Kontiki

Posted on by Slanted editors

The Kontiki typeface digitally simulates a handmade woodprint, but is less expensive to produce and easier to correct. It offers a designer the possibility to create a printed image that is very close to a traditional woodcut. As the warmth of manually printed matter demonstrates a special effort and has become a sign of quality and good taste, Kontiki is quiet useful for advertising, packaging, editorial and corporate design.

To create the Kontiki fonts, 193 glyphs were manually cut into five wooden plates and carefully printed by hand. From countless test prints, the most charming four were selected and digitized to create the different styles. For each of the 560 characters, the font offers four different qualities of print and gives you the opportunity to create a vivid typography according to your own visions.

The Kontiki Family has 4 styles as single fonts with 560 glyphs each, featuring four different qualities of print. The Pro version contains all 2240 glyphs as “stylistic alternates” in one font with optimized kerning for all style combinations offers the “contextual alternates” feature. This OpenType feature generates an automatic variation of glyphs with randomized selection. All customers of the Pro Version will get all single fonts of the family for free. If you have no access to these opentype features with your layout software, it may be better to use the smaller single font files, but if you would like to have optimized kerning for all letters, use the Pro version.

Kontiki offers various sets of numerals and mathematical signs, as well as common currency symbols in all four styles. To meet the needs of global communication it has a wide range of language support and supports all western-, eastern- and central-European languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Danish, Dutch, Faroese, Finnish, Frisian, Galican, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kurdish (Latin), Leonese, Low German, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Malay (Latin), Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Occitan, Pilipino (Tagalog), Rhaeto-Romanic, Scottish Gaelic, Swahili, Swedish, Tahitian, Wallon, Bosnian (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian Latin, Slovak, Slovene, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Turkmen.

Kontiki supports the following OpenType features: standard ligatures, lining figures, oldstyle figures, tabular figures, tabular old style figures, fractions, nominatoers, denominators, inferiors, ordinals, contextual alternates (this OpenType feature is only availabe in the Pro version. It generates an automatic variation of glyphs with randomized selection. You can also choose the stylistic sets manually with stylistic alternates)

Inspired by type, made from woodcuts his wife has carved, Felix Braden decided to cut a full set of glyphs for a manual printrun. To start with, he draw a Clarendon style bold typeface, by reducing the contrast of one of his favourite typefaces: Century Schoolbook. A light and a black weight were digitized and interpolated to generate a bold weight to be cut in wood.

After testing different techniques and sizes, he settled on a woodcut in a size of around 150 points and cut a total of five plates to complete a full set of glyphs. The choice of paper was also a difficult task. Eventually, he chose a matte coated printing paper with a very smooth surface, because he wanted to show the misprints in the printed image and not the effects caused by the structure of the paper. All plates were printed in an edition of 30 and four different qualities for digitalization were chosen: a print with full pressure, a half pressure print, and two subsequent prints without re-inking.

After selecting the best quality prints, the complete set was scanned and all same style glyphs were compiled into a single pixel file. Prior to vectorizing (with the „Trace Image“ extension) the scans had to be simplefied by using Gaussian Blur and Median filter to keep the file size as small as possible. To be a well performing font, a glyph should have around 1000 nodes as a maximum, and all its curves should be replaced by straight lines. After all the fonts were optimized and generated with Glyphs app.

Residing in Cologne Germany, Felix Braden, the designer behind Kontiki, has a background in graphic design. He studied Communication Design at Trier University of Applied Sciences with Prof. Andreas Hogan and worked with Jens Gehlhaar at Gaga Design. He co-founded Glashaus Design, is an art director at MWK Cologne and works as a freelance type designer. In 2000, he founded the free font foundry, Floodfonts, and designed numerous free typefaces, which are available as webfonts via Adobe Typekit. His commercial fonts are distributed by FontShop International (FF Scuba), Floodfonts (Capri, Sadness, Grimoire), URW++ (Supernormale), Volcanotype (Bikini) and Ligature Inc (Tuna, as a cooperation with Alex Rütten) and are all available via MyFonts. FF Scuba is one of the winners of the Communication Arts Typography Annual 2013, and was an honorable mention in Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces of 2012, in Typefacts Best Fonts of 2012, in FontShop’s Best Types 2012, and in Typecache’s Favorite Typefaces of 2012. Kontiki was nominated for the German Design Award 2019.

