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
Buy

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
Buy

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

Cartographies by Louis De Belle

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 in the upcoming week and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. 😉

The publication Cartographies is a a conceptual street photography book by Louis De Belle, lauded as one of the most innovative street photographers working today. This large format artist book shows photographs depicting close-up crops on pedestrian clothing, shot in the streets of New York.

Louis De Belle is a photographer, born in Milan, who graduated from the Bauhaus University of Weimar. His works have been published by the The Washington Post, The Independent, and WIRED among others.

We asked Louis 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’ve never used crowdfunding before and was eager to learn more about it. It was incredibly helpful to have the Kickstarter team giving me hints and insights, especially for the video which—I confess—I was shy about. Also being under the wing of Slanted was very important to get feedback and feel comfortable with the whole project.

How did this project come about?
The photographs from Cartographies were shot years ago in New York. One day I receive an email from Joel Meyerowitz, asking if he could include the series in an upcoming reissue of a historical book of his. I was flattered. Actually, I thought it was a spam email! But that was true and from then on, the series has been exhibited and published widely. Many people asked if there was a book and eventually, after many test, I decided to team up with graphic designer Claire Huss to turn the whole thing into a book.

What fascinates you about the way clothing behaves on bodies?
I’ve always been drawn to the idea of plasticity. To be more specific: drapery. Think of when you study at school all the great sculptors from Michelangelo to Brancusi. We learn to appreciate the depiction of folds of cloth but we often limit that to sculpture or painting. I wanted to bring this into photography and, even more, into daily life. That’s why I took the photographs in the streets, without asking the passers-by to pose or rearranging anything.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
We’ve been working on this book for many years, pondering the format, the layout, the sequencing and selecting very special and precious papers. After many drafts, we’ve got to a point where we felt we reached what we were looking for. So, anyone who likes this project, can play now a fundamental role in making this book possible. Every pledge is rewarded with something valuable, from a signed copy up until an original framed and editioned print. Previously published books went sold out pretty fast. So if you do have some feeling for this one, now is the time!

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

Leafy House Plants by Benjamin Wurster

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 in the upcoming week and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. 😉

In 1899, the German botanist Udo Dammer wrote down his knowledge of the ins and outs of different house plants and published the book Zimmerblattpflanzen with 46 detailed plant illustrations. With Leafy House Plants, communication designer Benjamin Wurster created a modern new edition of this botanical encyclopaedia.

Benjamin is a communication designer, based in the South of Germany. He is working for various clients in the fields of culture, education and economy. Since 2017 Benjamin has been increasingly dealing with the topic of inspiration and has implemented several personal projects in addition to the client work he does.

We asked Benjamin a 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 had already thought of launching a Kickstarter campaign for some time. So I was already familiar with the system and had read a lot about successful crowdfunding. However, Slanted was a great help to me in revising my production and cost planning so that I can later implement all components of the project at the highest level.

How did this project come about?
A few months ago, I started looking for materials that I could use as visual templates for limited edition lino prints. I had noticed the trend of more and bigger foliage plants in homes for quite some time. So I came across the publication Zimmerblattpflanzen by Udo Dammer with its 46 detailed plant illustrations. While working with this book, my desire for a reissue of the entire encyclopedia became bigger and bigger.

Why do you think there is a need for a re-edition of the publications of Udo Dammer?
Nowadays we can find all information about any topic on the internet and everyone can share the experiences they have made. But especially in these times, it’s often much more inspiring to get your information from old books that have already served many people before us.
I am very impressed by how much Prof. Udo Dammer already knew about the cultivation of house plants 120 years ago and how much of it is still up to date today. For this reason, I would like to publish one of his publications in English for the first time.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
So that as many people as possible can benefit from this 120-year-old knowledge about indoor foliage plants and, therefore, can be more inspired in their homes. I hope that I can realize Leafy House Plants soon, and I am planning more free works in the future with these beautiful plant illustrations.

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

Kommune Family is growing

Posted on by verena7

The Kommune family is inspired by the vernacular shop- and promotion letterings of Burkina Faso. Originally Verena Gerlach designed it as a stencil (uppercase only) typeface for the solo show and accompanying catalogue of Burkina Faso born Architect Francis Kéré (famous for his Laongo Opera Village and communal school buildings) at the Architekturmuseum der TUM, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

Additional to its’ already continued and at Laïc: Type Foundry released Display and Stencil versions it is now also available in a new version containing upper and lowercase letters in eight weights. Kommune is a reverse-contrast typeface. In its’ lighter weights it combines elegant hairlines with by Brutalism inspired round corners and heavy horizontals.

