Experimental Type Stencils

We love typography and experiments! On occasion of the release of Slanted Magazine #40—Experimental Type, a set of three type stencils has been published as a limited special edition that is exclusively available in the Slanted Shop. 

Draw your own experimental font with the three stencils included in the set. Each stencil contains a different set of shapes that can be combined with each other—the creativity is limitless! The colorful stencils are made of a durable, recyclable material that is perfect for die cutting. Let’s go!

Set of 3 type stencils
Die Cutting & Printing: Stober Medien
Material: PRIPLAK OPALINE, 500μ, Himbeere, Limone, Zitrone, distributed by Inapa Deutschland

Also available with Slanted Magazine #40—Experimental Type.

Grafikmagazin 05.22—Flora & Fauna

As the name indicates, Grafikmagazin is a print magazine focusing on all things graphic design. Primarily it’s aimed at professional creatives and design students from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and beyond. Grafikmagazin presents outstanding work from graphic design, typography, illustration, photography, design theory, research, paper, and printing every two months.

The editorial team of Grafikmagazin created a variety of sections and categories but selected focus themes for each issue, like Flora & Fauna. The topics portray how imaginative, eclectic, and many playful aspects of graphic design can be while also featuring successful branding concepts and niche ideas.
The extensive Showroom section lets readers know other creatives and the stories behind design studios worldwide. In this issue, Grafikmagazin 05.22—Flora & Fauna, the European Design Awards were featured, amongst others.

The Design & Research category presents interdisciplinary projects that show how science and research can benefit from creative solutions and play an active role in graphic design.

In the Production & Publishing section, everything revolves around the topic of print. You will find exquisite books, sophisticated annual reports, and high-quality embossed greeting cards. Also, the cover artists of each issue are interviewed or get to highlight their ideas.

Each cover is printed on a different paper, and the design interprets the particular Grafik+ theme more broadly or shares a fresh perspective on a unique design technique.

The Grafikmagazin team, its correspondents, and freelancers are bound and driven by the firm belief that print is not dead. With the will to prove just how alive it is, and the motivation to start something fresh yet deeply traditional, they strive for nothing less than to create another print magazine that makes history.

FFCGN—Die Macht der Bilder Vol. 2

FILM FESTIVAL COLOGNE is one of the leading festivals in Germany and an important international branch event. It presents worldwide trends and shows outstanding works of audiovisual storytelling for the first time in Germany. “FFCGN – Die Macht der Bilder Vol. 2” accompanies the festival visually as well as with texts and reflections on the diversity of media culture and brings together selected content from the current film world.

Everything about the power of images in film, pop culture, art and society. At the FILM FESTIVAL COLOGNE on site or in this richly illustrated volume.

It moves organically in nature. Its texture is familiar to us in a pleasant way. It breathes. Its surface is smooth and in resting dynamic movement. It lives, and we recognize a substance of which we are ourselves. No longer as the navel of the world, but as an element of the new order.

The key visual of FILM FESTIVAL COLOGNE this year illustrates the posthumanist feel of our time. We humans no longer believe in grand narratives. We no longer think of ourselves as actors, rather as the audience of the world theater. Visual information pelts us, it “overwhelms us.” They make it increasingly difficult to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad images. Are we art or junk?

And yet—every now and then something stings us. Every now and then, images manage to break out of the multitude of their peers and touch or change us in our lives. Pictures shake awake, fight for space, haunt us. Weapons and comfort at the same time. Are we art, or much more?

Welcome to FFCGN—DIE MACHT DER BILDER Vol. 2. Once again, this publication brings together and curates a wide variety of content from the world of the motion pictures. This book is a feature. The editors talk to people they find inspiring. It’s a snapshot of their work, at FILM FESTIVAL COLOGNE and far beyond. It’s a best of content they’re up for. And, last but not least, a little piece of nostalgia, a hint from the realm of analog: Go to the festival’s website! There you’ll find everything you need to know about the power of moving pictures.

Word Cards

Use this set of 135 ideation cards to define the components of a brand’s personality: brand archetype, tone of voice, personality traits, and style characteristics.

This collection of ideation cards enables you to define the characteristics of a brand’s personality quickly and effortlessly.

Use these cards when crystallizing your brand’s identity or facilitating your brand strategy workshops. Add more play to your work!

What’s included?
– 12 Brand Archetype Cards
– 39 Tone of Voice Cards
– 40 Brand Personality Cards
– 37 Style Characteristics Cards

Content Marketing Kit

This kit provides you with an expert process and a set of tools to create a content system that attracts the right people to your website, engages them to take action, and inspires them to come back for more.