Kontiki

Foundry: Floodfonts
Designer: Felix Braden
Release: Oktober 2018
Formats: OTF / TTF
Weights: Fine, Rancid, Rotten, used
Price per Cur: until November 17th available for EUR 9, then EUR 17.99
Family price: until November 17th available for EUR 27.50, then EUR 54.99

Here you can buy the font.

Festival Architecture RADIKAL

Posted on by Slanted editors

Festival Architecture RADIKAL

Conditions for Participation:
The Festival Architektur RADIKAL (May 31st until June 2nd 2019) is aimed at international students of all design disciplines.
Our only condition to you is that you are definitely able to take part at the Festival.

Services:
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation will offer following things for the three festival days:
Work and livingrooms
Assistance with the organization of events as well as technical assistance and public relations.
Certificates for all participants

Following is required by the participants:
Health and liability insurance
Visa
Cost of living
Traveling expenses
Participants are free to apply for additional funding for their stay with the support of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.

The Jury:
Dr. Claudia Perren, Leitung Festspiele Bauhaus Dessau und Direktorin der Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Kathrin Luz, Kuratorin Festival Architektur RADIKAL
Dr. Werner Möller, Kurator Festival Architektur RADIKAL

Deadline:
November 15th 2018 (MEZ)

You can apply here.

Slanted Magazine #32—Dubai

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

In Spring 2018 the Slanted editors took a close-up look at the contemporary design scene of Dubai. A city—when described by many people—that is all sickening shine and has no soul. But Dubai and the whole region, originally a piece of desert sparsely populated by Bedouins, is now transforming itself rapidly into a center, if not the world’s greatest center, of trade, finance, and tourism—and moreover, something important happened in the last few years: Culture! Today, a new Arab world is being plotted and planned. The entire Gulf is teeming with initiatives—from the most public to the most private—to change and reinvent seemingly immutable rules, regimes, edicts, and assumptions, culminating, perhaps, in the stated intention to work more closely together. The Gulf states have a past, and they will have a future. The contours of that future are legible in this Slanted issue!

Slanted met some of the most amazing creatives such as Möbius Studio, Wissam Shawkat, and Fikra Design Studio. Not only can you find their brilliant works in the new issue, Slanted also provides a deeper look at their opinions and views through video interviews that can be watched online on our video platform for free.

Illustrations, photography, interviews and essays complement the issue thematically. Slanted #32 comes with contributions by Abjad Design, Uday Al-Araji, becky beamer, Jason Carlow, Dr. Nadine Chahine, Afra Bin Dhaher, Fatmah Al Dhanhani, Noor Eid, Elephant Nation, Jori Erdman, Reem Falaknaz, Marcus Farr, Fikra Design Studio, Martin Giesen, Glyphs, Nan Goggin, Gökçe Günel, H2R Design, Hanken Design Co., Tulip Hazbar, Khalid Al Jallaf, JAM Type, Kemistry Design, Ibraheem Khamayseh, Cristiano Luchetti, Faissal El-Malak, Mohammed Mandi, Möbius Studio, Moloobhoy & Brown, Myneandyours, Nasir Nasrallah, Ingo Niermann, Narjes Noureddine, Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Khaled Al-Saai, Sheikh Saifi, Fatmah Salmeen, Ruben Sánchez, Tarsila Schubert, Wissam Shawkat, Slash, The Flip Side, The Lighthouse, T.ZED Architects, Tahreek, Tinkah, Toil & Tinker, Tribe Magazine, Twothirds Design Bureau, WTD Magazine, Majid Al Yousef, and Mandana Ziaei.

