, with a non-normative approach to design practices. It explores an attitude in and towards design education that is socially engaged, politically aware, generous in approach, lyrical in tone, experimental in form and collaborative in practice. How can we talk about and bring out the political that’s inherent in the work that design students are doing? What are the underlying values of such a pedagogy? What kind of practices are developed in that context? It is essential that designers understand how to leverage their position and expertise to take a stance in contemporary discussions. This book starts from the premise of allowing and facilitating (design) students to develop a socially involved and politically aware practices that allow them to relate to current events. This way, design becomes a means and medium to deal with reality and to relate to complex truths.

Design Dedication explores how an educational institute can support and safeguard this development among its students and reflects on how the institute can take responsibility in this regard. The Sandberg Instituut’s Design Department took these considerations as a starting point—to avoid hierarchy in the training and to rely on the strength of the collective, with values such as trust and generosity at its core.

Design Dedication reaches out to design students, designers, artists, and teachers who are open to questioning their own practices and reformulating values in design education for a yet unpredictable, but surely dedicated tomorrow.

Interwoven with the text, this book contains a wide selection of interesting images, all of works and projects developed at or within the framework of the Design Department of the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (The Sandberg Institute provides the Master’s degree programmes at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie).

Design Dedication—Adaptive Mentalities in Design Education

Editor: Annelys de Vet
Contributors: Hannes Bernard, Michèle Champagne, Rana Ghavami, Anja Groten, Agata Jaworska, Anastasia Kubrak, Sherida Kuffour, Gui Machiavelli, Daniel van der Velden, Annelys de Vet and many others
Design: Tessa Meeus & Alex Walker
Release: 2020
Publisher: Valiz with Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam
Production/Finishing: Paperback
Volume: 192 pages
Format: 23.5 × 17 cm
Language: English
ISBN: 978-94-92095-73-2
Price: € 19.90
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Virtual Moon Exhibiton

Posted on by forwardcreatives

The virtual Moon Exhibiton: This virtual exhibition is sending your art to the moon!

No events, no jobs: The measures taken in recent months have led to an increased shift from analog to digital. This includes art exhibitions taking place online. One of them, the Moon Exhibition, is not limited to any specific discipline, but opens up creative (virtual) space for all kinds of subjects. “We send your art to the moon, figuratively speaking of course, because we want the whole world to see your creativity,” says Othmar Handl, founder of the Forward Festival. The digital exhibition is now online showing more than 50 of the most recent artworks by up-and-coming creatives from over 1.000 submissions in recent years. The website is constantly growing, submissions are possible on an ongoing basis and can be uploaded easily and quickly at moonexhibition.com under submit. The exhibition is curated by the Forward Festivals team, the website design is by Readymag.

Open call, open for all disciplines
The main idea of the Moon Exhibition remains the same: it is open to artists from all disciplines, be it graphic design, photography, painting, architecture, UX design—there are no limits to creativity. It even features augmented reality works that can be animated using the Forward App.

Exposure for the community
The aim is to connect creative people and inspire each other. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Forward has also initiated a special edition of the Moon Exhibition, the Lockdown Special. In the extended version, artists were able to present entire projects in Forward’s online magazine and were supported with a solidarity contribution from Forward’s advertising budget.

Ongoing features since 2015
The concept remains the same: since 2015, the Moon Exhibition has been giving aspiring creative people the opportunity to make their work accessible to a large audience. So far, every Monday a new creative has been featured and a selection of the submitted artworks will be exhibited at the Forward Festivals in Vienna, Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin.

About
Forward Festivals are an established conference and platform for the national and international creative industries. Starting in Vienna, the festivals soon also took place in Munich and Hamburg, resulting in the premiere of the festival in Berlin 2020. The event provides insights into success stories of top-creatives, but also stories of failure and the use of tools and technology within the different creative disciplines. The conference, the centerpiece of the festival, is accompanied by various side events, such as workshops, live art sessions, and networking events.

Readymag is a browser-based design tool that helps build interactive websites and online publications without coding. You can draw up the design of your project, choose from a library of 3000+ fonts, enhance it with multimedia and animations, see how the project will look on various devices, and publish it online in one click. Ideal for dozens of formats—from landing pages to multimedia long-reads, presentations, and portfolios—all made with a single tool.

Virtual Moon Exhibiton

Organizers: Forward Festival
Website Design: Readymag
Contribute

STEEL CITIES

Posted on by Laura Nadvornik

The publication STEEL CITIES sheds light on the fast-growing logistics industry in Central and Eastern Europe and its hugely problematic effects on the built environment, landscapes, societies, and individuals in the region.

In the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, a certain type of industry has rapidly developed—an industry that produces nothing. Storing, packaging, classifying, assembling, and other ancillary processes of manufacturing and distribution are carried out 24/7 in extensive logistics parks. Their vast sites, often brightly lit during night hours, have doubled in terms of area covered every four years during the past two decades. These Steel Cities, as some locals have termed them, occupy increasing amounts of what has been fertile farmland, deeply affect the lives of local residents, and create entirely new relationships.

