‘Failed Images – Photography and its Counter-Practices’ tries to understand photography in its difference from the reality it shows. It sets as a task to analyse the different ways the photograph transforms that which exists before the camera. Photography is not only determined by technical features, but also by a conventional approach to it. This approach can be recognized in what is now called a ‘snapshot’. But the photographic medium enables also very different practices and as a result very different kinds of photographic images. To see this, one needs to look at the diversity of photographic images and practices outside the dominant approach.
In ‘Failed Images – Photography and its Counter-Practices’ the photographic image will be explored by focusing on photographic practices refusing the dominant approach to the medium, namely staged photography, blurred photography, under- en overexposed photography and archival photography.
Supported by Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.
I Will Call It Home
This project is dedicated to the question of what drives people to leave their homelands and try their luck in another. From a birds-eye perspective, migration may easily be presented as a “refugee wave” or a “refugee tide,” moving from a (safe or unsafe) country of origin towards a society where it can be used politically as a “refugee crisis.” The corresponding media images, of faceless trains of refugees and nameless protagonists, help to cement the hegemonic systems and interpretive patterns as “visual constructions”. By recording the stories of these migrants, and giving the phenomenon a face and a voice, Fabian Weiss returns in ‘I Will Call It Home’ some part of the interpretative power to those he has profiled.
How do we want to talk about migration? Which questions should determine the European discourse, and which issues belong on the media agenda? The conversations with the protagonists of this project show that migration within Europe is bound up with new narratives and self-images. In a digitally-networked world, migration will not only be better coordinated and planned, it will also define the self-conception of an expedited and highly mobile generation in which communicative closeness will be more important than regional origin.
The issue of migration will continue to preoccupy Europe in the coming years. While people from Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, or Afghanistan will continue to try and seek asylum, especially in Europe, the EU will probably continue to seal itself off with stricter border controls or transit centres in neighbouring non-EU countries. Apart from this, domestic migration will continue to keep Europe in motion and create the greatest proportion of migrants, something that was further stimulated by the exit of Britain from the EU.
“Triage-Tasche” by Raban Ruddigkeit × maesh
The “Triage-Tasche” by Raban Ruddigkeit × maesh pays homage to collective performance and social cohesion during the corona pandemic. The shape known as the everyday mask has been increased tenfold in size. The upcycling bags from old advertising tarpaulins are not only characterized by their large capacity, but are also dimensionally stable and slightly translucent. This makes the design item perfect as a beach bag, but also sets a very special accent as a wall object.
The bags were designed and produced by “Unter einem Dach / Under One Roof–Society Office & Sewing Workshop”, a social business from Hanover. The non-profit company has set itself the task of helping people from all over the world to arrive in Hanover and to create sustainable prospects for the future. Since 2016, “Under One Roof” has also been running its own sewing workshop. Sustainable and unique bags are made from used maesh advertising banners under the lable MAESH.
15% of the proceeds from the “Triage-Tasche” will be donated directly to maesh / Under One Roof. Anyone who would like to support the social business beyond that can currently do so until May 18th, 2021 at www.startnext.com/maesh
Ar/KATE Mannheim
Ar/KATE Mannheim is a specific guidebook connecting architecture and skateboarding. The pocket guide contains ten different urban locations with photographs and a map where a variety of skate spots can be found. Short additional texts inform the interested viewer about both the architecture and the skate spots which also convey new perspectives on existing architecture. Thus, both skaters and those interested in architecture can use the guide equally.
The architecture influences and shapes the creativity and type of skating. It creates the backdrop and at the same time is part of the action. It is both environment and obstacle. Skateboarding itself transforms and reinterprets the built environment and its architectural elements. Skaters’ perceptions of urban structure are also different from the urban impressions that non-skaters have—because skaters are always looking for new skate spots. Thus, every architectural or street structure object is scanned for its “skateable” potential.
