Theo van Doesburg was a jack of all trades: painter, writer, architect, typographer, and art theorist. In this volume of the Bauhausbücher, he attempts to make elementary concepts in the visual arts generally comprehensible. He was addressing the “modern artist” of his day, who had to deal with both shifting social paradigms and a changing understanding of art and art theory. Van Doesburg describes theory as a necessary consequence of creative practice. Artists, he says, “do not write about art but from within art.”
The Theater of the Bauhaus
Spatial dance, gestural dance, rod dance, Triadic Ballet: Oskar Schlemmer developed his costumed, masked dancer into an “art figure” synthesizing dance, masquerade, and music. The fourth volume of the Bauhausbücher presents the main characteristics of the Bauhaus concept of the stage.
The Bauhaus stage is that of the Weimar period, essentially shaped by Oskar Schlemmer, who had taken over the stage department in 1923. László Moholy-Nagy, who was appointed to the Bauhaus the same year, took an interest in abstract kinetic and luminary phenomena which he examines in his essay “Theatre, Circus, Variété.” Farkas Molnár focused for his part on stage architecture, which he discusses in detail in this volume.
A Bauhaus Experimental House
Adolf Meyer was Walter Gropius’s right-hand man, his planner and close confidant. As early as 1910, they jointly created the Fagus Factory, one of the most important modernist buildings. The experimental single-family home “Haus am Horn” was built for the first Bauhaus exhibition, in the summer of 1923 in Weimar. The house was planned by Georg Muche (design) and the architectural department at the Bauhaus. Adolf Meyer and Walter March were responsible for construction management.
The book about the project was compiled in the summer of 1924 and became the third volume of the Bauhausbücher. Following an essay by Walter Gropius that supplies information on the “Housing Industry,” Georg Muche presents the design of the model building. Adolf Meyer then describes its technical execution, giving details on the companies involved.
Il Teatro è Il Teatro è Il Teatro
A small town is mobilized. The proposal to demolish the historic cine-teatro Le Fontanelle and convert it to a multifunctional center has polarized an entire community. Over several decades of sacrifices the building served as a theater and as a space for both–live theatre and cinema, before being abandoned for thirty years. It hosted different generations’ efforts to create and bring culture to the inland territory of the Madonie and the town of Castelbuono, Sicily.
The artist, Emanuele Sferruzza Moskowicz, with the guidance of Gianfranco Raimondo and the help of the cultural association Glenn Gould, conducted and collected through his art practice listening sessions. He collected listening sessions with twenty-seven people who were part of the building’s history and its surroundings and with those who have been denied the opportunity to do the same.
From a man’s remembrance of his first childhood encounter with movies to a teacher’s memories of Tornatore’s production of “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso.” From the sophisticated religious and folkloric works of the initial performers to the unbreakable will and desire of the new generation to bring the theatre of the absurd to their community. From the story of a man coming back to his town after his successful studies in the north of Italy to be part of its cultural empowerment to the stories of a building denied to the future generation and the ones to come. This inquiry contains an absolute love for culture and for a community that put culture at the center of its identity.
Il Teatro è Il Teatro è Il Teatro is a book that reserves the memory of a building, a building that for almost a century made culture shine for its community, and which apart from memory might be forever lost.
Oktoberfest 1984–2019 by Volker Derlath
For 35 years, Munich photographer Volker Derlath has hardly missed a Wiesn day. With his camera, right in the middle of the action, he is capturing intimate moments, touching scenes, moments full of violence and comedy. The “folk festival of all folk festivals” reminds him, with its incomparable coarseness of folk amusements, of the Middle Ages, he says. The Wiesn is a kind of utopia where visitors can live out what has long since been domesticated in their everyday lives and swept under the rug of civilization.
The Munich Oktoberfest, also known as the Wiesn, is considered the largest folk festival in the world: two exhilarating weeks with beer, chicken, rides and partying people from all over the world. But like last year, this year’s festival has been canceled due to a pandemic. Sad news for the worldwide fan community. With Oktoberfest we would like to remember a time when people could still unconditionally drink, flirt, and celebrate together.
“So entsteht dann Fotokunst aus einem Ausnahmezustand, der – genau betrachtet – das allzu Normale nur in eine andere Form packt.”
SUEDDEUTSCHE.DE, Franz Kotteder
Awarded with Deutscher Fotobuchpreis (Special Mention).
