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.–
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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.–
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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.–
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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.– 
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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.–
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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

Right Grotesk

Posted on by Alex Slobzheninov

Right Grotesk blends the neutrality and functionality of workhorses with a good touch of distinctive personality. Featuring many fine details, smooth curves, moderate contrast and slightly unusual anatomy, the typeface can be a loud and proud hero or a humble supporting actor for all sorts of designs. Not trendy, not timeless either, it is designed to be a versatile and high-quality type family for both serious and fun projects. It is designed to be just Right.

The typeface is not a revival of any particular historical references; it’s an interpretation of the whole genre of Gothic / Grotesque types. To add a nice personality, some letters have unusual sharp reversed terminals: lowercase r, a, f, t, y, ß and some others. On a macro level, one may notice smooth ink traps—they help to get more white space and add some charisma to the type.

The family covers the most used range of styles. They are packed in 1 variable and 51 classic fonts: 7 weights × 7 widths, and 2 text-friendly styles. For more sophisticated design, it supports case sensitive forms, ligatures, tabular figures, circled figures, arrows and other symbols.

Right Grotesk

Designer: Alexander Slobzheninov
Type foundry: Pangram Pangram
Release date: February 2020
51 styles: 7 weights × 7 widths + 2 text-friendly styles
File formats: otf, ttf, web, variable

Tuscaloosa

Posted on by jamesgrieshaber

Tuscaloosa is a hybrid script that includes Tuscan (bifurcated) serif treatments. The design of Tuscaloosa began as a set of organically-formed initials, the Tuscan serifs being reminiscent of shoots and leaves bursting forth. Tuscaloosa also derives inspiration from the late Victorian era, when the development of newspaper and poster advertising led to extremes of weight in the main strokes. The font is intended to convey an aura of excitement and fun that characterized those times!

The name Tuscaloos‘ was chosen because of the appropriate combination of “Tuscan” and “looseness,” and because of its essentially American character.

Ted Staunton was born in 1942 in Lincoln, England. After spending some time in London working for the big publishing houses, he emigrated to Vancouver, Canada in 1970. After working for more printers and publishers, he opened his own design and letterpress printing shop, Sherwood Graphics, in 1984. He is now semi-retired, and lives in a suburb of Vancouver, with his wife and family. He began creating fonts early in his career, some of which were used privately on transfer lettering sheets, and cast in metal for hand typesetting at his private press.

Designer: Ted Staunton
Type foundry: P22 TYPE FOUNDRY
Release date: April 2020
File formats: otf, web
Test version: yes

Lumix Festival

Posted on by ItYt

The Lumix Festival presents young, socially committed photojournalism of the 21st century, which actively deals with political, cultural, social, ecological, and technological processes. With the expressions of journalistic, transmedial narrative formats, the focus is on current perspectives of the documentary and understands them as media of active participation in global debates.

After the festival had to be cancelled in its originally planned form—due to the Corona pandemic—the program of the #lumixfestivaldigital is increasingly taking shape. Ten different topics will be presented on ten festival days from June 19th–28th, 2020 on platforms such as lumix-festival.de, Instagram and Facebook. In addition to 80 multimedia and photo projects, there will be live talks, portfolio reviews and a daily podcast.

The new corporate identity was designed and implemented by ItYt from Hanover. One focus of the design office is on projects and events in the fields of art, science and media.

For the word mark, ItYt chose a combination of the Halvar Medium and the Times New Roman Italic. The logotype of the Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism can be used variably, as the word mark is supplemented—depending on the medium and language—by the date and/or the edition of the festival. The mixture of typefaces gives the word mark the striking character required for use in the different variants.

The focus within the communication media is on the interaction of typography, color and image. The images are positioned with a varying “white space” on red, blue or gray color areas. This independent and also variable triad runs through all media such as posters, websites, social media channels, admission tickets, vouchers, certificates and much more.

Lumix Festival

When?
June 19th–28th, 2020

Check the program online

The Nest by Scott Massey and Laura Bernstein

Posted on by Julia Kahl

Nine selected book projects from the first Slanted × Kickstarter Mentoring & Publishing Program are live and ready to be funded. We are happy to present you the individual projects and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. 😉

In the book The Nest American designer Scott Massey celebrates his alma mater with a collection of poster art from the famous CalArts vaults. More precisely, the book is about a piece of art that “was created with the intent of making the best damn poster about posters for a poster show in poster show history.”

Working between New York and California, Scott Massey’s body of work is playful, considered, and deadly serious. As a hybrid art director/designer for Surfer and Patagonia Books, his projects were recognized by Print’s Regional Design Awards in 2013–2015, and he garnered a gold metal award from the Art Directors Club in 2017 for his Creative Direction on the MTV VMAs. His work is in the collections of both MoMA and LACMA.

