New videos online from Tokyo

Posted on by Julia Kahl

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.

Slanted met some of the most amazing creatives such as &Form, Shin Akiyama, Tatsuya Ariyama, Dainippon Type Organization, Terada Hideji, Hitomi Sago Design Office, Ian Lynam Design, IDEA, KIGI, MATZDA OFFICE / USIWAKAMARU, Nakagaki Design Office, OMOMMA, PULP, Yoshihisa Shirai, TSDO, Yosuke Yamaguchi and woolen. Not only can you find their brilliant works in the issue, Slanted also provides a deeper look at their opinions and views through the video interviews that can be watched online for free!

Have a look at the Tokyo video interviews!

Posted in Uncategorized

Hotel Josef

Posted on by Julia Kahl

Exactly 50 years ago, the people of Prague took to the streets to fight for the reform efforts of the Communist Party to establish a democratic, socially just and modern state. Today, 50 years later, Prague is a city with a lot of history and sights, such as Prague Castle and Charles Bridge, which are almost swallowed up by tourist streams, but also an energetic metropolis that ticks at the pulse of time and has a lot to offer culturally.

Last week we were in Prague for the spring/summer issue of Slanted magazine to take a look at the design scene there and get to know the soul of the city. During our stay we were allowed to stay overnight in the design hotel Josef, which is located in a picturesque side street next to the old town and was designed by the renowned architect Eva Jiřičná.

Skilful light staging and sensitive use of materials characterise the consistent and straightforward style of the whole house. A highlight from the pen Jiřičnás are the bathrooms, which either consistently open out of glass towards the bedroom or are clad in stone. Altogether there are eight room categories, which differ mainly in size and view.

No wonder that Hotel Josef is the only hotel in Prague to be a member of the curated Design community Hotels™, which includes 270 hotels in 50 countries and which has a particular passion for visionary design and sincere hospitality.

But it’s not just the architecture and fantastic location that make Hotel Josef a special place to stay and feel at home: A welcome gift from the hotel’s own patisserie, bathroom products from the world capital of perfume, a free minibar filled with Czech specialities and freshly roasted coffee and a breakfast buffet that leaves nothing to be desired.

Explore Prague on a design icon? No problem! The Čezeta – translated “the pig” – is a real scooter original, which with its aerodynamic silhouette provides a lot of driving fun. In the Hotel Josef you can borrow the exclusively designed electric special edition free of charge.

www.hoteljosef.com

The End of TYPO Berlin …(?)

Posted on by Slanted editors

For more than 20 years the 3-day design conference TYPO Berlin was a must for all European designers in May…as well as for us, who have been on pilgrimage there for more than a decade, to give you live reports. These countless contributions, which you can find on our blog, give you insights of this exciting conference, that resulted of the FUSE in 95. Until 2014 it was organized by FontShop and since then by Monotype.

Now it became known that there will be no TYPO in 2019, as the organizer Monotype will not be financially involved in the conference. Whether the TYPO can possibly be carried on by another organizer, is unclear.

We think it is a pity that such a prestigious, long-standing conference is now coming to an end, but who knows, maybe even in the gap something new will be created …

Still, here are some impressions from 2007-2018. You can see from the resolution of the pictures for how long we have been visiting the TYPO 😉

Logical

Posted on by Slanted editors

When a typeface is called Logical you’re quasi expecting strong underlying principles and repeating design elements. And that is quite the case in Edgar Walthert’s new sans-serif family. But he pairs these rules with affable, soothing details that make for an overall warm and approachable design. While the basic structure of the letterforms is oval and compact, there are circular patterns to discover. Terminals are tapered towards the end, many of them in soft curves, and apertures stay open.

Walthert wanted Logical to be geared to web and screen design so he started out by drawing the letters on a 13 px grid for better rendering on standard resolution displays. Special underlined versions of the glyphs are available for links or other emphasis in interactive environments (Stylistic Set 19 and 20). All eight weights from Thin to Black are accompanied by real italics and an extensive set of pictograms and icons. These are accessible via smart OpenType features that automatically convert words into associated symbols (Stylistic Set 01, 02, 03 and 04 for Englisch, German, Dutch and French respectively). Or simply type the right keyword between two colons like :this: For a complete list of keywords, more info, demos and a full glyph overview check out the logical specimen site. And if all fails, the icons are also accessible via their unicode value.