How to use it?
https://youtu.be/2jiIDb4cFrk?si=BjNIjRvz07hRvNzj

Without a strategy to inform your content creation process, you spend valuable time creating and publishing content that isn’t exciting for the brand’s audience, doesn’t convert, or quickly becomes obsolete.

Content Strategy Kit provides you with an expert process and a set of tools to create a content system that attracts the right people to your website, engages them to take action, and inspires them to come back for more.

WHAT’S INCLUDED?
Content Strategy Workbook
Content Canvas (21 Worksheets, A3)
10 Content Goal Cards
15 Content KPI Cards
55 Persona Cards
40 Content Title Cards
11 Content Content Scorecards

Branding Kit

This DIY Branding Kit will guide you through the inside-out brand strategy process. By the end, you’ll have created a Brand Canvas containing all the core components of your brand.

How does it work?
👉 https://youtu.be/0jnCr7_w_0M?si=fcpZxZKlL6m5NZO8
You’ll define your brands mission, target audience, next-level of success, positioning, brand personality, archetype, brand style, etc. At the end of the process, you’ll gain the clarity you need to develop your brand system. The brand canvas will serve you as a well-defined brief for your designers, agency, partners, collaborators, or team.
Shoot for the stars and let this Kit be an additional pair of wings for your successful flight!

What is included?
✦ Brand Strategy Workbook
✦ Brand Canvas Template (A2)
✦ 200 Style Cards
✦ 12 Brand Archetype Cards
✦ 40 Brand Personality Cards
✦ 20 Tone of Voice Cards

Why choose this Branding Kit?
The idea for the Brand Kit was born after working with clients world-wide for 15 years now and after organizing the Brand Strategy workshops in various cities (London, Santiago de Chile, Barcelona, Paris, Casablanca, Beirut, etc.). I wanted to standardize the branding process I was using to help my clients uncover and define their whys, authentic points, target audience, positioning statement, and crystallize the next level for their brands. Instead of going down the tedious route of creating traditional brand briefs that are full of paradoxes and clichés (“we want innovative yet trustworthy”; “young and dynamic;”—who hasn’t been there, right?), this Kit enables you to try out a faster and more fun approach which speeds up the branding decision-making process—as well as rests your eyes from the screen time.

Content Cards

Use this set of 135 content cards to brainstorm ideas for your brand’s content and set a solid foundation for your content marketing system.

How to use Content Cards?
https://youtu.be/hk6MG6zJXtI?si=1NE_6uYkXLM2swkj

WHAT’S INCLUDED?
10 Content Goal Cards
15 Content KPI Cards
55 Persona Cards
40 Content Title Cards
11 Content Content Scorecards

Style Cards Vol. 2

Use this set of 135 design cards to explore visual trends, define a brand’s look and feel, gamify design workshops, and enhance moodboards. These cards contain works of modern designers and are curated into 10 themes that reflect the world’s visual trends.

How to use the Style Cards?
https://youtu.be/otyWGzT4TXs?si=s69pH8w26jmanYiA

This volume contains design cards curated into the following themes that reflect visual trends:
Crypto Techno
Dreamy Geometry
Future is Now
Monochrome
Nature Calling
Vintage Modern
Neon Gradient
Happy Pop
Bold Play
Speakeasy

WHAT’S INCLUDED?
130 Style Cards
10 Styles
Printed and packed in a nice box

Brand Cards

A design ideation tool for brand strategists, designers, and creative teams to visualize and crystallize their ideas through mood boards and transform them into brand or design concepts.

Getting on the same page with your client or team when discussing the aesthetics of the brand or design project can be a challenge. Especially if you work remotely. What is modern and hip for a New Yorker is not necessarily the same for someone from Hong Kong or Johannesburg.

We’ve created the Brand Cards with a mission to create a simple and practical tool that would enable you and your client or team to quickly synchronize around the design direction for your project. This tool helps to avoid miscommunications and reduces the resulting back-and-forths.

The Brand Cards is also a celebration of the most interesting creative work out there. Have fun with this!

WHAT’S INCLUDED?
200 Style Cards
12 Brand Archetype Cards
40 Brand Personality Cards
20 Tone of Voice Cards

Lavender flowers No.1

The Lavender flowers No.1 Print with surreal surrounding comes as a DIN A1 digital print on 250g/qm photo paper.
The Print is sold unframed.

Palm leaf No.1

The Palm leaf No.1 Print with surreal surrounding comes as a DIN A1 digital print on 250g/qm photo paper.
The Print is sold unframed.