Another special variant of Kommune is Kommune Inline. It combines the two extreme weights of Kommune within just one. It is inspired by fancy patterns and groovy shapes of the 1970s, only designed and available as a special treat to celebrate the second birthday of Laïc: Type Foundry.

Kommune Family

Foundry: Laïc: Type Foundry
Designer: Verena Gerlach
Release date: May 9th, 2020
Weights: Basic (8 weights), Display & Stencil (capitals only—providing two styles, 4 weights each)
Prices: Single style: € 30.–, family of 8 styles: € 170.–
You can get the test version via email
Buy

Support Independent Type by Marian Misiak

Posted on by Laura Nadvornik

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 in the upcoming week and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. 😉

Support Independent Type is a book by Polish creator Marian Misiak AKA Threedotstype about the new culture of type specimens, their impact on design and typographic culture at large. It’s a manifesto for independent type foundries showcasing their work in an effort to promote freshly designed fonts, and why we should support them. An exhibit of over 400 of today’s most adventurous typography labels and designers!

Threedotstype is a type foundry based in Wrocław, Poland offering fonts with storytelling extra. It is founded by Marian Misiak who is interested in experimental and cross-cultural type design. Besides long-term practice as an active graphic designer on a local field, he is also known as a co-author of the book about history of Polish typography. No joke, this guy has done some research and is currently teaching at American University of Sharjah, UAE. At threedotstype.com you will find fonts for web, print and for you.

We asked Marian 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 learned a lot. One of the most powerful parts of Kickstarter is that it reaches a global audience, and I have the feeling this was one of the biggest things I learned and also enjoyed a lot.The support we have received from Slanted and Kickstarter is how we can communicate with such widespread viewers. Support Independent Type is a rising awareness kind of project, and reaching such a broad public is crucial. After such an experience, I definitely believe in a backers community, and I would like to continue to build publishing projects with Kickstarter platform in the future.

How did this project come about?
It might sound pathetic, or cliche, but it all comes from the passion for type and a habit of collecting type specimens. Within the process of the mentoring, we decided to join forces with Lars Harmsen from Slanted, because we share this same point of view and we both are collecting those treasures. We have put our collections together and are currently in the process of adding even more type labels.

Which current trends do you see in type design?
What is very significant, is that the type design field is polarized nowadays. On one hand we have big corporate giants—and on the other hand small groups or individual designers which are also distributing typefaces. We believe this second group is producing an amazing body of work and need more substantial support. Type specimens have the magic power to encapsulate the current state of innovations in type design. We want to share with the world this fantastic and unexpected creativity through those documents also proved that the definition type specimen was recently very much expanded.

Another trend is obviously, that type designers produce more type specimens than ever before. We want to document this phenomenon. Our plan is to focus not only on a printed matter as the most current fonts are usually promoted through digital media. We want to showcase social media strategies. There will be a section in the book with pdfs which were designed to encourage potential font buyers from the desktop. And from the printed selection we have a lot of them which are not only executed fascinatingly abut also contains very serious content.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
I think Independent Type Labels need more recognition, the concept of being an independent publisher and distributor of fonts is still not clear for a lot of people even from the industry. For example, a lot of graphic design students still feel not confident with type. Supporting our project means to join our manifesto of independent type labels and celebrate the creativity of independent, super-engaged people who are pushing boundaries of the design field. From the beginning it was a project to create awareness for independent type and I definitely want to continue it. It could potentially grow to something like Independent-Type-Label-Fairs where distributors are selling their specimens, goods, fonts, and you can meet them face to face, which is slightly a rare opportunity. Similar way as art book fairs works. Can you imagine this collective energy?

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

Postcards from Isolation

Posted on by Postcards from Isolation

The project Postcards form Isolation, founded by London-based digital design studio sabato.studio, is a collection of collaborative & interactive experiences that represent the shifts in our lives caused by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The origins of the project lie in a reflection on the deeper social, cultural, and economic impact of being in isolation. The initiators studied how the context of being isolated these days corresponds to the uniqueness of geographical islands—spaces that enforce a different connection to the land and its resources, and ones that shape human identity like no continent does. Right now we may evolve into islands of our own, driven by similar powers. What can we learn from that? How can we visualize our feelings about this shift for others to remember?