We asked Scott a few questions about his project:

Your project was selected from nearly 100 submissions to be part of the Slanted × Kickstarter mentoring & publishing program. What did you learn, what helped you the most?
The most helpful part of this project has been breaking down the thesis behind The Nest, figuring out how to best describe the book in terms that someone not familiar with the subject matter could find it interesting. This part of the process was much more introspective and less intuitive than the actual making of the work. Within my process, ideas tend to organically build upon one another as a new phase is started. Through writing, conversations, and a little bit of nudging along the way I’m really excited with how clear the story of The Nest has been communicated. Many thanks to Lars Harmsen & Julia Kahl from Slanted, Julian Brimmers and Chris Nagel from Kickstarter, as well as the multi-talented Ian Lynam, Laura Bernstein, and Ethan Stewart.

How did this project come about?
The project was started in the first week of March, when a former professor of mine commissioned a poster to celebrate the exhibition Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1970–2019*. Michael Worthington, the curator and designer of the exhibit/book, had a couple of requests, “make it bold, make it colorful, and if possible use the bits created by former students, and faculty.” From my perspective, the bitmapped clippings sourced from various posters in the CalArts archive represented the voices of past students and faculty (both known and unknown). My strategy from that point on was to find a structure that could merge and magnify a diverse range of forms in order to properly celebrate the school and people that have helped create this environment.

How important is the process of re-working for young designers? Which techniques can you recommend?
Re-thinking or re-considering work creates a space within a designers methodology that can provide the freedom to fail. Often designers are hell bent on constructing perfect solutions through the guidelines of the Modernist grid, a pseudo-scientific pursuit that is polished enough to cover up all flaws, scratches, and mutations. I’m interested in how a design can transform when introduced to a somewhat destructive system, how does it breakdown, build up, or mutate when introduced to new environments and variables. How does the human element enter into this development.
Two catalysts for change during the creative process are collage and mind maps. Whether using digital or analog processes, collage, enables the designer to move past preconceived ideas by pairing up dissimilar forms. In a similar manner, mind maps allow for free associations to organically develop across subjects, events, and histories. Within each practice, we’re allowing ourselves to create connections of both form and meaning in a short amount of time.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
The intent of The Nest is to unpack the creative process, to share the journey with the design industry and general public with the hope that we will understand the importance of creating a place to play and fail in order to develop a designer’s voice. Within the next few months, we will continue to engage with design educators and practitioners through interviews, essays, and conversations to illuminate what it truly takes to start something and to keep going no matter the resistance, until you find your way out.

Thanks a lot for the insides and we keep our fingers crossed that your project will be financed!

Today is Tomorrow’s Yesterday by Ruben Sanchez

Posted on by Julia Kahl

Nine selected book projects from the first Slanted × Kickstarter Mentoring & Publishing Program are live and ready to be funded. We are happy to present you the individual projects and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. 😉

Today is Tomorrow’s Yesterday is a collection of sketches by acclaimed painter and multi-genre artist Ruben Sanchez. After years of treading the globe—from Madrid and Barcelona to New York, Dubai and all the way back—Ruben Sanchez grants his audience a private glimpse into his process. Today is Tomorrow’s Yesterday compiles doodles, drawings, notes, and quotes from Sanchez’s personal sketchbooks in one beautifully crafted hardcover edition.

Ruben Sanchez was born and raised in Madrid (1979), adopted by Barcelona, NYC, and Dubai in the past years. He is a self-taught artist, coming from the subcultures of graffiti and skateboarding. Graphic design and illustration as a background, Ruben was always interested in applying his work onto different materials such wood, resins or ceramics. His work can be found all around the globe as a part of art festivals, commissions, humanitarian projects or international exhibitions but also as any kind of ‘uncommissioned’ works. Interested in the avoidance of symmetry, lack of perfect proportions and vibrant color palettes. Visual balance, strong interactions, messages to depict, chain reactions and connectivity always surrounded by a Mediterranean vibe, in a journey with no destination.

We asked Ruben a few questions about his project:

Your project was selected from nearly 100 submissions to be part of the Slanted × Kickstarter mentoring & publishing program. What did you learn, what helped you the most?
I learnt long time ago that it’s better to live without much expectations. That makes you avoid frustrations and focus on the work 100%, if you have expectations you kind of focus your work to those expectations and loses part of the soul, you know what I mean? I say this because when you make something straight from your heart and brain and you work hard on it, it will find its place organically at some point. I’m lucky that my project found its place in this amazing program. It’s been really cool to have the help and point of view of Slanted, sometimes you are so inside your project that opinions and ideas from 3rd parties like Slanted are received like fresh air.