CAPS LOCK – How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it
Capitalism could not exist without the coins, banknotes, documents, information graphics, interfaces, branding, and advertisements made by graphic designers. Even anti-consumerist strategies such as social design and speculative design are appropriated to serve economic growth. It seems design is locked in a cycle of exploitation and extraction, furthering inequality and environmental collapse.
CAPS LOCK uses clear language and visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are inextricably linked. The book features designed objects, and also examines how the study, work, and professional practice of designers supports the market economy. Six radical design cooperatives are featured that resist capitalist thinking in their own way, hoping to inspire a more socially aware graphic design.
Ruben Pater (b. 1977, NL) is trained as a graphic designer. For a decade he worked in graphic design and advertising studios. Afterwards he decided to start his own practice. Informed by his experience, Untold Stories produces critical work between graphic design, journalism, and activism. He is tutor at the BA Graphic Design and the MA Non Linear Narrative of the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. His first book The Politics of Design (BIS publishers, 2016) has been an inspirational source book for design students, tutors, and visual communicators worldwide.
Juni 2021, Valiz
100 Poster Battle
Sober: A poster should invite, communicate, inform, convince, and also provoke. If a viewer feels addressed, a poster is able to influence his or her decisions through text and images.
Emotional: 100 Poster Battle—one poster a day, for a hundred days, the span of a semester. Inspired by daily events from politics and current affairs. With the aim to try out different techniques, beyond the limits of conventional tools.
In the end, 100 days of poster design reads like a diary. 2020/21 was marked by the pandemic and its consequences for culture, society, and education, the scary tweets of Trump and the upcoming US-elections, BLM, LGBTQ, Söder and Laschet in the power struggle, pro-democracy demos in Thailand, climate goals 2030, and fun-facts like the height of Mt. Everest which has shrunk by 86 cm, the eruption of the Sakurajima volcano in Japan, Elon Musk has become the richest man in the world as well as the boom of sextoys …
Instant Nudes
Over the years the collection of intimate instant photos of the makers of PHOTODARIUM Private, a tear-off calendar, has been growing. They now present a curated selection in the beautifully produced book Instant Nudes. Dreamy, suggestive, exiting, or simply aesthetic: nude photography has many sides.
In the photo book Instant Nudes the work of eleven photographers who use instant images to capture erotic moments is presented. Some of the photographs are revealing, some more discreet. What they all have in common is their reverence for a beautiful body. Because of its authenticity, the medium of the instant photo is the antithesis of digital photography. Instant photos enhance the erotic-voyeuristic moment through their intimacy, uniqueness and materiality, often not perfect and therefore all the more authentic, provocative and yet differentiated.
In their everyday working lives, models are projection screens for social ideas of beauty. They are staged by the photographers and a whole staff of stylists and hair & make-up artists. It is different with the photography of Nudes at home, in the intimacy of their private surroundings. The calendar PHOTODARIUM Private has been published for five years now. The tear-off calendar shows uncensored instant pictures with an artistic approach to nudity. Day after day a new erotic, naked, or cheeky instant image is revealed.
A modern and young look at eroticism beyond pornographic clichés—by photographers and individuals from all over the world. Emancipated and honest.
Please Come: Shameless / Limitless—Selected Posters & Texts 2008–2020
Please Come: Shameless/Limitless Selected Posters & Texts 2008–2020 is a 536-page brick of a book. It charts the history of Shameless/Limitless, a Berlin promoter whose trajectory has paralleled (is responsible for?) the establishment of the most recent iteration of the city’s DIY music scene.
The book includes:
- 219 posters for shows, parties and events spread across 40 Berlin venues made by 130 designers, notable and newcomers alike.
- 24 guest texts which celebrate and shed light on the ethos of the S/L spirit, from buds including musicians (Alex Cameron, Molly Nilsson, Sean Nicholas Savage, infinite bisous, Jane Penny of TOPS, Farao, Sam Vance-Law +++) designers (Aisha Franz, Tabitha Swanson, Jason Harvey and Natalia Portnoy to name a few), kindred spirits and more.
- Over 100 original event promo texts.
- Posters for first or early shows from now-established artists (Alex Cameron, Better Person, Erika de Casier, Fatima al Qadiri, Ultraflex +++) to memorable nights with artists passing through town (Metronomy, Crack Cloud, Project Pablo, Pender Street Steppers, Handsome Furs, Geneva Jacuzzi, Homeshake) to recurring shows and parties with heavy hitters (Molly Nilsson, Mac DeMarco, Win Butler of Arcade Fire, Kirin J Callinan, Sean Nicholas Savage, TOPS) and, of course, much more.