The booklet “Contemporary Typefaces” is a regular feature of Slanted Magazine presenting an editorial selection of recently published international high-quality typefaces as well as typefaces with an Arabic language support in an additional section, including Akkordeon Slab (Eduardo Manso / Emtype Foundry, Faune (Alice Savoie / Centre National des Arts Plastiques), Knif (Building Paris, Axel Pelletanche-Thévenart / A is for…), Mackay (René Bieder), Mazagan (Mário Feliciano / Feliciano Type Foundry), Rektorat (Prof. Rudolf Barmettler, Anton Studer / Nouvelle Noire), SangBleu (Swiss Typefaces), Sloop Script Pro (Richard Lipton / Lipton Letter Design), Trash (Estela Ibarz González / Bruta Types), Adelle Sans Arabic (Azza Alameddine / TypeTogether), Amariya (Dr. Nadine Chahine, Matthew Carter / Monotype), 29LT Bukra (Pascal Zoghbi, Swiss Typefaces, Adrien Midzic / 29Letters), Clother (Jérémie Hornus, Julie Soudanne, Ilya Naumoff / Black[Foundry]), Edit Serif Arabic (Christoph Dunst / Atlas Font Foundry), FiraGO (Ralph du Carrois, Anja Meiners, Botio Nikoltchev, Titus Nemeth, Hasan Abu Afash, Rob Keller, Kimya Gandhi, Natalie Rauch, Akaki Razmadze, Natalie Rauch, Yanek Iontef, Mark Frömberg, Ben Mitchell / bBox Type), URW Geometric Arabic (Jörn Oelsner, Boutros Fonts / URW Type Foundry), Graphik Arabic (Khajag Apelian, Wael Morcos, Christian Schwartz / Commercial Type), Markazi Text (Fiona Ross, Borna Izadpanah, Florian Runge / Google Fonts), Skolar Sans Arabic (Titus Nemeth, David Březina / Rosetta Type Foundry), Teshrin (Kristyan Sarkis, Peter Biľak / TPTQ Arabic), and SF Tobba (Sultan Mohammed Saeed Maqtari / Sultan Fonts).

In addition to this exciting publication, a limited special edition is available consisting of a tote bag designed by Wissam Shawkat and produced by World of Textiles and a risograph printed booklet presenting the colorful work of Ruben Sánchez. Moreover, it contains a photo book showcasing the work of Ola Allouz, Faysal Tabbarah / Architecture + Other Things, Ammar Al Attar, Lamya Hussain Gargash, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Lars Harmsen, Irenaeus Herok, Johannes Heuckeroth, Celia Peterson, Juan Roldán, Christian Topp and Ashok Verma that has been printed by Océ.

Slanted Magazine #32—Dubai

Publisher / Design: Slanted Publishers
Release: October 2018
Volume: 256 pages + 48-pages booklet
Format: 16 × 24 cm
Language: English
Printing & Finishing: Stober
Paper: Gmund 925 Brown Silver, MultiArt Gloss, PlanoPlus, OpakoSatin, distributed by Papyrus
ISSN: 1867-6510
Price: € 18,- (DE) / € 21,- (International) 

Get your copy here.

Reportagen Band #43

Posted on by Slanted editors

Report # 43 is released.
The content:

– The Phoenix of Paris. By Julia Amberger.

– Where is Transdniestria? By Urs Mannhart.

– 5x Mail. By Erwin Koch, Carol Pires, Amir Hassan Cheheltan, Emilienne Malfatto, Kerstin Zilm.

– This Animal is an Issue. By Barbara Bachmann.

– Whose will be done? By Alexander Krützfeldt.

– The Historical Reportage: In Court, 1976. By Fritz H. Dinkelmann.

Reportagen #43

Publisher: Puntas Reports AG
Design: Moiré
Release: November 2018
Volume: 144 pages
Format: 16,5 × 23 cm
Language: German
ISBN: 978-3-906024-42-4
Price: 15,– Euro
Buy

The Global Warming Typeface

Posted on by Slanted editors

Unique font with implemented global warming data. This annually released font is a new and unusual method of data visualization in the graphic world and we already look forward to the day, on which we won’t have to release an updated version of the typeface ever again, because the human race actually managed to stop the global warming process. But until then we’ll start with five fonts for the years 1910, 1936, 1963, 1990, 2017

50% of the payed amount will be donated to the Climate Group.

The Global Warming Typeface

Foundry: STAN STUDIOS
Cuts: 1910, 1936, 1963, 1990, 2017
Format: OpenType Font / Web Open Font Format
Price per Family: 25,– Euro

 

Morisawa Type Design Competition 2019

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Morisawa Type Design Competition has been giving birth to new typeface designs for more than three decades from the first Morisawa Awards International Typeface Competition held in 1984. The last competition (2016) received more than 700 entries from 49 countries and regions, including both Kanji and Latin category. We are looking for works with new expressivity and full of challenging sprit from all over the world.

Morisawa Award calls for typeface designs with creativity and aesthetic excellence of designs for two categories, Kanji and Latin. Designers and experts who lead each field will join as new judge members and will evaluate entry works. People’s Choice Award will be chosen by the general public votes online.

Akashi Award used to call for entries for typeface to commercialize. We launch a new initiative and set a theme each time for entries. This time, the theme is “variable fonts” which is implemented in the OpenType specification. The judges will comprehensively evaluate whether your work is new or progressive as a variable font.

The submission period is November 1st, 2018 to January 31st, 2019. The result is planned to be announced in July 2019. You can find all the submission informations here.