Skateparks try more and more to imitate these architectural elements, but often it is nothing more than an attempt. The true character of street skating takes place in real confrontation with real architecture in real urban situations. The architecture influences the scene, the vibe, and the feeling while the skaters are there. The act of skateboarding is deeply connected to the built environment.
Mannheim, a medium-sized city in southwestern Germany, is located between Frankfurt and Stuttgart and is known for its square city layout, its Baroque castle and its buildings from the Brutalist period, such as the Collini Center and the “Neckarbebauung” (Neckar Building). On the other hand, Mannheim is also characterized by its large and networked skateboard scene. No other place shows this more than the “Mezz,” the “old Messplatz” in Neckarstadt, a district of Mannheim. It is the local spot par excellence. And it is the starting and end point for spot explorations within Mannheim.
A smart pocket guide about the famous skate spots of Mannheim and the architecture behind them!
Tannhäuser Tor
This richly illustrated catalog shows the work cycle “Tannhäuser Tor” (Tannhauser Gate) by the Berlin-Dresden artist duo Alekos Hofstetter and Florian Göpfert. Their series of drawings, begun in 2012, depicts the distance our society maintains to the post-war architecture of modernism in an imaginary way.
In Göpfert and Hofstetter’s “Tannhäuser Tor,” architecture is freed from any functionality and seems to exist only as a remote idea: Far from their original urban locations, modernist buildings appear as isolated, timeless, fortress-like structures on mountains and hills, in a utopian “new home.”
The catalog includes illuminating essays by Lukas Feireiss and Daniel H. Wild, a founding member of the artists’ group BEWEGUNG NURR.
We would also like to draw your attention to “Tannhäuser Tor II.”
Shame! and Masculinity
Since the Me Too movement, masculine exercise of power, and sexual abuse have been widely brought under close scrutiny. The focus on ‘toxic’ masculinity impacts our perception of male sexuality, which substantially influences the self-image and self-esteem of men. Men are being shamed by others for their transgressive and contemptuous attitudes; and they feel intrinsically ashamed of their own wrong-doings or of the virulent patterns and traditions of Western manhood.
This book explores both positions. It looks at the representation of male sexuality, nudity, fatherhood, male violence, rape, fascism and virility, men and war. It shows works of art that deal with the intricacies and contradictions of these socio-cultural constructs and realities. “Shame! and Masculinity” is hybrid in terms of genre, combining scholarly essays with short stories, personal testimonies, and provocative and intimate artist’s contributions. It stimulates reflection on shame in collusion with masculinity, from male as well as female perspectives. Thus it encourages us to reimagine these issues that simultaneously play a role in society, in our own experience, in history, and in our own bodies and being.
“Shame! and Masculinity” is the second volume in the PLURAL series. The PLURAL series focuses on how the intersections between identity, power, representation and emancipation play out in the arts and in cultural practices. The volumes in this series aim to do justice to the plurality of voices, experiences and perspectives in society and in the arts and to address the history and present and future meaning of these positions and their interrelations. PLURAL brings together new and critical insights from cultural and social researchers, theorists, artists, arts professionals and activists. Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms (Valiz, 2020) is the first book in the PLURAL series.
Pinhole Shots 2000–2011
The extensive publication “Pinhole Shots 2000–2011” presents, for the first time, a collection of Chris Dreier’s various series of photographs taken during her travels throughout Europe. The shots taken by the artist with her self-made pinhole cameras seem like images from a bygone era. A certain blurriness and strong distortions characterize these pictures. Because of the long exposure times, moving things are simply not captured. Only stationary objects leave their image on the photographs and appear as architectural elements of the places.
Dreier developed her predilection for driving around and discovering places in the early 80s. At that time, she studied visual communication in Berlin. To finance her studies, she worked as a truck driver. Through this job she discovered remote places and industrial wastelands.