Logical is a great choice for interactive designs, websites, user interfaces, signage or other text were readability is key. The slightly technical, DIN-like structure paired with a humanist feel will fit a wide range of applications.

Edgar Walthert started designing Logical in 2012 as the leading typeface for his portfolio website. To maintain optimal readability on the web without the need for TrueType hinging, Edgar modeled the font’s basic shapes on a grid of 13 points. The website therefore only used the point-sizes 13, 26 and 52 points. The portfolio used an abundance of revolving links, which guided visitors through Edgar’s interdisciplinary practice. The fact that every browser displayed underlined text differently, and yet there was no CSS solution to style underlines, quickly presented an obstacle. Through discussion with the collaborating web-designer Tijs Gadiot, the idea of a underlined version of the typeface emerged.

Next to his freelance work at LucasFonts in Berlin and graphic design work in Amsterdam, Edgar extended the family to eight weights and added the italic styles and small caps. In conversations with Paul van der Laan of Bold Monday about a release, Edgar decided to add more intelligent functions to the typeface, drawing from research into Otto Neurath completed during his master’s study in TypeMedia. The interest in icon-language goes back to his studies in Lucerne, Switzerland where Edgar got in touch with Genesis by Juli Gudehus and Der Mensch und seine Zeichen by Adrian Frutiger. The icons included in Logical can be easily accessed by typing words the are associated with the different icons—for example :sun: will automatically change into a sun—wherever basic ligatures work. This markup-accts to emojis should be familiar to people working with Slack. For the languages Englisch, German, Dutch and French, there are even stylistic sets, that can be applied to a text and will transfer every word the dictionary recognises into a fitting icon.

When the time came to finish the font family, Edgar had already joined the team at Bold Monday to help in the development of IBM Plex. Here he refined his TrueType hinting skills, which allowed him to hint his own typeface and icons. In the years of development and justification, the typeface left its original grid and moved towards more ergonomic proportions. Therefore the TrueType instructions were needed to fit the lettershapes back onto the grid when used on low-resolutions screens. During this time-intensive labor another obstacle had to be resolved: the extensive dictionary of words in four languages, exceeded OpenType capabilities. Thanks to the help of Frank Grießhammer and Read Roberts at Adobe, who created an exclusive pre-version of the Adobe Font Development Kit, a reduced version of the dictionary was finally compiled for the fonts. Paul van der Laan meanwhile worked to optimise the OpenType features, using his expansive knowledge to make the fonts, especially the web-fonts, as small as possible.

Logical is a highly-readable typeface with recognisable details that makes it perfect for branding purposes. The unusual ‘g’ can easily be replaced with a one-storey-gthrough a OpenType stylistic set. The same goes for the serifed ‘I’. The icons and arrows that fit every weight of the typeface can be helpful for signage or way-finding systems. Together with the underline-function, Logical is a helpful tool in web-development. The attention-grabbing details that appear in larger sizes take a backseat in reading sizes and makes the typeface suitable for display use as well as for copy text.

Edgar Walthert studied Graphic Design in his home-country Switzerland at the Fachklasse Grafik in Luzern. After his studies he worked several years in an interdisciplinary design-studio in Hamburg, working predominantly on packaging design. After TypeMedia at KABK The Hauge in 2007, Edgar worked at LucasFonts Berlin, where he helped in the development of Taz. In 2016 he joined the team at Bold Monday. At the beginning of 2018 Edgar, together with studio colleagues Diana Ovezea and Sabina Chipară, started a monthly lecture series about type and typography in Amsterdam called letterspace. For more information, please click here.

Logical

Foundry: Bold Monday
Designer: Edgar Walthert
Release: 17. Juli 2018
Format: PostScript OpenTupe / TrueType Webfonts
Weights: 8 / + 8 Italics
Price per weight: 49.– EUR
Price full family: 470.40 EUR
Buy

Graustufen Podcast

Posted on by Slanted editors

The Designstudio Bureau Bordeaux from Hanover, Germany, released the first German design podcast. It is not only for designers but rather for everyone in our society.