Judges of Morisawa Award

Kanji Category
Issei Kitagawa / Osamu Torinoumi / Ryoko Nishizuka / Masaaki Hiromura

Latin Category
Ilya Ruderman / Indra Kupferschmid / Cyrus Highsmith / Laura Meseguer

The Emeritus Jury
Matthew Carter

Awards
Morisawa Award (Categories: Kanji and Latin)
Winners receive a testimonial, a trophy and a sub-prize money;

Kanji Category
Gold Prize: JPY 1 million (1 work)
Silver Prize: JPY 500,000 (1 work)
Bronze prize: JPY 300,000 (1 work)
Honorable Mention: JPY 50,000 (3 works)

Latin Category
Gold Prize: JPY 1 million (1 work)
Silver Prize: JPY 500,000 (1 work)
Bronze prize: JPY 300,000 (1 work)
Honorable Mention: JPY 50,000 (3 works)

Peopleʼs Choice
Winners receive a testimonial, a trophy and a gift.

Kanji Category
Highest number and 2nd highest number of votes (1 work each)

Latin Category
Highest number and 2nd highest number of votes (1 work each)

Akashi Award
The theme is “variable fonts.” Please see the entry guideline for more detail. Morisawa Inc. examine entry works. 
Winners receive a testimonial, a trophy and a sub-prize money.
JPY 500,000 (Up to 3 works)

Melnikov-House Moscow

Posted on by Julia Kahl

During my trip to Moscow for bauhaus imaginista, I was lucky to have the possibility to take part in one of the rare guidances at the renowned Melnikov House.

It was built by architect Konstantin Melnikov as a classic residence that represents the forefront of the 1920’s Russian avant-garde and was opened to the public only just in 2017. Located in the trendy district of Arbat, its aesthetics differ dramatically from traditional Soviet residential architecture.

Nearly 60 hexagonal windows with nine types of frames establish the aesthetic quality of the rear cylinder, showering the interior with light. Functionally not a masterpiece – you can’t really open them properly. Aesthetically for sure one of the most iconic pieces of modern architecture!

Frankfurter Buchmesse 2018

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Frankfurter Buchmesse is the world’s most important fair for the print and digital content business, as well as an outstanding social and cultural event.
 We visited the book fair to get an impression of the latest trends and publications from the design book world. We were very happy to be also part of this year’s fair, because the Indiecon Island were hosting the Slanted Magazine in their stock. Have a lot of fun by taking a look at our review pictures and we hope to see you next year.

For five days, publishing experts, writers and cultural enthusiasts from all over the world come together at the fair in Frankfurt, where they network, talk, make decisions, get inspired and join together in celebration. Every October, Frankfurt is the centre of the global publishing industry. It’s where ground-breaking contractual agreements are made, innovative technologies are presented, and world literature gets discovered. And during the rest of the year, Frankfurter Buchmesse lives on with appearances at many locations across the globe.

DOCKS ’18

Posted on by Slanted editors

DOCKS is a collective of five young photographers (Fabian Ritter, Arne Piepke, Ingmar Björn Noltig, Maximilian Mann, Tim Brederecke) from FH Dortmund. They stand for diverse and contemporary approaches to documentary photography. With humanistic values as their common basis, they believe in the power of visual storytelling. They just published a first Magazine that you can order for free.

DOCKS ’18

Design: Simon Schulz
Printing: Rheinisch-Bergische Druckerei GmbH Düsseldorf
Promotion: NIKON Deutschland
Release: May 2018
Volume: 48 pages

10th Weltformat Graphic Design Festival

Posted on by Slanted editors

As every year, the opening day is one of the highlights of the festival. The programme features a series of introductions and openings. This year, the tour through the exhibitions starts in the north of the city – at Kunsthalle – and ends, after numerous stopovers, in the south – at Neubad. In between, the designers and curators introduce their exhibitions and projects. The highlight of this year’s opening day will be Weltformat Newcomer Award ceremony followed by an anniversary dinner at Neubad and the printing of the world’s longest silkscreen print. Weltformat Graphic Design Festival Switzerland.

The Weltformat app has been launched and is now available on the App Store! The app not only accompanies you through the exhibitions of the festival but – thanks to augmented reality – makes some of them possible in the first place. Get the App here.

Designers’ Open 2018

Posted on by Slanted editors

Slanted is offering 3 x 2 tickets for the Designers’ Open. To take part in the lottery, just send an email to [email protected], subject “Designers’ Open 2018” until November 11th, 2018, 11 a.m. (UTC+1) and add your postal address for shipping. There is no right of appeal. When taking part, you agree to our privacy policy. Good luck!