- An interview between frequent contributor Norman Palm & S/L founder Kevin Halpin.
… and a couple more nice things, too.
Immerse yourself in the unique aesthetics of the Berlin DIY-club scene!
Büro Destruct 4 + Tote Bag
Carry your book suitable with the Büro Destruct 4 + Tote Bag package!
Over the past 27 years, Büro Destruct have successfully avoided being pinned down or getting too comfortable in a defined area. At the same time, of course, it is there: that special Destruct eerie feeling. An independent handwriting, for which many words could be found, but which even after more than two decades is best conveyed by looking at their work …
The Bern-based foursome have never dealt in safe or conventional consensus graphics, but prefer distinct, sometimes trashy and always refreshingly original designs. Blessed with a healthy dose of insatiable curiosity, they have been seeking out inspiration from beyond the mountain ranges since the mid-1990s – long before the proliferation of Internet access and distribution.
In contrast to the strict and somewhat restrained Swiss Style of the 1960s, Büro Destruct stands for design without the handbrake on. Apparently everything is possible. It can be humorous, loud, colorful and zeitgeisty. At the same time, minimalism, precision and craftsmanship are present in all their work.
If you prefer only the book, have a look here.
Freistil 7 – Das Buch der Illustration
Illustration is more than just depicting the world as we see it. She is interpreting and focusing. Illustrators are creating images you have never seen before. Images that have the power to change the thinking, acting and feeling of those who are watching them. That’s because people in media business and creative agencies are always searching new talents, styles, trends and techniques.
Illustration confronts the enormous number of replaceable photos taken by advanced smartphone cameras with strong images. For the seventh time and with enough temporal distance to the previous editions, “Freistil 7 – Das Buch der Illustration” is presenting the incredible works of 157 illustrators from all over the world. It’s showing images that speak a thousand words.
In times like this it is so important to stand out for freedom of speech and picture. Therefore, the editorial focus of “Freistil 7 – Das Buch der Illustration” lays on illustration that shows more than others see–or want so see. The book surveys the political power of strong images and introduces to you illustrators who teach important men to fear. For example, the editorial is dedicated to Art Spiegelman who, in his underground comic “Maus–A Survivor’s Tale”, tells poignantly the story of his father, a survivor of Auschwitz. For his graphic novel Spiegelman has won the Pulitzer price.
Authoritarian systems are afraid of the power of images. The more autocrats are there in the world the more important becomes the political meaning of images. Unfortunately, also the risks are increasing for those who have the courage to hold up the mirror to the world. Based on that, this edition of “Freistil 7 – Das Buch der Illustration” is more than a simple invitation to explore new talents. It’s encouraging us to reflect about our times and is confronting it by illustration.
Novo Typo Offgrid
Can graphic designers be self-sufficient? Can graphic designers recycle their own work?
When a designer is able to make his own letters, he also should be able to design and produce his own paper and ink. In order to understand and experiment with the concept of letters, color and paper, it is necessary to learn about these things. A designer should have a complete understanding of these elements because they are the cornerstones of good design.
This self-initiated DIY project by Mark van Wageningen aka Novo Typo, that is described in this book “Novo Typo Offgrid,” is intended as a blueprint for all designers and design studios that wish to be self-sufficient or wish to recycle their own designs. By proposing a new standard for polychromatic typography using plant-based ink and recycled paper, this publication aims to inspire the pursuit of different approaches in graphic design.
The publication “Novo Typo Offgrid” is designed and produced within close proximity to Novo Typo’s Amsterdam studio. The cover is letterpress printed with plant-based ink on Amsterdam Pulp Paper.
Data Centers — Edges of a Wired Nation
Often hidden in plain sight, data centers are the backbone of our Internet. They store, communicate, and transport the information we produce and access along invisible pathways. Unlike industrial plants, “Data Centers—Edges of a Wired Nation” shows how data centers come entwined with an iconography of generic, bland, and sterile architectures: placeless, inconspicuous, anonymous structures—buildings, cable ducts, junction boxes and landing sites that could be anywhere, generating a ‘cloud’ that is both everywhere and nowhere.