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” English poet John Donne wrote these verses while ill at home back in 1623. Fast-forward to 2020 and we envy his confidence in such a statement. The consequences of lockdown policies during the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak are hard to guess. Are we shifting towards becoming islands? Or, now more than ever, we’ll stick to our past lands? It’s not in our interest to predict the future, trying to outline what we currently see as a blurred picture. What we want to do, instead, is look outside our windows and, mostly, inside ourselves to understand what’s shifting.
Excerpt from the Postcards From Isolation Manifesto

The first launch of “Postcards” involved the work of designers, researchers and developers from around the world who were asked to portray shifts in their lives that are most important to them. The existing release includes a chosen number of experiments but the project is continuously evolving. The creators are inviting anyone to submit ideas to them through the website. They ask for all ideas to be already supported by design and development efforts so they can go through the selection process to be added to the project. Prospective contributors can join the team behind the project alongside a growing community of 50+ on Slack.

Postcards from Isolation

Design: sabato.studio
Research & Manifesto: Jacopo Botticelli and Anna Wojnarowska
Development: Lorenzo Migliorero

Ar/KATE: Mannheim by Florian Budke

Posted on by Laura Nadvornik

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 each project in the upcoming days and weeks and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. 😉

Ar/KATE: Mannheim is the first instalment in an ongoing series of publications about the intricate interplay of architecture and skateboarding culture. Architect, design student and skate brand owner Florian Budke kicks things off where he knows all the rails and hidden gaps: his hometown of Mannheim.

Florian Budke was born in 1983 and started skating in 2000. He got a diploma in Architecture in 2013 and is studying Communication-design at HBKsaar, Saarbrücken since 2017. He is currently working, living and skating in Mannheim, Germany.

We asked Florian 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?
Honestly I learned a lot about budgeting a campaign like that. This aspect was really interesting to me and Julia helped me a lot. If the campaign would reach its funding goal, I would really like to learn more about the production and publishing process of a book.

How did this project come about?
The project started as a student project at the HBKsaar with Tania Raposo. The idea was to create and develop a guide book for a special subject. First of all, I thought about a classic skate guide, but somehow, that was a bit too simple and too superficial for me. So I focused to combine Architecture and Skateboarding, which are both two personal interests of myself.

After the class I had the idea to start a skatemag based on this concept. According to the release of my skatebrand (Amateur Skate Co.) I put the Ar/KATE project on the back burner, but suddenly I stumbled across your campaign.

Is there a symbiotic relationship between skaters and the architecture they ride on?
Architecture influences and shapes the creativity and type of skating. It creates the setting and is also part of the action. So every architectural or street object is scanned for its “skatable” potential. Skate parks are trying more and more to imitate these architectural elements, but often it is nothing more than an attempt. The real character of street skating takes place in real confrontation with real architecture in real city settings. Architecture affects the scene, the vibe, and the feeling during skating. Due to this the act of skateboarding is deeply connected to the built environment.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
The Ar/KATE Mannheim issue is hopefully just the beginning of the series. If people support, share and buy the book, we are able to expand the concept on other cities. So we can show more architectural buildings combined with different skatespots—and perhaps once upon a time we can build a worldwide architectural-skate-connection. 🙂

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

Posted in Uncategorized

Sichtbarkeit gestalten

Posted on by jmeer

Under the title Sichtbarkeit gestalten (“Designing Visibility”), the participants of a course at Fachhochschule Potsdam, have jointly investigated where and how feminist thought and action become visible and what role design plays in this. The result is this “quilted” website, which assembles objects and other feminist artefacts. In a collective research they collected artefacts online: printed and digital publications, advertising, moving and photographic images, posters, objects, clothing, etc. For this work, the class developed the image of the quilt—based on a reflection on historiographic issues and the particularities of feminist publishing. It refers to working together on a supra-individual project, sharing stories and the sense of belonging and togetherness that comes with it.