Designers’ Open

When?
October 26th—28th 2018

Where?
Kongresshalle am Zoo Leipzig
Pfaffendorfer Str. 31
D—04105 Leipzig 

Beautifully Simple

Posted on by Slanted editors

Studio Makgill, the independent design and brand studio, presents Beautifully Simple, an exhibition at private gallery Ground Floor Space this October, to mark the studio’s tenth anniversary. Not to be confused with minimalism or with notions of pure beauty, Beautifully Simple looks at ten extraordinary designs, that articulate the most stringent of briefs – designs that are stripped of the unnecessary and could not be any other way.

When?
Vernissage
Thursday, October 11th 2018
6 p.m.—8 p.m

October 12th—19th 2018
10 a.m.—5 p.m.
Free Entry

Where?
Ground Floor Space, 3 Tyers Gate,
London SE1 3HX

nomad #5 – where to go?

Posted on by Slanted editors

The fifth issue of nomad addresses “the human aspect” in the development of our time. The human race is the greatest influencing factor on our planet, with an impact that is changing the very role of humanity itself. In this context, artist Edward Burtynsky documents the ways in which humans are re-forming, and deforming, the earth. What does it mean to be human if intimacy can be provided by robots? A question explored by interactive designer Dan Chen with his responsive machines. The global digital transformation determines the routes travelled by information, but also the pathways of our feelings; multimedia artist Cécile B. Evans explores the economic value of emotions. How will we feed ourselves in the future? Hervé This introduces Note by Note, the successor to molecular cuisine. Will the concepts of interior and exterior still have a place in the future, or will simply being take centre stage? Japanese architect Junya Ishigami abandons boundaries in architecture to focus on the existence of humanity in the here and now.

nomad #5 – where to go?
The Magazine for New Design Culture, Business Affairs & Contemporary Lifestyle

Design: Veronika Kinczli und Frank Wagner, hw.design gmbh
Editor: Frank Wagner
Publisher: hw.design gmbh
Release: biannual, May and November
Volume: 168 pages

Format: 23 × 26 × 1,7 cm

Language: German or English

Price: 14,– Euro
Buy

POSITIONS 2018

Posted on by Slanted editors

POSITIONS 2018

The graphic design conference POSITIONS during the Designers‘ Open is taking place for the fifth time. Philipp Neumann, self-employed graphic designer and owner of the book and magazine store MZIN will present six positions.

Speakers 
Sandra Kassenaar, Neven Allgeier, Happy Little Accidents, New Tendency, Stefanie Leinhos, Anymade Studio

When?
Saturday, October 27, 2018
10 – 11 a.m. SANDRA KASSENAAR (Amsterdam)
11 – 12 a.m. NEVEN ALLGEIER (Frankfurt/Berlin)
12 – 13 p.m. HAPPY LITTLE ACCIDENTS (Leipzig)
14 – 15 p.m. NEW TENDENCY (Berlin)
15 – 16 p.m. STEFANIE LEINHOS (Leipzig)
16 – 17 p.m. ANYMADE STUDIO (Prag)

Where?
KONGRESSHALLE am Zoo Leipzig / Lessing-Saal
Pfaffendorfer Str. 31,
04105 Leipzig, DE

Important:
Limited seats available.
You can reserve via this formular.

Click here for more information.

Typeface of the Month: SangBleu

Posted on by Slanted editors

Guided by their vision of future graphic and editorial design, the Swiss type design company has developed SangBleu into an elaborate supercollection of unprecedented structure and versatility. The typeface consists of five full-featured collections: Empire, Kingdom, Republic, Versailles, and Sunrise, each in a range of weights with matching italics, spanning 45 styles in total.

SangBleu is informed by history, but it’s not a revival. The typeface collection appropriates the best from the past and transforms it into an effective tool set for the aesthetic and technical environment of our day and age. All five collections can be used separately or in combination. Thanks to their consanguinity, they perfectly complement each other.

SangBleu Empire loves to be big. Serifs are lineal and contrast is high, like in a Didot. In the Black styles, its thick & thin delicacy is taken to the max. Fat curvy letters like the grinning ‘e’ or the spiraling italic ‘w’ may evoke Caslon burlesques from the 1970s. But then you encounter the crude bar in ‘G’, devoid of any smooth transition, or the leg of ‘K’ that has been synthesized into a pure rhomboid – and you’ll realize this diva is headed for the future.