This new book investigates the Steel Cities’ impact on landscape and society from various perspectives. It reveals the architectural and spatial, economic, social, and environmental ramifications of the logistics system in this region and elsewhere. It examines these logistics centers on three scales: as an architectonic-landscape entity the size of a small town, as a network that reshapes the map of Europe so to define its own territoriality, and as part of the everyday life of the workers inside and the residents around them.

With contributions by Rutvica Andrijasevic, Kateřina Frejlachova, Adrian Hyrsz, Tomaš Khel, Bob Kuřik, Jesse LeCavalier, Lukaš Likavčan, Petr Mezihorak, Victor Munoz Sanz, Tonia Novitz, Miroslav Pazdera, Tadeaš Řiha, Hannah Schling, Pavel Suchan, Daniel Šitera, Martin Špičak, Philip Ursprung, Ina Valkanova, and Jan Vopravil.

About the Editors:
Kateřina Frejlachová is an architect working with Prague-based firm MCA Atelier. Miroslav Pazdera is an architect working as a research assistant at Czech Technical University’s Faculty of Architecture in Prague and with Bernd Schmutz Architekten in Berlin. Tadeáš Říha is an architect and writer currently working with 6a architects in London. Martin Špičák is an architect and co-founder of Placemakers.cz collective. He works at the city of Prague’s department of urban planning.

STEEL CITIES

Edited by: Kateřina Frejlachová, Miroslav Pazdera, Tadeáš Říha, and Martin Špičák
Publisher: Park Books
In cooperation with VI PER Gallery, Prague
Release: 1st edition, 2020
Language: English and Czech
Production/Finishing: Paperback
Volume: 364 pages, 102 color and 7 b/w illustrations and graphics
Format: 17 × 23 cm
ISBN: 978-3-03860-189-0
Price: € 29.00
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Credits in order of appearance: Cover Picture Steel city at night, North West Bohemia, 2019 © Studio Flusser; Léon Benett, original Illustration from the first edition of Jules Vernes Les cinq cents millions de la Bégum (The Begum’s Fortune, 1879) © Author’s archive; A single bedroom of a dormitory in West Bohemia, located directly in a logistics park © Martin Špičák, 2018; “Warehouse industry,” interior of Tchibo warehouse, West Bohemia. © Miroslav Pazdera, 2019; Construction of a new shed in CTPark Bor © Miroslav Pazdera, 2018; Light pollution from a logistics centre, North West Bohemia © Studio Flusser; Trucks seen from logistics shed construction site, North West Bohemia, 2019 © Studio Flusser; Warehouse worker, Thermo Cities, 2019 © Jan Kolský; Worker among storage shelves, 2019 © Jan Kolský

Deus

Posted on by renegadefonts

Deus is when type design is brought to extreme. It tries to answer the question whether you can design all glyphs in one axis of stress. It does not try to be all purpose, useful at all sizes, legible or readable and most of all it does not try to be neutral. It has its own style you either accept or not.

Every glyph has the same width across four masters, so you can change the style in one title or even make an animation out of that. It also has some cool animated emojis, so make sure you take all four styles!

Deus has been designed by Jan Charvát who studied programming graphical applications on the Czech Technical University in Prague. After finishing school he worked as a freelancer and as an evening news graphic operator. He moved to Germany and worked for Monotype as a Font Engineer and there he specialized in scripting and large family production with focus on diacritics. Now back in Prague he’s freelancer and teacher of type theory and graphic design on two major higher education schools.

Deus

Designer: Jan Charvát
Type foundry: Font Renegade
Release date: 2020
4 styles + animated version
File formats: otf, ttf, web, variable
Test version: yes, there is a download-link on their website
Retail price: € 30.–

Gruppo Due

Posted on by Gruppo Due

Gruppo Due is a type design platform and foundry offering retail typefaces, alongside bespoke designs resulting from a close collaboration with a variety of commissioners. It was founded in 2019 by Moritz Appich, Massimiliano Audretsch, Jonas Grünwald, and Bruno Jacoby—four friends who are also working together in the wider field of graphic and web design.

Most typefaces originally evolved from the praxis as graphic designers itself. They were designed to suit a projects specific need. Gruppo Due aims to progressively finalize, rethink, and release these type designs and make them available for wider public use. On their website you will currently find the three retail typefaces G2 Ciao, G2 Kosmos, and G2 TGR, alongside the research project concerning the digitisation of Wolfgang Schmidt’s Lebenszeichen (“signs of life”.) The website also showcases a number of bespoke type commissions that have been conceived over the last years.

Just recently fledged Gruppo Due still has a drawer full of typefaces yet to be released. Keep an eye on this foundry and take a look at their newly released website.

Gruppo Due

Founder: Moritz Appich, Massimiliano Audretsch, Jonas Grünwald, and Bruno Jacoby
Visit their new website and feel free to purchase their fonts—or visit them on instagram