As motifs, Dreier prefers empty streets, derelict factories, depopulated areas, and neglected new buildings. These remnants of a fragmented history are highly fascinating to her. Thus, her photo series show workers’ clubs in northern England, bunker ruins of the Wolf’s Lair in Poland, battlefields of World War I near Verdun, secluded landscapes in the Oderbruch region on the German-Polish border, Ceaucescu’s palace in Bucharest, and the former Iraqi embassy, an abandoned building, in Berlin. The pinhole photography series are supplemented by found photographs Dreier discovered during her forays through the “Forbidden City”, a deserted Russian barracks town in Wünsdorf near Berlin.
Andreas Seltzer – Im Nahbereich
The title, “Im Nahbereich,” translates as “in the immediate vicinity,” which is where Andres Seltzer took the photographs featured in this book. Using an endoscope with attached light projector, he explored the things that surround him: a wallet, his mother’s sewing box, the pocket of his girlfriend’s jacket, a bag of toys … Seltzer’s endoscopies lead us into the small world of household goods, clothing, and all the things we feel at home with.
The search for new perspectives on the familiar, the playful gesture, and the joy of discovery are key elements of Andreas Seltzer’s work. At a flea market, he noticed, by a lucky coincidence, that the size of the round, centrally placed cut-outs of traditional record dust sleeves was an almost perfect fit for his centered endoscopic photographs. Thus, he discovered a relation and a plethora of possible combinations of these respective items of domestic intimacy.
A kind of introspection emerges in “Im Nahbereich”– the afterglow of dialogues between things, of dialogues framed in the pitch black of mythical tales.
Cihan Tamti — Breakout–100 Posters Book
Cihan Tamti started treating Instagram like a graphic design gym, and worked on designing a poster every day. Without constraints, he was able to experiment, often creating work that no normal agency would approve. Such freedom of approach allowed him to develop designs with strong, experimental typography and complex compositions. Unexpectedly, these daily designs ended up winning some competitions and attracting some cool clients along the way, which now gave him the last necessary push to publish a book that combines all his ideas and creations.
Cihan’s “Breakout–100 Posters Book” summarizes 100 selected posters from the past few years. These posters include free and personal ones, real commission work, exhibition posters, and award-winning posters. But what it makes even more important is that it encourages and inspires to breakout oneself and to start spreading one’s own visual messages.
Teasing Typography
How does typography behave under extreme conditions? What visual phenomenons, patterns, artifacts, and graphic elements can be provoked by pushing type through extreme grids and using extreme typographic parameters? At what point does a text step back to its original purpose of informing the reader? When does text become something else: a graphic element, a gray surface, a static noise, or a haptic pattern?
To investigate these questions, graphic designer Juliane Nöst systematically pushed text through various grids in the framework of a typographic study. Starting with the InDesign default-settings, a range of font-sizes and columns were used to generate a broad spectrum of diverse typographic outcomes.
In a further step, existing results were layered and collaged, aiming to create additional sets of unexpected forms and graphics. The outcome of this research leads to a variety of visual peculiarities, creating absorbing patterns, interacting with the grids, sometimes making them visible while disappearing under other parameters.
The 500-page book is a glimpse into the endless possibilities that may emerge when teasing typography.
Awarded with Tokyo TDC Award.
Thomas Kapielski/Sven-Åke Johansson – Das Moabiter Duo–“recovered”
Sven-Åke Johansson and Thomas Kapielski’s vinyl LP “recovered,” released under the project name Das Moabiter Duo, was published by Fantôme on the occasion of a joint exhibition by Johansson and Kapielski at Berlin’s Laura Mars Gallery.
The LP from Das Moabiter Duo–“recovered,” mixed and mastered by Frieder Butzmann, features a previously unreleased concert recording from 1983. In addition to a download code, the album contains an extensive, format-filling 16-page booklet with drawings by Sven-Åke Johansson, liner notes by Heiner Goebbels, a letter by Thomas Kapielski, and concert photographs by Gerald Domenig.
Das Moabiter Duo performed back then at Berlin clubs like Korrekt—and at the experimental concert series “Materialausgabe”, organized by Heiner Goebbels and Christoph Anders, at Frankfurt’s Batschkapp.