SangBleu Kingdom stands between Empire and Republic, in terms of shaping, contrast amount, and application range. Sturdy bracketed base serifs are paired with pointy triangular terminals. At the same time, Kingdom forms a pair with Sunrise: Both collections come with Light and Air styles. These slender members demand a certain size to thrive, while the other weights work fine down to medium-sized text.

With its modest contrast, economical horizontal proportions and larger serifs, SangBleu Republic is designed for unobtrusive text and continuous reading. It is the only collection not to flaunt the crescent shapes in ‘bdpq’. In letters like ‘m’, the arcs don’t flow smoothly into the stems, but form an angle. The collection still shares much of the design DNA, and can serve as a demure text companion to Empire or Kingdom.

SangBleu Versailles is a softer, rounder sibling to Republic, with wider capitals and a gracefully curved leg for ‘R’. It is distinguished by flatter top serifs, and introduces lachrymal terminals for ‘acfry’. Although many of the other glyphs are virtually identical in both collections, the difference in rhythm and feel is immense. Just like with Republic, the weight span of Versailles includes a Book, indicating that these two collections are made with text sizes in mind.

SangBleu Sunrise stands out as the only member without serifs. It is not a grotesque, though, rather a serifless roman. With the round ‘a’ and ‘g’, it seems derivative of Versailles. Traits like the stylized ‘Q’ tail can only be found back in Empire, while details like the straight-stemmed ‘M’ suggest close ties to Kingdom. Sunrise doesn’t have a single seriffed counterpart, but several. Stripped to the bone, it embodies the essence of the SangBleu concept.

SangBleu

Foundry: Swiss Typefaces
Designer: Ian Party, Swiss Typefaces
Release: September 2017
Format: otf, ttf, woff, woff2
Weights: From Air to Bold
Price: 400,– CHF 
Buy

Slanted in Tokyo

Posted on by Slanted editors

A year ago, the Slanted team dove into Tokyo—with their friends Renna Okubo and Ian Lynam preventing them from drowning—to take an intense look at the contrasting design scene. The Japanese capital is a unique place. With its clean streets, punctual transportation and polite service at every turn, Tokyo is more than just a well-run city. It unites cultural extremes: it is a city where the futuristic meets the traditional and tranquility meets speed. In the Slanted Magazine #31—Tokyo you can get a visual impression of the studios we visited during our journey.

Tatsuya Ariyama has graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He established Ariyama Design Store in 1993. He performs graphic design and art direction mainly on editorials. He puts emphasis on being at the place where the things happen, and, imagining how he can reflect them on the paper, rather than manipulation “the mouse” towards “the monitor screen.”

Take a look at the Slanted Magazine #31—Tokyo to get an idea of Tokyo’s creative environment. Additionally you can find several video interviews on our video platform to get a deeper insight in the designer’s thoughts.

bauhaus imaginista

Posted on by Slanted editors

During its brief 14-year existence, the Bauhaus (1919–33) was actively engaged in the international movement of modernism. The school’s first director, Walter Gropius, one of the members of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM), helped create a network of modernist architects spread throughout Europe and the United States—as did its third and last director, Mies van der Rohe. Hannes Meyer, the school’s second director, was in dialogue with the avant-garde of the Soviet Union and Latin America. The school’s worldwide reputation made it fundamentally important to the creation of modernist conceptions of form, method and ethos in architecture and design.

The Moscow iteration of the exhibition series bauhaus imaginista – Moving Away: The Internationalist Architect traces the complex relationship between the Bauhaus and the Soviet Union through the experiences of former Bauhaus teachers and students in Moscow in the 1930s. From its very beginnings, Bauhaus design ideas were profoundly influenced by the Russian avant-garde, with lines of communication between it and the Moscow design and architecture school Vkhutemas (1920–30) established early on. When Hannes Meyer arrived in 1927 to start the newly established building department at Bauhaus Dessau, these Russian ties were strengthened through regular visits, guest lectures and exhibitions. The exhibition started last week in Muscovite Garage – Museum of Contemporary Art in Gorki Park.