How did this project come about?
I’ve been told many times that I should do something with my sketchbooks, they have been with me since I got my first diary when I was 12.
They have become my window to express my ideas, feelings, experiences and of course my drawings. So at the end they kind of became artworks by themselves, full of information and emotions. I think it was a good idea to share them in some way. One of the ideas was to make an exhibition but I couldn’t really visualize how to show all the different pages and it would be a temporary experience and limited to a specific location, so making a book was a better idea I think.

In which situations and at which places do you feel inspired to draw in your sketchbooks?
Airports, hotels, my studio, cafes all over the world, planes, my home … there’s no specific place for this, I try to have notebooks close to me anytime so I can write down ideas as they come. Sometimes I’m just bored and I start doodling or making some non-sense stuff.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
I think it’s always interesting to see what’s inside an artist’s head. The human being is curious by nature. We buy magazines to know more about people we don’t know. We spy at our neighbors through the windows. We glance at the passenger next to us in the train to see what he/she’s reading. We are always curious about others. This is like opening a window of my studio so anyone can take a look in a way. People who like my work will know more about me through this book, and people who doesn’t know me might think oh this is cool or this is interesting or this guy is an ass or whatever.
As I said before, I don’t have expectations so let’s see where this project goes. So far I’m infinitely happy to see the support it’s receiving, reaching the goal in two days. I hope not to disappoint the backers.

Thanks a lot for the insides and we keep our fingers crossed that your project will be financed!

Berlin Exhibition of The 100 Best Posters 19

Posted on by Julia Kahl

In collaboration with the association 100 Beste Plakate e. V. , the Kunstbibliothek (Art Library) is presenting the 100 best posters of the past year from Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the 14th time. The exhibition (16.06.–05.07.20) provides a cross-section of current graphic design, including a number of surprises. Admission is free during the three-week presentation in the lobby of the Berlin Kulturforum.

Bumblebee Pills? Pineapple Bunnies? Banana Fingers?
Bumblebee pills? Pineapple bunnies? Banana fingers? Who says innovative graphic design can’t have surrealistic moments? The 100 best posters of 2019 stand out for their highly inventive pictorial compositions, which are often laced with humour. Photography is once again increasingly being used in many exciting ways, while typographical experiments remain a constant source of fascination.

2,247 Posters by 684 Designers
For this year’s competition, 100 beste Plakate Deutschland Österreich Schweiz (The 100 Best Posters from Germany, Austria and Switzerland), 2,247 posters were submitted by 684 designers. A jury, consisting of Julia Kahl (Slanted, Karlsruhe, Germany, chairperson), Michel Bouvet (Paris, France), Benjamin Buchegger (Studio Beton, Vienna, Austria), Götz Gramlich (gggrafik, Heidelberg, Germany) and Isabel Seiffert (Offshore Studio, Zurich, Switzerland), chose the finalists. Following the presentation of the winning designs in Berlin, an event accompanied by an annual publication, the exhibition will travel to Essen, Vienna, Zurich and other venues.

The 100 Best Posters competition was launched 50 years ago in East Germany. After 1989 it initially continued as a Germany-wide contest, subsequently expanding to encompass the German-speaking countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the last 18 years. Each year the Kulturforum hosts the opening exhibition of the exceptional posters selected by the jury.

Here’s an overview of the 100 winning posters 100-beste-plakate.de.

The exhibition tour will also stop at Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany / School for Design St.Gallen, Switzerland / Kornschütte in the city hall of Lucerne, Switzerland / within the framework of World Format—Graphic Design Festival / ECAL / Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne—Gallery L’elac, Renens/Lausanne, Switzerland / MAK—Austrian Museum for Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria / In The Paper Gallery, Seoul, Republic of Korea / ZHdK – Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland / HEAD Haute école d’art et de design Geneva, Switzerland

© Images:
 
Spielzeitplakate für das Staatstheater Mainz
Neue Gestaltung
Anna Bühler, Pit Stenkhoff, Nina Odzinieks (Avis de Tempête/Hoffmanns Erzählungen) / Flo Paizs, Pit Stenkhoff, Nina Odzinieks (Krabat)
 
Mensch und Tier im Revier
Loesch Uwe
unter Verwendung eines Fotos von Michael Wolf (1976) / Fotoarchiv Ruhrmuseum: Siedlung Bottrop-Ebel
 
Toshiro Mifune
Tuena Anna
 
2’222 Neumonde Basler Kunstverein
Martin Stoecklin & Melina Wilson
unter Verwendung von Fotografien aus dem Fotoarchiv der Kunsthalle Basel. (1) oben: Fotograf unbekannt, unten: Dominik Asche, (2) Fotografen unbekannt, (3) oben: Jeck, Basel, unten: Philipp Hänger
 
Luis Buñuel
Keller Samara
 
Mike Gordon
Rohlmann Bene
 
(zwischen)räume in der gegenwartsmusik
2xGoldstein
Andrew Goldstein, Jeffrey Goldstein