Olaf Unverzart—Walking Distance

Five continents, three decades: with Walking Distance, Olaf Unverzart presents his interpretation of a travel diary. Beyond tourist attractions, well-known places with supposedly typical folklore, his volume of photography opens our eyes to the things and creatures “in between”—this “in between” mainly takes place on the street.

The power of the images lies in the stillness and intimacy of the scenes. Unverzart’s photographs do not have a voyeuristic feel; they do not pretend to uncover essential insights and truths about places or their people, but appear as fleeting impressions. The individual photographs with their black-and-white composition and grainy texture have a strange quality that seems removed from time and place, lending them an almost universal character.

Unverzart explores the most diverse types of transition: we see cars, rails and streets as well as passers-by and pedestrians. Scenes of the old-fashioned and the obsolete point to the photographer’s search for a lost era and repeatedly allude to the extreme cultural, social and technological changes of the last three decades.

Yearbook of Type #6 2022/23 – Movie Edition

You know the scenario: You just want to find a fitting series or movie on your streaming platform—but you can’t find what you are looking for and keep doom-scrolling—until you turn off the computer.

The same often happens when looking for the perfect typeface for your design. You know, the one that not only conveys the mood you are longing for, but also needs to fulfill all necessary requirements. In a mess of countless open browser tabs, bookmarks, lists, and folders, the right typeface and foundry—characterized by smallest details—is hard to find.

The Yearbook of Type is a collection of the latest published typefaces that helps you find the one—from a browse through the book, or quick look in the index that neatly sorts typefaces by class, designers, and foundries. Each font and font family is presented on a double page. On the left page, the font is applied; inspired by this year’s theme of film and drama. To the right, the typeface is described in detail; with all its features, as well as information about the designers and foundries. A complementary online microsite features all fonts with direct links to respective foundries and purchasing options.

The publication is rounded off by a series of essays, interviews, and tutorials on the subject of type design and contemporary typography.

The Yearbook of Type provides clarity in a world of constant streaming, scrolling, and aimless browsing. Find the typefaces you’re looking for—and maybe even the right movie for the evening!

Awarded with German Design Award (Special Mention).

finding Forte

Forte, this lively and friendly typeface that everyone knows, has been used, misused, and overused for over six decades now, ever since it was published by The Monotype Corporation in 1962. Well-known figures in the typographic world like Stanley Morison and Vincent Connare have stood in the limelight of this typeface’s sprightly lifelines. But the typeface’s designer, Austrian graphic artist Karl Reißberger, remained little known. Until now.

finding Forte traverses the world in search of “findings” such as Reißberger’s early posters, original designs, and advertising materials to trace the origin story of the “typeface everyone knows.” Sixty years after Forte’s first appearance, it has found new life as Toshi Omagari’s revised typeface, Forte Forward. Its release accompanies this book.

Also finding its way into this book on Forte are the artistic visions of thirty-one contemporary artists who have examined Forte’s formal language in dialog with its historical outlines. The interpretations of these international creatives open up new approaches to typography.

Graphic Design Is (…) Not Innocent—Scrutinizing Visual Communication Today

Graphic Design Is (…) Not Innocent questions ingrained approaches, values and assumptions of graphic design in globalized societies. The publication aims to initiate a dialogue between designers, scholars, critics and commissioners, who investigate responsibilities, potentials, politics, limits and risks of designing visual communication. How innocent is graphic design? Whom is it addressing, whom is it in/excluding? What does it bring about? When defining the role and impact of visual communication, what future questions lie ahead?
Graphic Design Is (…) Not Innocent combines case studies and academic reflections, trying to sketch a common ground for basic research into the parameters and value systems of graphic design. It is a road trip between various possible conceptual challenges and praxis. It is a temporal inventory, without the claim of completeness. It is a question mark, as well as an exclamation mark. And it wants to stimulate critical thinking in graphic design.
Contributors:
Designers: Karo Akpokiere, David Bennewith, Sandra Doeller, Markus Dreßen, FDSC, Matthias Görlich, Klasse Grafik, Anna Lena von Helldorff, Jianping He, Christop Knoth & Konrad Renner, Flávia Nalon (ps.2), Ingo Offermanns, Isabel Seiffert (Offshore), Astrid Stavro, Markus Weisbeck
Scholars: Christian Bauer, Friedrich von Borries, Clémentine Deliss, Li Degeng, Annette Geiger Daniel Martin Feige, Jun Kay, Anoushka Khandwala, Eva Linhart, Sophia Prinz, Markus Rautzenberg, Alice Rawthorne, Pierre Smolarski
Critics & Commissioners: Salem Faissal Al-Qassimi, Sabrina Handler, Martin Ludwig Hofmann, Francisco Laranjo, Madoka Nishi, Adam Szymczyk, Michael Zöllner

Art and Solidarity Reader—Radical Actions, Politics and Friendships

Solidarity has re-entered the global zeitgeist with resounding force in the last decade, driving new thinking to counter the systemic failures and abuses of our society. The Art and Solidarity Reader considers the agency artists, collectives, and art institutions have in building the radical visions of care and solidarity needed to transform the conditions of our collective existence.