The podcast is meant to support the general conscience for design in our daily lives. Not only does it deal with different topics and guests in every episode, but tells the responsibilities designers have to take in front of society.

All things considered it is an experiment. Trying to audible visual structures and graphic design.

Episode 1: »Heimat« mit Martina Glomb
Episode 2: »Verantwortung« mit Simon Kiepe
Episode 3: »Gut« mit Renate Flagmeier

Here you can listen to the podcast.

WASD #13 – Bookazine für Gameskultur

Posted on by Slanted editors

An ambitious independent magazine with great design for video gamers? Yes this works! For more than six years now WASD explore the possibilities of creating a bold magazine about video game culture—fresh designed on a small paper format.

The finest authors of the industry write from different perspectives about everything today’s gamers are interested in. While german game magazines focus on test reports and purchasing advice, WASD is exploring new ways with specialist articles, satirical texts, essays, prose texts, and even poems.

Between 2012 and 2018 WASD won ten international awards including Lead Award, German Design Award, iF Design Award, Red Dot Design Award and European Design Award.
The design follows the classic book typography, which place a high priority on reading comfort, but with the benefits of an innovative and varied editorial design, including exciting layouts, beautiful illustrations, sophisticated infographics and partly experimentally typography. The design highly contrasts with the visual appearance of the established game magazines on the market.

WASD #13 – Bookazine für Gameskultur

Publisher: Sea of Sundries
Release: Sommer 2018

Art Direction: Markus Weissenhorn

Editor: Christian Schiffer

Format: 14,8 × 21 cm 

Volume: 192 pages 

Language: German

ISBN: 978-3-946942-02-3

Price: 15,90 Euro
Buy

Brasilia #5 – Waste

Posted on by Slanted editors

When do we no longer need something, and how do we make that decision? In the fifth edition of Brasilia Magazine, designers set out on quest for a definition of what is superfluous somewhere, what is too much for someone and what eventually becomes unusable.

With her collection, Claudia Bumb directs our attention to microplastics in the ocean: colourful islands of plastic as large as Germany. Malte Uchtmann photographed painted-over graffiti on the walls of buildings, and André Nakonz tells us how burnt material offers new ways to protect façades. Barbara Hindahl knows whether something is art or can be discarded. Stefan Finger shows people in the Philippines who live and die in garbage, and Christian Werner photographed the children of the war in Iraq. Luisa Schlütsmeier and Vivian Dehnig visited elderly people in seniors’ homes and asked them what is left as time grows short. These viewpoints are multifaceted and show that what we do not seem to need is, at times, a perspective that cannot often be integrated with fixed concepts, but requires more and more people with the courage to stand up and create new solutions.

BRASILIA #5 – Waste

Editor: University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Hanover / Faculty III – Media, Information und Design
Release: June 2018
Format: 22 × 28,5 cm
Volume: 150 pages
Language: German/English
ISBN: 978-3-932011-94-8
Price: 8,– Euro
Buy

Reportagen #42

Posted on by Slanted editors

Report # 42 is released.
The content:

– Alone against Apple. By Marius Elfering.

– The Quran from Saddam’s blood. By Emmanuel Carrère / Lucas Menget.

– Born in the USA. By Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah.

– The Historical Reportage: 9/11 Illinois. By David Foster Wallace.

Reportagen #42

Publisher: Puntas Reports AG
Design: Moiré
Release: September 2018
Volume: 128 pages
Format: 16,5 × 23 cm
Language: German
ISBN: 978-3-906024-41-7
Price: 15,– Euro
Buy

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 Nobuo Nakagaki, a living legend because of his impact on Japanese information graphics.

Nobuo Nakagaki (1938) studied Graphic Design at Musashino Art University and later trained under Otl Aicher at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm while working under Kohei Sugiura. He started Nakagaki Design office in 1973 and is known for his expertise in typography and diagrams as the cornerstones of design. In 2008, he founded Meme Design School.

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.