The research defines a broad geographical, temporal and thematic field, on which individual artefacts are highlighted—this too is a consciously chosen image that takes into account the shadows that are created by the selection. To structure this field, the class has chosen categories that lie at right angles to a chronological or theme-based analysis: book, journal, and magazine titles, posters and advertising, digital and social media, info-visualizations, typography and language, moving image as well as body, clothing, and identity. In this way, they examined the specific modes of production and distribution of the respective media and the extent to which they condition and influence strategies for producing visibility.

From this research, the participants first developed a print publication—though not between two book covers, but as a loose-leaf collection. In this way, we took up the image of the quilt, but refused a fixed arrangement. Rather, we call upon the reader to explore, create and break up visual and thematic connections himself. In addition, this type of publication emphasizes the fragmentary, the unfinished and the polyphony of the collection. This website translates the concept into digital—and hopefully helps to continue the project.

Sichtbarkeit gestalten

Course at Hochschule Potsdam by: Julia Meer and Franziska Morlok
Write an email, if you would like to participate
Visit the Website

 

Inner Necessity by Léon Howahr

Posted on by Laura Nadvornik

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 in the upcoming days and weeks and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. 😉

“Art that had to be done:” in the publication Inner Necessity, Léon Howahr pays tribute to the artistic urges of those who have no choice other than to create. In this exploration of art brut and outsider art, Howahr compiles and highlights the works and life stories of (accidental) artists like Prophet Royal Robertson, Zdenek Košek, Josef Hofer, and many more, laying bare the utterly personal core of all artistic intent.

Léon Howahr is a graphic designer from Essen, Germany, with a passion in editorial design. Since finishing his studies at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund in 2015, he has been working as a graphic designer and art director both in freelance projects and as an employed designer.

We asked Léon 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?
You always feel that you get the most support in the areas that are not your cup of tea. I believe that what few people with a more creative background fully consider are the numbers. At least that is unfortunately the case with me. A Kickstarter campaign does not only mean to produce nice pictures and a nice video, but also to be aware of shipping and packaging costs, taxes and duties. Here the support of the partners Slanted and Kickstarter was definitely the biggest for me. Of course you also talk to them about the content of the book, design, rewards. But that’s usually fun! Thanks Slanted and Kickstarter for the great opportunity and coaching!

How did this project come about?
The project was originally my bachelor thesis in the field of communication design, which I designed in 2014/2015 at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund. I had known Outsider Art for about 5 years at that time and since I love these and beautifully designed books, it was the perfect opportunity to combine the two topics for the project.

Is there a real Outsider Art/Art Brut scene? Or is it time to give them a stage? 
I would say yes and yes. Of course there is a certain “scene,” if you can call it that, in which certain galleries, institutions and collections from the field of Outsider Art and Art Brut play a role. And of course there are already numerous enthusiasts. But this “scene” is not hermetic and the boundaries are fluid. Here and there, there is a tendency or desire to be even more in the realm of contemporary art. This has also been reinforced in recent years by the participation of Outsider Artists in large contemporary collective exhibitions of important curators and museums. Nevertheless, my experience has always been that many people have simply never heard of Outsider Art—despite their interest in art, design, culture. This also led to the decision to dedicate a book entirely to this topic and, as you say, to give the artists a stage.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
For me, Outsider Art was a great enriching addition to my understanding of art and I believe that everyone who sees the works for the first time feels a certain fascination for it. So I can only recommend the Slanted reader not to miss this great source of inspiration! But also people who already know Outsider Art will get their money’s worth—because well-designed books for an audience with design background are still rare in this field. I hope that the crowdfunding will be successful and that the book can be published in cooperation with Slanted Publishers in spring 2021.

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

Artworks: courtesy christian berst art brut

Justice First, Coexistence Second

Posted on by slanted-api

We wanted to comment on the ubiquitous “Coexistence” logo created by Piotr Młodożeniec and added to over the years by many designers including Jerry Jaspar. We think it is a fundamentally flawed argument: “Why can’t we all just coexist” — In a capitalistic world, one cannot expect the oppressed to simply coexist with their oppressors. As long as religious, political, racial, sexual and economic inequalities are institutionalised and enabled by a ruling class, there can be no justice, no peace and no coexistence, BY DESIGN. Hence we wanted to satirise the centrist notion of simple coexistence as a hippie dream with no grounding in reality or existing power structures.