Following his politically motivated dismissal in 1930, Meyer and seven of his Bauhaus students travelled to Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet government, such visits by architects and other engineering professionals being common at that time. While in the Soviet Union, Meyer worked for a series of institutes and collaborated on several urban projects. Meyer’s former students would continue to work for Soviet state agencies well after his departure for Switzerland in 1936, leading teams designing educational facilities, interiors and housing schemes. They conducted urban studies and undertook the large-scale planning of new town developments such as Orsk in the southern Ural region. When under Stalin’s regime, avant-garde ideas were summarily rejected, several Bauhaus architects were imprisoned and even given death sentences. Many left the Soviet Union with the Stalin purges, relocating, variously, to Europe, Asia or South America. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, in locales as diverse as Hungary, Chile, the German Democratic Republic and North-Korea, one could find Bauhaus-trained architects working as city planners and educators.

bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away focuses on some of these architects/planners: second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer; Philipp Tolziner, who became a permanent Moscow resident; the recently deceased Konrad Püschel, who died a Weimar resident; and Lotte Stam-Beese, the first woman to study at Bauhaus Dessau’s building department. Today, holdings from their estates are spread across several institutions: the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, the archive of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, the archive of the Archiv des Deutschen Architekturmuseums Frankfurt (DAM), the  gta-Archiv at ETH Zurich and the Netherlands Architecture Institure. Each institution has its own system and history, expressing the power structures and modes of selection behind collecting, while each estate exhibits the subjectivity and the partial, precarious and contingent status of what these architects left behind.

For the exhibition at Garage Contemporary Museum of Art, contemporary practitioners have been invited to respond to these personal archives, producing reading of material relating to the architects’ socialist backgrounds and work in the Soviet Union. Each invited practitioner has also produced a proposal on how to contextualize archival knowledge. These different takes on the archive correspond with the subjective nature of storytelling revealed in the personal papers of the Bauhaus architects themselves.

These archival responses have been commissioned from an international group of figures who deal with geopolitical, social and design histories: the artist Alice Creischer, theorist Doreen Mende, and researchers Tatiana Efrussi and Daniel Talesnik. The exhibition is comprised of these responses and will also include material generated through participants’ readings, as well as selected archival holdings chosen by the curators. The architecture and design group Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik has provided advice on exhibition design.

As part of the exhibition’s public program, artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh will present her research for a new commission exploring the life and contemporary legacy of Lotte Stam-Beese, who, after implementing her ideas in Orsk, in 1935 moved to the Netherlands, becoming famous after World War II for her work reconstructing Rotterdam. Van Oldenborgh’s work will premiere at the centenary exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in 2019.

You can get more insight in a little video-documentation of the exhibition by Silke Briel and a summary of the Archive Talks. bauhaus imaginista is a collaboration by Bauhaus Kooperation Berlin Dessau Weimar, the Goethe-Institut and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The research project with different stations takes place on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of bauhaus. bauhaus imaginista is made possible by funds of delegates of the German Federal Government for Culture and Media (BKM), die Cultural Foundation of the sate (KSB) supports die exhibition in Berlin and the Federal Foreign Office stations offseas.

Pictures: © Julia Kahl, © Silke Briel

The Global Alphabet

Posted on by Slanted editors

“Global Alphabet” by Yuliana Gorkorov chosen as “Best in show, student” at TDC64

Globalization and digitization imply new cultural and linguistic rapprochement. Multicultural communication plays an ever growing role in our everyday life. Many words became international and can be understood by all of us. But even words like “pizza”, “chocolate” or “coffee” are unrecognizable, when written in a foreign alphabet.

The Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets look completely unrelated at first sight, while hiding the fact, that they actually share a mutual historical origin.
This fact motivated the designer Yuliana Gorkorov to unite the alphabet again in new fonts, that would be readable simultaneously to people from different cultures.

The 29-year-old was born in Ukraine, grew up in Israel, and lives since nine years in Germany. That is how she became familiar with the Cyrillic, Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic alphabets.

Already during her Bachelor studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts she began examining the Alphabets, looking for similarities.

Her Master graduation project, the “Global Alphabet” book, presents the results of her five years work: five font, each fonts unite the alphabets in a different way.
In BABEL2014 e.g. similar sound are united in one mutual form. If we take the BABEL2014 sign for A as an example, we can see that the form stays the same for all of the alphabets, it just has to be rotated 90° for Hebrew and Arabic.
In Akrofont on the other hand, Yuliana freed herself from the forms of the letters and united similar sound through pictograms of international words. In this case the sound A is represented through a pictogram of an Avocado.

In the past few years the project was awarded and exhibited multiple times, and lately it was honored to be chosen as “Best in show, student” and as “Judges Choice” of Natasha Jen at TDC64.

Now Yuliana hopes that the fonts will make their way from the academy to the everyday life, and will serve as a cultural bridge.