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 Yukimasa Matsuda, a book designer and the founder of his own publishing house. 

Yukimasa Matsuda is a book designer. In parallel with his book designs, he runs a small publishing company, Ushiwaka-maru, to pursue the idea of books as objects of art. Besides his work as a designer, he is active as a writer as well, inspired by his interest in the “origin of things,” in particular characters, and symbols.

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.

Cercle Magazine #6 – Dreams

Posted on by Slanted editors

Until further notice, most living beings, unlike machines, have the particularity of not being binary and of dreaming. The conscious and unconscious states exist, and dreams have the ability of slipping from one world to the other. This fascinating permeability gives an individual the capacity of projecting himself, imagining and hoping. In the day time, dreams are ambitions, desires or hopes. At night, for some, dreaming is a way into the world of spirits, the afterlife or even the future, whereas for others it’s something absurd, terrifying or a way to switch their brain off. What a vast subject…

Whether it’s on a collective or individual scale, dreams are at once a goal, a tenet for analysis and research, an answer, an inspiration or an incongruity. Whether you are attached to them or find it hard to remember them, they remain present, yet impalpable. You can only see them through visual representations or tales and when you look closely, some constructions bear the marks of them. By taking the time to pry into the dreams of others, this new issue of Cercle explores the infinite grey area between day and night.

Cercle Magazine #6 – Dreams

Publisher: Cercle Studio
Release: Frühling 2018
Format 20 × 26,5 cm
Volume: 136 pages
Languages: English, French
Price: 18,– Euro

Designing Design

Posted on by Slanted editors

Representing a new generation of designers in Japan, Kenya Hara pays tribute to his mentors, using long overlooked Japanese icons and images in much of his work. In Designing Design, he impresses upon the reader the importance of “emptiness” in both the visual and philosophical traditions of Japan and its application to design, made visible by means of numerous examples from his own work.

“To understand something is not to be able to define it or describe it. Instead, taking something that we think we already know and making it unknown thrills us afresh with its reality and deepens our understanding of it,” Hara says of his design philosophy. Designing Design gives the reader an understanding of said philosophy as well as opens their mind to new ways of thinking.

Hara, born 1958, is a Japanese graphic designer and professor at the Musashino Art University. He for instance designed the opening and closing ceremony programs for the Nagano Winter Olympic games 1998. In 2001, Hara enrolled as a board member for the Japanese label MUJI and has considerably molded the identity of this successful corporation as communication and design advisor ever since.

Designing Design

Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
Author: Kenya Hara
Design: Naoto Fukasawa Design
Volume: 472 Seiten
Format: 16,5 × 24 cm
ISBN: 978-3-03778-450-1
Price: 45,– Euro
Buy

Typegeist

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

The Type Directors Club has launched Typegeist, a new editorial platform that illuminates various aspects of the current moment in international type design and typography through original essays by curious designers, historians, academics, experts, and aficionados.

The first issue, “Decentralizing Type”, examines type outside of Western centers. Dan Reynolds writes about India, Sahar Afshar comments on type in Arabic-speaking regions, and YuJune Park and Caspar Lam interview designers about contemporary type in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Designers Pragun Agarwal, Mohammad Sharaf, and TienMin Liao interpret the issue’s theme visually through typographic illustrations.

Typegeist is created by a team of Type Directors Club board members and editor Caren Litherland. Synoptic Office has designed the first digital issue. The design of Typegeist is an important platform for new typefaces and typography.  This premiere issue features type donated by General Type Studio and Frere-Jones Type. Although the first issue is digital only, plans are being made to publish future issues in print.

Typegeist is committed to high standards in the presentation of exclusive content that explores the zeitgeist in type. With curiosity and wit, Typegeist takes advantage of the unique knowledge and expertise of the Type Directors Club and its members and friends. Typegeist is inspired by the belief that type shapes language and ideas, and deserves thoughtful consideration as both a product and driver of culture.

Type enthusiasts can access Typegeist at this website and follow Typegeist on Twitter @tdc_typegeist and Instagram @tdc_typegeist.