On stage, Kapielski engaged “ingeniously-stockhausianistically” (as he himself puts it as ironically as conceitedly) in electronic manipulations of sounds from everyday objects. Meanwhile, Johansson explored the sonic possibilities of shoe trees, lashed out with towels, grabbed his accordion with its attached rear-view mirror, and, last but not least, played his astonishing drums.
Confusion arose—both during the live performances and, in a completely different way, decades later when Kapielski rediscovered the audiotape of a concert in an old cardboard box—because of one of Johansson’s unique ideas, which Heiner Goebbels describes as follows in the liner notes: “With a professional gesture, in the middle of the concert and while playing, Sven-Åke exchanged the cymbals, mounted on stands to the left and right of the bass drum, for large ‘cymbals’ made of thick foam pads. And he continued to play on them. We laughed—but we heard nothing. Or presumably even more. Each of us something different. That was enlightening—how else would this scene still be so present in my memory after 35 years.”
Obviously, listening to the original recording on which the album is based, one wouldn’t be able to see Johansson playing his foam cymbals, in order to, as it were, hear them before the inner eye. Moreover, little of Johansson’s actual drumming can be heard on the tape—due to, as Kapielski recalls in a letter to Johansson printed in the booklet, the way the recording microphones were placed at the time.
So, after decades, a special kind of improvisation emerges: Johansson has added new, “real” sounds with his drum kit, turning his collaboration with Kapielski into a, not only in a temporal sense, genuinely free-floating undertaking: “recovered.”
Sven-Åke Johansson is renowned as one of the style-defining drummers of the German free jazz era of the 60s and 70s. From the 80s onwards, he pursued an artistic path as a music performer, largely independent of institutions and groups and increasingly involved in visual-arts and new-music circles. His oeuvre includes more than fifty record releases, numerous music theatre pieces, radio plays, visual works, and a lively touring life.
Thomas Kapielski is known as an author (whose books have been published by Merve, Suhrkamp, etc.) and an artist. However, since the early 80s he has also been active as a musician. He collaborated with, among others, Frieder Butzmann.
Auslöser Magazine Issue 4
Interview with Hanna Mattes, Arnold Odermatt, Fatemeh Behboudi, Myoung Ho Lee
Behind the scenes: Allan Porter’s “camera”
In detail: Kodachrome
Andreas Seltzer – Prima Vista. Über das Zeichnen
“Prima Vista. Über das Zeichnen” presents drawings by Andreas Seltzer and—in an insightful collection of polished vignettes and anecdotes—his writing about drawing. This handsomely designed catalog was published on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition of the same name, which took place at the Laura Mars Gallery in Berlin.
Andreas Seltzer’s drawings are grotesques that alternate between caricature and black humor, between horror and magical enchantment, between Mannerism and carnivalesque inventions. The colors black, red, and white form the basis of this work. This reduced choice of colors is motivated by the intention to increase the effect of the pictures through economy of means. Black functions as an arsenal that has all possible weights in store to lend—depending on the motif—gravity or sketchy lightness to the pictures. Red, on the other hand, plays the traditional role of the eye-catching signal that provides orientation in the genre of hidden object pictures. White, in the form of outline-like, splinter-like, meticulously captured figurations, is used to show views from above as well as vistas: against densely checkered backgrounds, these elements become actors that make those other parts of the picture dance.
Translated excerpt from “Prima Vista”:
Drawing, Dancing
From the perspective of the fingers holding the drawing pen, the area to be conquered is a vast white terrain full of potential risks. Moving the pen means striving forward while being aware that any lingering results in dark, puzzling spots. Dots and strokes form a team that finds its goal somewhere on the horizon of the playing field while challenging the format. The special thing about these movements is that they are more similar to dancing than, for example, walking is. The rhythm of drawing circles and semicircles, swinging back and forth, securing the sidelines, repeating and varying spontaneous moves and improvised patterns—all this results in flowing lineaments that are nothing but control elements seeking to guarantee step by step, inch by inch the sure-footedness of the endeavor.