For further information please click here.

Humanity vs. Artificial Intelligence—ADC DESIGN Experience

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

The conference Humanity vs. Artificial Intelligence of the ArtDirectors Club Germany took place on September 13th, 2018 and discussed questions like: What role does power supply play between analog craftsmanship and digital automation? Where is the technology over estimated and where under estimated?

For this purpose, experts from the fields of technology, development, communication and design were brought on board to examine the topic from various perspectives. We were there to gather some impressions of the conference and the following workshop day.

Slanted in Tokyo

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

A year ago, the Slanted team dove into Tokyo—with their friends Renna Okubo and Ian Lynam preventing them from drowning—to take an intense look at the contrasting design scene. The Japanese capital is a unique place. With its clean streets, punctual transportation and polite service at every turn, Tokyo is more than just a well-run city. It unites cultural extremes: it is a city where the futuristic meets the traditional and tranquility meets speed. In the Slanted Magazine #31—Tokyo you can get a visual impression of the studios we visited during our journey. Now we present the work of Daijiro Ohara, a typography artist. 

Daijiro Ohara was born in Kanagawa Prefecture (1978) and graduated from Musashino Art University in Tokyo. In 2003, he started working independently and is principal of omomma, a studio focusing on lettering, illustration, motion graphics, and art direction. Beside commissioned work, he has also been actively engaged in self-initiated projects, searching for new perceptions of words and letters.

Take a look at the Slanted Magazine #31—Tokyo to get an idea of Tokyo’s creative environment. Additionally you can find several video interviews on our video platform to get a deeper insight in the designer’s thoughts.

Phase XI

Posted on by Slanted editors

PHASE XI is a questions and answers game, played out with the cultural and creative industries and intended to design tomorrow’s society and business sectors. Different creative people have spent several months dealing with issues that will be relevant to the economy and society in the future. The project is based on the conviction that this industry has a very special, non-technical innovation potential and that this strength is not only conducive to other sectors of the economy but can also be a catalyst for social change.

For everyone involved, this project was a journey, a test set-up, an expedition and an experiment. The documentary book allows viewers to share in this experience in different ways: you will need both hands to read this book. You will have to turn it, change perspective and change direction. You will have to disassemble and refold it. Maybe you will get angry over this book and be surprised the next moment. In the end, hopefully, you will not only have answers, but also many new questions.

In order to visually and haptically support this experience, Bureau Hardy Seiler, with support from Christian Vukomanovic and Ilina Catana, made use of various papers, typefaces, formats, printing and production techniques. The textual content was distributed together with photographic stagings by Studio Tusch on three thread-stitched books, each section being content-based and thus individually designed and developed by the reader. The three books are combined into a book by an eight-page cover and held together by a slipcase made of two papers. Before the elaborate production with foil embossing, special colors and laser punching could be taken over by the Hanoverian Gutenberg Beuys Feindruckerei GmbH, the entire book was art-worked in detail by Simon Kondermann and prepared for printing.


PHASE XI
Eine Expedition mit der Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft

Design: Bureau Hardy Seiler
Project & Editorial Management: Ivana Rohr
Publisher: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi)
Client: Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes /
u-institut Backes & Hustedt GbR
Released: February 2018
Pages: 236
Size: 18 × 24 cm
Language: German

If you are interested, pleas contact u-institut.

A’ Design Awards & Competition – Call for Submissions

Posted on by Julia Kahl

A’ Design Award and Competition is the World’s largest, most prestigious and influential design accolade, the highest achievement in design. A’ Design Award Winner Logo, symbolizes exceptional design excellence in your products, projects and services.

A’ Design Award, recognizing the excellent and original design work from across the globe, is the highest achievement in design, a source of inspiration for award-winning designers, artists, architects, brands and design agencies. Entry and nomination is open to all from all countries.

The award is organized under various categories based on Locarno classification of economic sectors and industries such as Graphics and Visual Communication Design / Packaging Design / Advertising, Marketing and Communication Design / Photography and Photo Manipulation Design / Computer Graphics and 3D Model Design Competition. All categories here.

Costs for taking part are calculated upon point of time, amount of submitted work, professionalism, etc. Unlike other design award and competitions there are no further fees for winners’ services: All the services for winners; including exhibition, book and the winners’ packages are provided free of charge to award winning designers.

The A’ Design Prize includes public relations and publicity services in addition to the award trophy, certificate, yearbook and of course the winner logo which laureates could use to differentiate and add further value their award-winning products, projects and services.

Submit your work now!