CAPTCHA Designfestival 2018

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Initiated and organized by students of the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim the CAPTCHA Design Festival takes place for the fifth time this summer. The workshops and the symposium revolve around this year’s topic DIMENSION. Together with the participating students, reputable guests from design and art will develop innovative and new ways of design. The results will be presented in a final one-week exhibition.

CAPTCHA Designfestival 2018

When?
Symposium: 
September 3rd, 2018, 9 a.m.
(Zeitraum, Mannheim)

Workshops:
September 4th–7th, 2018
(Zeitraum, Mannheim)

Vernissage: 
September 7th, 2018, 6 p.m.
(Kunstverein Mannheim)

After Party:
September 7th, 2018, 10:30 p.m.
(Disco Zwei)

Exhibition:
September 8th–16th, 2018
(Kunstverein Mannheim)

Where?
Zeitraumexit 
Hafenstraße 68
68159 Mannheim

Kunstverein Mannheim
Augustaanlage 58
68165 Mannheim

Disco Zewi
T6 14
68161 Mannheim

Here you get more informations.

Offprint-Reader

Posted on by Julia Kahl

Frankfurt, Leipzig, Cologne, Berlin, Paris, London —there are a lot of offprint fairs all over the world where you can see an artistic selfpublishing scene grow and meet. Fresh experiments and ideas can be found from small publishers and in small print runs, far away from mainstream and commercial printing.

The students Magdalena Rank, Anna-Lena Janke, Marvin Eichholz und Theresa Dzung-Tien Nguyen have collected all events to give an overview of what’s going on internationally in 2018.

A very nice project, unfortunately not for sale as it is part of a design initiative at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz.

Offprint-Reader

Design: Magdalena Rank, Anna-Lena Janke, Marvin Eichholz, Theresa Dzung-Tien Nguyen
HocUniversity of Applied Sciences Mainz 2018
Communication Design
Inititiativeunder supervision of Prof. Johannes Bergerhausen
Language: English
Format: 22 × 42 cm
Volume: 104 sheets

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 #31—Tokyo you can get a visual impression of the studios we visited during our journey.

Born in 1975, in Nagaoka City, Kiyonori Muroga started working as the editor of the graphic design magazine IDEA in 1999 at Seibundo Shinkosha Publishing, and edited a number of design and typography related books. He often contributes to design media and gives lectures at educational organizations. Muroga bridges “design and “dezain” (Japanese katakana).

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.

komma #21

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

The komma-Magazine is the platform for student work of the Faculty of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim.

Each issue is and every aspect is entirely executed by Student-Editors. The staff is in constant change and through this every issue gets its very unique theme and identity. As regards content we publish Term Papers, Course Specials as well as Bachelor- and Master Theses. Depending on the issue and theme we also publish guest art works and interviews of various Designers. Every Issue is sent to over 1000 addresses of Designers, Agencies and Bureaus in the industry.

The 21st issue of komma magazine deals with boundaries, borders and limits.

But what’s it all about? This question is way more difficult to answer than you might think at first.

Limits structure our lives—no matter if they are geographically, politically, economically, linguistically, personally or socially.

But also a designer is affected by them. On the one hand boundaries serve as an orientation, but on the other hand it is important to break them down to create something entirely new.

This issue shows visual works and focuses on various forms of limits in different areas of design, but also in our everyday lives.

The second part gives an insight into degree theses, student works, events and exhibitions of the Faculty for Design of the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim.

An inlay, which contains some interviews with different designers and studios about their experiences with borders clearly separates these two parts.

komma Magazin – Grenzen

Publisher: University of Mannheim – Design Department – komma magazin
Design: Fiona Oehler, Camilla Schröer, Maximilian Borchardt, Kerstin Sebesta, Sarah Zink, Bianca Werdan
Release: April 2018
Pages: 173
Format: 17,5 × 24,5 cm
Price: free

Orders to: [email protected]

FORTY FIVE SYMBOLS #5

Posted on by Slanted editors

Issue #5 of the the FORTY FIVE SYMBOLS magazine is risographed in gold and black. It introduces the six winners and three honorary mentions of the open call 17/18 which received more submissions than any open call before including entries from India, Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Spain, Switzerland, and USA. Participants conducted forensic analysis of common everyday objects to act as a subtle wake-up call about modern life; developed speculative linguistics of a dystopian machine-driven world; observed cultural heritage, migration, and personal mobility; and translated socio-political topics of their culture into systems of forty-five visuals.