Drawing, Remembering
To the extent that drawing, associative drawing, has become the main activity, words lose their power, writing loses its force. Perhaps this activity is some form of memory training with the result that one remembers the visual aspects of things but—now familiar with their metamorphic nature and skeptical of the predeterminations of language—forgets names and terms. Thus, a new variant of dementia might appear: the specter of a babbling, picture-crazy idiot who points to his scribbles while sinking into aphasia.
Drinking and Drawing
In the evening, a glass of wine sometimes happens to be placed next to the inkpot. Then, the temptation arises to portray one of those cartoonists struggling for inspiration and tortured by deadlines, as depicted countless times by Robert Crumb as a self-portrait—cartoonists downing ink: their final act of desperation. Ink is in this case an imagination-enhancing substance, impregnating all internal organs, coloring blood, sweat, and tears, and transforming the whole body into a drawing instrument.
“Ink is my natural element. A beautiful liquid, by the way, this dark liquid. And it is dangerous! How you can drown in it! And how it attracts you!” (Gustave Flaubert)
Alekos Hofstetter – Tannhäuser Tor II
The catalog “Tannhäuser Tor II” (Tannhauser Gate II), edited by Daniel H. Wild, documents the development of the work cycle of the same name begun by the artists Alekos Hofstetter and Florian Göpfert in 2012. Conceptually, it follows the first catalog on this topic, which was published in 2013, also by FANTÔME.
The theme of the group of works titled “Tannhäuser Tor” is the relationship between space, time, and distance; and the focus is on examining the changing perspectives on post-war modernism and its architecture. The disappearance of modernism from our surroundings has consequences. Through this disappearance, modernism’s former utopian promise, or rather, the memory that is left of this promise, is dissolving. In the drawings and paintings, some of which were created together with Dresden artist Florian Göpfert, a new relationship between architecture and landscape is constructed. And in this very construction of a utopian context, or a “new home,” a distance becomes visible. The architecture that Alekos Hofstetter shows us in his works is freed from any functionality and seems to be able to exist only in a remote realm.
Irène Hug – Reading Pictures
The catalog “Reading Pictures” is the first comprehensive examination of the work of Berlin-based Swiss artist Irène Hug. In addition to her work of the last sixteen years, it includes essays by philosopher Gernot Grube, curator and art critic Raimar Stange, and art historian Viola Vahrson.
Far from sober artworks of American minimalists or conceptual artists involving written language, Irène Hug confronts us with her messages in glaring neon signs, objects, installations, and photographs. Hug utilises and manipulates the typographic components of signposts, logos, and advertising slogans that cover urban spaces worldwide. Using techniques of appropriation, montage, citation, and retouching she reacts to found materials, situations, or stereotypical images, commenting on and changing their meaning using pointed but complex artistic interventions.
With subtle wit, Irène Hug questions in “Reading Pictures” our belief in the truth of the supposedly objective world (or its representation) and our entanglement in omnipresent consumerism and challenges us to get, behind the surfaces, as it were, to the bottom of the true meaning of things and words.
Peter Woelck – Dancing in Connewitz
The book “Dancing in Connewitz” documents the attempt to bring the eclectic diversity of an archive into a sequence of images that does not strive for a photo-historical classification but rather allows a specific and subjective narration to emerge from today’s perspective.
After studying photography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, Peter Woelck worked as a professional photographer in the GDR for various companies and magazines. Moreover, he independently created a vast amount of artistic works, especially in the field of portrait and architectural photography. Photographs of the construction of the Berlin Television Tower, cityscapes of Leipzig, and intense portraits from the 60s through the 80s document how life used to be in a country that no longer exists. On the other hand, there are photographs from the post-reunification period, during which Woelck repeatedly tried to establish himself as a freelance advertising photographer. Thus, the pictures also tell of a break in the photographer’s biography, the kind of experience that affected many people of his generation.