Bringing together photographic works, essays and case studies, the book explores the mutual, typically fraught entanglements of place, past and digital infrastructure, taking Switzerland as their example. Underneath the official storyline—Switzerland’s favorable alpine climate, the relatively low energy-costs, the political stability of the area, and its strategic positioning in central Europe—“Data Centers—Edges of a Wired Nation” uncovers a more varied, inconclusive set of trajectories: narratives of techno-nationalist aspirations; of Swiss-Chinese interdependencies; of deregulation and once-mighty telecommunications enterprises; of cold-war legacies and the multi-billion-dollar business of data security.
100 Beste Plakate 20
For twenty years the association 100 Beste Plakate e.V. has been spotlighting the most groundbreaking poster designs from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In its anniversary year, the group and its members are facing existential questions, just like graphic designers all over the world. The coronavirus has laid waste not only to people’s lives but to cultural life as well. In our day and age, museums are closed while people are still allowed to shop at DIY stores; they can get a haircut, but theaters remain off-limits. The place of culture in society is shifting, which most often means it is becoming less relevant. But what is society without culture?
Some of the posters included in this book were made for events that never happened, for billboards that remained empty, for an audience that wasn’t there.
These upheavals have had an impact not only on the selection of the 100 best posters of 2020, but also on current trends in the graphic arts. Last year, as the authorities imposed restrictions, or in some cases even outright bans, on interpersonal communication, the desire for visual communication and design seemed to grow by the same measure. This book and the posters presented in it can be regarded as a physical testimony to the time and space that was lost in 2020.
zweitausend&zweiundzwanzig – A1 Wall Calendar 2022 – White Black Gold
The zweitausend&zweiundzwanzig – Wall Calendar 2021 shows you the whole year at a glance, with plenty of space for all appointments, vacations, appointments, birthdays, and whatever else is coming up.
The calendar is a 3-color screenprint: white printing, a specialty of screen printing, for the weekends. Black as the primary color for the days of the week, and gold as the accent color for the detailed entries. It was printed on Kaskad Sparrow Grey in 160g, a fine, dyed-through paper.
The calendar shows the calendar weeks as well as all German bank holidays. Furthermore, the public holidays of the individual federal states are marked accordingly. The school holidays for each federal state are at the bottom. Also, you will never again miss setting the time forwards or backward or the phases of the moon. You can see when summer or winter begins, and in hot August, you know precisely: these are the dog days of summer.
The calendar comes rolled in a stylish black tube.
zweitausend&zweiundzwanzig – A1 Wall Calendar 2022 – Neon Coral Black Gold
The zweitausend&zweiundzwanzig – Wall Calendar 2022 shows the whole year at a glance, with plenty of space for all appointments, vacations, appointments, birthdays, and whatever else is coming up.
The calendar is a 3-color screenprint: neon coral for the weekends, black as the primary color for the days of the week, and gold as the accent color for the detailed entries. It was printed on Kaskad Sparrow Grey in 160g, a fine, dyed-through paper.
The calendar shows the calendar weeks as well as all German bank holidays. Furthermore, the public holidays of the individual federal states are marked accordingly. The school holidays for each federal state are at the bottom. Also, you will never again miss setting the time forwards or backward or the phases of the moon. You can see when summer or winter begins, and in hot August, you know precisely: these are the dog days of summer.
The calendar comes rolled in a stylish black tube.
Slow Spatial Reader – Chronicles of Radical Affection
Slow Spatial Reader offers a collection of essays about ‘Slow’ approaches to spatial practice and pedagogy from around the world.
The book’s contributors are from twenty-four countries on five continents. Each one brings distinct philosophical and disciplinary approaches—from ‘spatial’ fields like architecture, sculpture, and installation, but also performative, somatic and/or dramaturgical practices. Moreover they are exploring how we think about and engage with space at a range of scales, tempos, and durations.
The essays chronicle projects and processes that amplify tangible and intangible qualities of spatial experience: reaching into the cracks of the body, probing the fuzzy borders of atmospheres, and extending out across both geographical and epistemological coordinates.
The term ‘radical affection’ in the book’s title was coined to unite those diverse approaches in a call for tender acts of individual and collective imagination. New forms of caring, connection, and resilience might emerge through those. Like its predecessor, Slow Reader (Valiz 2016), this new publication is intended to spur meaningful dialogue between disciplines and cultures.It is the aim to inspire not only a different velocity of engaging the world but also critical shifts in consciousness that only Slow thinking and practice can provoke.