FORTY FIVE SYMBOLS #5

Art Direction: Pascal Glissmann, Olivier Arcioli, Andreas Henrich
Editors: Pascal Glissmann, Olivier Arcioli, Andreas Henrich
Release: July 2018
Volume: 24 pages
Format: 20,5 x 29,2 cm
Language: English
Execution: Risography Print
Price: 9,– Euro
Buy

Hessen Design Routes

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

Once again the German design festival named “Design Routes” based in Hessen, open it’s doors in 2018 to everyone who is interested in getting a close insight into design concepts of around 50 creative studios around Hessen. You will have the opportunity to participate in many workshops, lectures, exhibitions, and much more!

When? 
Friday, August 24th, 2018
12 a.m.–5 p.m.
Saturday, August 25th, 2018
10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Festival period:
August 24th–25th, 2018 (Rhein-Main)
August 31st–September 1st, 2018 (Kassel)

Where?
post-industrielle Kulisse 
Ost-stern

Hanauer Landstraße 121

60314 Frankfurt am Main

Neue Denkerei

Friedrichsstraße 28

34117 Kassel

Get more informations here.

Adobe Hidden Treasures: Bauhaus Dessau

Posted on by Clara Weinreich

For the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus Dessau, Adobe has launched the beautiful project “Adobe Hidden Treasures—Bauhaus Dessau,” in which almost forgotten, unfinished font designs and letter sketches of legendary Bauhaus masters have been taken from the archives and now completed.

In collaboration with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and Erik Spiekermann, Adobe has realized the project and will now successively publish five new fonts based on legendary Bauhaus designs by Xanti Schawinsky, Joost Schmidt, Carl Marx (July 2018), Alfred Arndt (August 2018) and Reinhold Rossig (September 2018). Three fonts are already published: Xants, Joschmi and CarlMarx which are available via Typekit.

We are proud to present the fourth font: Alfarn, based on the work of Bauhaus student Alfred Arndt. It was designed by Céline Hurka (Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague). We conducted an exclusive interview with the designer in which she gave us personal insights into her work on the Alfarn.

What do you spontaneously think of about the Bauhaus?

I have to think mainly about how many fundamental ideas in art, architecture and design have changed at that time. It also reminds me how important studying can be, as it has the potential to form new general approaches and structures. Visually I associate with the Bauhaus a certain simplicity and reduction in forms and colours, as well as a playful precision and rigour.

How did you come to the Adobe Hidden Treasures project?

In mid-April, Erik van Blokland wrote to me and introduced me to the project. When he offered me to participate, I was naturally very happy. We were shown the various original designs from the Bauhaus and the letters on Alfred Arndt’s posters immediately appealed to me. Fortunately, I was able to start designing exactly these letters a week later.

What thoughts did you have when designing the letters?

At the beginning of the project, I first of all dealt visually with the technique Alfred Arndt used on the poster. On closer inspection, you will notice that he probably worked with a brush. That was enormously important for the general construction and for some details, since the technique is also associated with certain limitations.

At the same time I researched Arndt’s curriculum vitae and found out that he had a connection to both painting and architecture. I then decided to construct the typeface geometrically on a grid of lines and reduce many of the optical compensations to a minimum. One of the biggest difficulties was also that I had very few letters available in the original and that I had different cuts to choose from. In the end, I worked out several that can be used as features in the font. Altogether it was very important to me not to keep the font too rigid and geometric but also to handle the shapes playfully.

What do you take out of the project for yourself, what did you learn?

Before the project, I hadn’t really dealt with type design from the Bauhaus. Looking back, it was of course exciting to learn more about this time and to experiment with its approaches. The nice thing about the project was to get to know other students and to exchange our fonts.