In “Dancing in Connewitz”, texts are contributed by Wilhelm Klotzek, Woelck’s son, who not only co-manages the estate in collaboration with the Laura Mars Gallery but also artistically deals with the legacy, by writer and publicist Peter Richter, and by curator Bettina Klein.
Heike Gallmeier – Vertigo
The catalog “Vertigo” documents a journey from Berlin to Northampton and the exhibitions based on this trip. On her journey, Heike Gallmeier built temporary installations from found materials in a transporter that she converted into a mobile home and studio. On her way through Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, and Great Britain, she avoided highways and major roads. Instead of choosing the shortest routes she followed rural roads and wandered through residential areas. When she arrived at her destination, the NN Contemporary Art in Northampton, she moved the contents of the van into the exhibition space, and, along with large format photographs, combined the materials found along the way to create new installations–and called it “Vertigo”.
Heike Gallmeier works across media, from sculpture to installation to photography. Found objects and other materials are gathered and assembled into large installations that then are photographed.
Soap “Rosetta”
Rosetta’s natural formula is infused with petals of the Bulgarian Damascena Rose to flourish your skin and tantalise your senses. Personally kissed with unconditional love, Rosetta is embedded in a silver hot foil stamped box to adequately showcase your piece of jewellery.
Ingredients: Natural Oils, No additives, Vegan and eco-certified
Manufactured in the South of Germany
Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms
‘Feminisms’ (as a plural) is widely used today to draw attention to inequalities and to critique the status quo in limiting women’s roles/ positions/ lives/ potential. Art can offer a vision of future worlds, manifesting a desire for projecting change, playing with existing realities and conventions. “Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms”, two sides of the same coin, arise where art approaches, develops or transforms into activism and vice versa, where activisms become artivisms. In both, art emerges in differing forms of political intervention, at both an individual, shared or collective level, apparent in actions, events, identifications and practices.
This volume wants to reveal the diversity of these practices and realities. Representing a range of critical insights, perspectives and practices from artists, activists, curators, academics and writers, it explores and reflects on the enormous variety of feminist interventions in the field of contemporary art, social processes, the public sphere and politics. In doing so, “Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms” touches upon broader questions of cultural difference, history, class, economic position, ecology, politics, sexual orientation, and the ways in which these intersect.
Richly illustrated with c. 300 black and white illustrations and photos.
This is the first volume in the new PLURAL series. The series focuses on how the intersections between identity, power, representation and emancipation, play out in the arts and in cultural practices. The volumes in this series aim to do justice to the plurality of voices, experiences and perspectives in society and in the arts and to address the history and present and future meaning of these positions and their interrelations. PLURAL brings together new and critical insights from artists, arts professionals, activists, cultural and social researchers, journalists and theorists.
2020, Valiz, supported by Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and Middlesex University London
Hard Werken – One for All
“Hard Werken – One for All” is the first major publication on the experimental Rotterdam-based design studio Hard Werken [Working Hard, Travailler dur], also known for the underground magazine of the same name. Hard Werken’s anarchic design, smattering high with low culture and running contrary to typographic conventions and modernist currents of the time, characterized this group as a brash, elusive, and distinctly Rotterdam phenomenon. However, working in Rotterdam and Los Angeles, the core members Henk Elenga, Kees de Gruiter, Gerard Hadders, Tom van den Haspel, Willem Kars and Rick Vermeulen also had worldwide ambitions.
This feisty and uncompromising book examines Hard Werken’s practice and legacy in an international context and addresses their contemporary significance. It investigates the group’s pioneering role in the cultural life of Rotterdam and their impact abroad, especially the US, by examining the innovative aspects of Hard Werken’s practice, which combined graphic and fine art languages. All is elucidated by a myriad of images and clear, concise texts.
‘The 1970/80s Dutch magazine Hard Werken has all the qualities of a pop-legend. Born of the collective desire of a group of young graphic designers from industrial Rotterdam to express themselves, they quickly achieved an influential cult status, then [the magazine] died young.’