SPRING #18 – Freedom
Everyone wants to be free, and personal freedom in particular is promised everywhere. But what does that actually mean today? Where do we find these personal and social freedoms, and where are their limits? What is left of the sexual revolution, for example? And are thoughts really free?
In the current issue SPRING #18 – Freedom, the 11 illustrators tell stories of being free and their desires for freedoms, but also of being confined and of the limits we constantly set for ourselves and our unfolding. They follow their fantasies of transformation and change, overcome social norms and political hurdles, seek liberation in nature, illustrate their dreams, and for once replay evolution. In very different ways, they thus lead us to points of freedom.
SPRING magazine was founded in 2004 in Hamburg. Since then, every summer a new volume of the anthology is published, which combines the different works from the fields of comics, illustration and free drawing into one topic each. Since the beginning, the group consists exclusively of women and has become a solid and important network for female illustrators in Germany.
SPRING #17 – Ghosts
Can you draw ghosts? And why are we actually afraid of them? We know them since our childhood, they flit through our memories, fill creepy, abandoned places and look at us in the mirror. People have known them at all times, past and present.
In the current issue of SPRING magazine, the 16 illustrators draw ghosts both beloved and forgotten. They take us through analog and digital ghost towns, deal with the ghost of capitalism and the ghostly in emotions. They try to capture and make visible the ghosts and demons that haunt us in quiet hours, hoping thereby to take away some of their creepiness. And they wonder where the ghosts come from – and why they ultimately never let us go.
With a foreword by Karen Köhler.
SPRING was founded in 2004 in Hamburg. Since then, every summer a new volume of the anthology is published, which combines the different works from the fields of comics, illustration and free drawing into one topic each. Since the beginning, the group consists exclusively of women and has become a solid and important network for female illustrators in Germany.
Makers Bible Voralpen – Handgemachte Qualität
A guide about Maker & Crafter, retailers, restaurants and accommodations in the foothills of the Alps between Lake Constance and Berchtesgaden.
Join us along with Outville as we make our way to the foothills of the Alps between Lake Constance and Königssee, pausing at dazzling lakes, stopping by brewers and distilleries, artisans and merchants, serving up bread and dinners, and settling into our feathers with passionate hosts.
Servus, Mahlzeit, Prost and bon voyage!
Büro Destruct 4
The new book Büro Destruct 4 not only presents the best of realized projects of the past 12 years, but also intermediate steps, discards, experiments & inspiration of the Bern-based and internationally renowned design studio Büro Destruct. The Swiss, who see themselves and their studio as a kind of band, again present a skilfully composed album with this new book.
In contrast to the strict and somewhat restrained Swiss Style of the 1960s, Büro Destruct stands for design without the handbrake on. Apparently everything is possible. It can be humorous, loud, colorful and zeitgeisty. At the same time, minimalism, precision and craftsmanship are present in all their work.
The layout of “Büro Destruct 4” presents various works in detail—in progress and finalized. It is always left open which of the variants shown was realized. Although the illustrations are only minimally explained, this principle allows for a particularly intensive look over the shoulder and reveals much about the working methods of Büro Destruct.
Their vector-heavy graphics have always conformed to “think global, act local.” Often against the grain of public conception: they were among the few to ignore the temporary, yet intense flirt of Swiss graphic design with fledgling neo-conservatism.
Over the past 27 years, Büro Destruct have successfully avoided being pinned down or getting too comfortable in a defined area. At the same time, of course, it is there: that special Destruct eerie feeling. An independent handwriting, for which many words could be found, but which even after more than two decades is best conveyed by looking at their work …
Want to carry your book suitable with the book? Get one of the limited tote bags with the book from our shop.
Artprint Essiggurke, Pickle | Risograph Print
Who doesn’t love them? Great print for your kitchen, your parent’s kitchen, your best friend’s kitchen, maybe your bathroom? Knock yourselves out, there are no rules in the Pickle Universe.
DIN A3 risograph print on 170g/qm rough paper.
Print sold unframed.
Artprint Anemone | Risograph Print
Big flowers – big joy! Our beautiful anemone as DIN A3 Artprint.
DIN A3 risograph print on 170g/qm rough paper.
Print sold unframed.
Artprint Hortensie | Risograph Print
Big flowers – big joy! Our beautiful hydrangea as DIN A3 Artprint.
DIN A3 risograph print on 170g/qm rough paper.
Print sold unframed.