Presenting new and historical material, the Reader narrates various micro-histories of artistic solidarity globally from the 1970s to today, in relation to the multiple crises of migration, neo-colonialism, rising radicalization, inter-religious conflicts, class divisions, new technology, heteronormativity, and the environment. It emphasizes the centrality of artist-led empathy and personal connectivity in building networks of solidarity and concrete actions that generate profound transformation in society.

Whilst addressing the relevance of the Non-Aligned Movement of the Cold War in generating new forms of artistic solidarity globally, the Reader points towards its successors and, significantly, centres Indigenous perspectives rarely considered when discussing the history of artistic solidarity.

Editors: Katya García-Antón, OCA Norway
Contributors: Reem Abbas, Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, Noor Abuarafeh, Yasnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Ali Hussein Al-Adawy, Salvador Allende, Defne Ayas, Wendy Carrig, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Ntone Edjabe, Katya García-Antón, Soledad García, Natasha Ginwala, Irene Guzmán, Gavin Jantjes, Sholi Kanuga, Geeta Kapur, Lara Khaldi, Chelsea Manning, Olivier Marboeuf, Naeem Mohaiemen, Mário Pedrosa, Ram Rahman, Laura Raicovich, Aban Raza, ruangrupa, Devika Singh, Eszter Szakács, Alice Walker, and many others

Zukünfte gestalten

“By designing and conveying future scenarios, you shape the future ideas of your fellow human beings and can thus indirectly design the future itself.”

For this we have to say goodbye to the future in the singular. Because this singular suggests that there is only one seemingly inevitable future. If we consistently put the term in the plural, we recognize the designability of the world. Design futuring opens up a new business field for you. And a new role with more relevance. With the help of the methods and tools presented in the book, creative people can make different futures tangible and enable people to make smarter decisions in the present. This allows you to design more than surfaces and interfaces. Ideally, you will become a designer: in a better world.

… und dann? Wie Kinderbücher Gestalt annehmen

Do you love children and like to tell stories? Would you then like to know for yourself how to proceed? Do you draw and illustrate with passion and imagination? And at some point you would like to have your name on the cover of a children’s book? Then Annabelle von Sperber and Michale Wrede have written this book for you!

Step by step, it illuminates how children’s books take shape, how stories gather momentum, characters come to life and illustrations create a pull. The world of children’s books thrives on new stories and characters. Publishers scout new talent. Young readers devour stories, fall in love with characters and demand more. This book will pave your way onto the children’s book shelf. And in the hearts!

A Second Beating Heart

The birth of a child is also the birth of a mother. Her body carries a second beating heart. When that second heart suddenly beats outside the body, everything changes. The return to a new normal starts slowly.
A Second Beating Heart tells the story of Martha, a newborn mother, using documentary and autofictional strategies. A few days after giving birth to her first child, Martha no longer leaves the house. What begins insidiously becomes a new reality. For almost three years the house becomes a shelter, a prison and a cocoon at the same time.
What many people experienced these years as a compulsion or an external necessity, the isolation at home, becomes a vital strategy for Martha: Inner spaces become outer spaces and vice versa.
A photo art book about the many sides of motherhood, about love and postpartum depression, a topic that is too often kept silent. With a literary essay by Rabea Edel. Shortlist Belfast Photo Festival 2022

Work Better. Live Smarter. Be Happier.

New attitudes to work are dynamically changing conventional habits. The formulaic 9-to-5 routine is not a one-size-fits-all structure, which is why individuals from across the globe are establishing their own terms — putting personal fulfillment first while leaving the corporate world behind. Work Better. Live Smarter. Be Happier. profiles 25 entrepreneurs, exploring how they live and work and offers practical advice, insight, and inspiration on how to follow in their footsteps.

Human-based skills are becoming increasingly important for the modern founder to thrive and Work Better. Live Smarter. Be Happier. looks at stories of success from health food companies, streetwear labels, ethical jewellery lines, and so much more. This truly international book acts as a start-up manual for people with a dream, no matter the scale and champions a generation of dynamic, driven decision makers.