Peter Bilak in: Dot Dot Dot magazine, Issue 1, 2000
Hard Werken ‘quite deliberately has broken every rule in the handbook’ by producing ‘scattershot lay-outs, jarring mismatches of type, shrieking colours and a veneer of industrial grime which seem calculated to assault the sensibilities of more delicate colleagues.’
Rick Poynor in: Blueprint No 59, 1989
2018, Valiz with Stichting Kunstpublicaties Rotterdam | supported by Creative Industries Fund NL, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Stichting Jaap Harten Fonds
Detail in typography
An attractive, interesting layout can certainly attract and please the reader; but when the details are not good, reading requires more effort and any pleasure is short-lived. Detail in typography is a concise and close-up view of the subject – letters, words, the line, and the space around the elements – and it discusses what is essential for the legibility of the text. Yet this is more than a guide to correct typography. How is it, Hochuli asks, that text can be set perfectly and yet look insufferably dull? Answers may be found here, not least in the way the book itself has been set and produced. Jost Hochuli is a Swiss typographer, internationally renowned for his book design work. As a teacher, he has had long experience in Zurich and his home town of St. Gallen. As a writer and editor, his books include Book design in Switzerland (1993), Designing books (1996), and Jost Hochuli: Printed matter, mainly books (2002). He has edited and designed the annually published Typotron series of booklets (1983-1998) and the Editions Ostschweiz (from 2000).
Unjustified texts
Over twenty-five years of engagement, somewhere in the borderlands between journalism and the academy, Robin Kinross has written for magazines and journals, making a case for typography as a matter of fine detail and subtle judgement, whose products concern all of us, every day.
This selection of his shorter writings brings his major themes into focus: the unsung virtues of editorial and information design, the fate of Modernism in the twentieth century, the work of dissident and critical Modernist designers, the contributions of emigré designers from Europe in the English-speaking world, the virtues of a socially-oriented design approach.
He argues for a design that is of use in the world, and against the cult of design and the delusions of theory. Pieces move from patient exposition, to sharp critique, to warm appreciation. This book presents an unexpected body of writing, which stakes out fresh territory between the purely academic and the merely journalistic. The whole is an unusual and powerful contribution to the subject of typography.
“In short, a nice book to read and the perfect antidote to all those slick design books.”
Mathieu Lommen, Items
Modern Typography
Situating the birth of modern typography around 1700, when it started to be distinct from printing, Robin Kinross introduces in Modern Typography a new understanding of the subject: as something larger and more deeply rooted than a modernism of style, echoing Jürgen Habermas’s proposition that modernity is ‘a continuing project’. Starting with the early years of the Enlightenment in France and Britain, different cultures and countries successively become the focus for the discussion as they gain significance. Examining the social, technical and material contexts in which typographers operate, the argument also considers principles and explanations of practice. This essay is seminal in many ways, providing a lively and critical narrative of historical development, a springboard for further investigation, and reproductions of not-often seen items.
‘This is a book to read and reread. It is provocative, dense, opinionated, and thoroughly original. […] It deserves to become a classic.’ Alastair Johnston, Bookways
Systematic book design?
Does designing a book follow a logical and well-thought-out process? Swiss graphic designer and typographer Jost Hochuli studies the crucial role played by instinct throughout the various stages of planning a book, from selecting a typeface and its size to determining the layout of the blocks of text.
Drawing on his own experience and examples taken from various books he created, Jost Hochuli considers the questions which arose while they were being designed and the importance of intuition in rational thought.
“Systematic book design?” was written for a lecture Jost Hochuli gave for the first time in Munich in 2007, and then at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2011 on the initiative of F7. The text has been first published in Back Cover magazine in 2011. John Morgan’s foreword was especially written for the present edition.
Jost Hochuli’s text was translated from German by Charles Whitehouse.
Foreword by John Morgan