At the same time this font is my first to be published and there were some technical and organizational things I learned. Since everything went quite fast and we only had one month to design, it was a very different process than with previous fonts that I designed at KABK over several months. Finally, I would like to thank Erik van Blokland, Paul van der Laan, Peter Verheul, Ferdinand Ulrich and Erik Spiekermann for their feedback and support. I’m pretty sure I’ve learned many things from this project that I’ll need in the future.

Alfarn
Alfarn is based on capital letters that Bauhaus student Alfred Arndt (1898–1976) drew for a poster in 1923, designed to advertise a bakery in Jena, Thuringia. The poster is an example for what we call today “Bauhaus features”: yellow circle, red square, black bars and an indication of geometric lettering that became so popular in the following years. Céline Hurka carefully analysed Arndt’s lettering and derived two weights in different widths: wide and condensed, available as OpenType alternates. She took on the characteristic bars and transformed them into an underlined weight of its own. Hurka also drew perfectly balanced small caps, which make up for a missing lower case. Alfarn captures the spirit of 1920s Bauhaus-influenced posters—a timeless style quite suitable for contemporary designs.

Design competition:

With the publication of the fonts, Adobe is also launching a five-part design competition in which all creative people are invited to design with the new fonts for the first time. There are exclusive prizes to be won, including a trip to the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. More information on how to participate can be found here.

Coming soon:

Font 5: September 2018—Designed by Elia Preuss, based on the work of Bauhaus master Reinhold Rossig

Background:

Although the Bauhaus was only active for 14 years after its opening, it is still considered today to be the best known modern school for architecture, design and art of the last 100 years. In 1932 the Dessau municipal council, dominated by the National Socialist Party, decides to dissolve the Bauhaus School in Dessau. The unfinished masterpieces of the designers Xanti Schawinsky, Joost Schmidt, Carl Marx, Alfred Arndt and Reinhold Rossig have therefore remained in the archives to this day.

“Hidden Treasures of Creativity is an ongoing project that aims to revive lost creative history to inspire current generations. Last year, Adobe worked with the Munch Museum and the world’s leading Photoshop brush expert, Kyle T. Webster, to recreate Edvard Munch’s brushes. Tens of thousands of people downloaded the brushes and were inspired by the old master. This year, Adobe recognizes the unbroken influence of the Bauhaus, whose goal was to rethink the future, unfold it in everyday creativity, to shape modernity in all its demands—including typography and design from the beginning, which has driven us to innovation to this day. We hope that by bringing these hidden treasures to the present day, we can inspire many creative people,” said Sabina Strasser, Head of Brand Marketing, EMEA at Adobe.

Eastern Design Conference

Posted on by Slanted editors

“Design is a global language, yet the business that’s done here in the east stays local. We aim to explore this unordinary relationship.”, as Roman Juhás says, co-founder of the conference.

Speakers:

Liv Siddall, the editor of one of the most beloved UK’s music institutions–Rough Trade–comes to share her experience on how to make a music magazine of a legendary record store having as low budget as possible.

Studio Feixen, an independent design studio creating powerful visual concepts based in Lucerne, Switzerland. Felix Pfäffli and Raphael Leutenegger come to talk about an ability to create work with global impact from a small town on the outskirts of Switzerland.

Professor Lars Harmsen is an art director and one of the partners in the Melville Brand Design studio in Munich, professor of design and typography at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences & Art and editor-in-chief of Slanted Publishers residing in Karlsruhe.

PEKNE & DOBRE and Potraviny YEME, is one of the most successful, long-term and aesthetically pleasing cooperation in Slovak business environment. Martin Bajaník is a founder of a design studio PEKNE & DOBRE, co-founder of café Shtoor. Martin is behind Yeme’s astounding aesthetics. Peter Varmuža is former COO of Tesco Slovakia and co-founder of the first conceptual grocery market in Slovakia, Potraviny Yeme.

Studio Najbrt is a legendary Czech graphic design studio. The studio’s longtime collaborations with the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival or the City of Prague among many have established it as a reference in the region. Founder Aleš Najbrt and a representative of Masaryk University – MUNI come to Eastern to talk about their controversial yet successful collaboration on redesigning the university’s visual identity.

easternconf.com