Let Me Draw You a Bath

The bathtub as a stage for all kinds of actions—artist Bianca Kennedy presents the bathtub in four work series and presents existential themes such as birth, sexuality and death. Personal hygiene becomes a secondary matter here.

Isn’t the bathtub an auspicious symbol? For the offline mode of life? For leisure time and hygiene? But anyone who associates the bathtub only with naked bodies and relaxation should take a deeper look at Let me draw you a bath. In her monograph, the artist Bianca Kennedy shows that an entire life can take place in the bathtub. It’s where people read, write, drink, smoke pot, kiss, laugh, sing, cry, mourn, argue, sleep, shoot, kill and love.

Kennedy has been exploring the bathtub in various video works and drawings since 2016. She has created a silent film, a series of 200 drawings with digitally augmented con- tent, a 3-channel video installation, and a Virtual Reality experience. Bianca Kennedy uses the bathtub as a culturally and art-historically charged symbol to explore the boundaries between cinema and video art and to question visual traditions.

Each work complex is preceded by an interview excerpt conducted by the artist together with art historian Darja Zub. General insights into bathing are provided by Anna Mayr’s essay Zurück in die Wanne (Back to the Bathtub), published in ZEIT Magazin in 2019, and the poem In the Bath by Jo Shapcott with a German translation by poet Jan Wagner. The book is supplemented with texts by Philipp Bollmann (curator, Wemhöner Collection) and Dr Thomas Girst (art historian and cultural manager).

My Work Is My Personal Theatre

Photography merges with painting—In her works, Russian artist Katerina Belkina uniquely combines visual art forms with digital image processing. An illustrated book with art historical discourse.
When looking at the pictures of Katerina Belkina, it is not clear which medium you are looking at—a photograph or a painting? In her works, the Russian artist uniquely combines techniques of photography with forms of representation of the visual arts. Using a digital brush, she imbues her photographic works with a weightless, dreamlike atmosphere, elevating the reality of the snapshot to an expanded and enhanced reality. In doing so, she creates her very own genre.
The focus of her works is always the human being, mostly the woman. In the process, Belkina herself takes on a triple cast of characters: she is motif, director, and visual artist all at once. Based on feminist principles, the Russian artist shows everyday life from a female perspective, where the woman is not presented as an object, but is above all energy. In her picture series “Not a Man’s World” she presents herself self-confidently smoking a pipe and with a raised forefinger. However, Belkina does not want to denounce, but rather seeks answers to the question: who is she as a woman, an artist, a mother, or a member of a society?
Silver award winner (shortlist) at the German Photo Book Award 21/22 in the category Conceptual-Artistic Photo Book.

Power Plants

The book POWER PLANTS by artist collective kennedy+swan finally puts an end to the anthropocentric world view. Why should humans feel superior to the evolution of plants and animals?
The duo asks questions without pretending to deliver moral answers. What will the world look like in 1000 years? What will happen when our bodies merge with different species of flora and fauna? And what do insects have to say about the idea of making them humanity’s main protein source?
The bilingual publication (German and English) gives access to the complex narratives with numerous texts, an essay by Kimberly Bradley and an interview with the artists. Using a self-programmed app, some of the illustrations can be augmented. Since 2013, kennedy+swan try to create empathy with fungi, insects, and hybrid beings in their films, virtual reality and augmented reality works, as well as in their drawings and installations, spinning a dense narrative web under their label L I F E 3. 0. The book POWER PLANTS gathers all the duo’s previous work cycles and tells of a world where nature regains its deserved upper hand.
Longlist in the 2022 competition of the Stiftung Buchkunst The Most Beautiful German Books in the category Art Books, Photo Books, Exhibition Catalogs.

Branded Interactions

Branded Interaction Design (BIxD) – the brand-appropriate design of interactive applications – goes far beyond the visual design. Digital touchpoints are an integral part of current brand communication. The number and form of these brand touchpoints is growing rapidly. Complex user experience designs can only be created in a workflow that closely interlocks conception, design and IT and integrates consistent prototyping and testing. That changes everyday agency life. And the professional profile of the designer.
Katja Wenger and Marco Spies accompany companies on their way through the digital transformation. They know how to make brands credible in the digital space and how to plan and design the user experience in line with the brand. They know the company side from their own start-up experience and pass this knowledge on.
Profound and practical. Structured and understandable. With checklists, tools and valuable practical tips.
This book is a guide and inspiration for anyone involved in designing interactive applications for businesses and brands. It is aimed at beginners and professionals, at creative people and those responsible for brands, at lone fighters and designers in large agencies. It imparts practical knowledge and gives food for thought for a new era.