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 Rose | Risograph Print

Great flowers – great joy! Our beautiful rose as DIN A3 Artprint.
DIN A3 risograph print on 170g/qm rough paper.
Print sold unframed.

Jeremiah Chiu – Ou(te)r Space

Ou(te)r Space: Course as Collective Manifesto contains the work of 21 high school students that participated in the (virtual) Graphic Design section at Otis College of Art & Design’s Summer of Art in July of 2020. The month-long course, led by Jeremiah Chiu, was proposed to the students as a 4-part experimental and collaborative workshop—activating the remote classroom as a space for self-reflection, critical inquiry, and expression through experimentation.

The course was structured into four, week-long topics: A Portrait Through Objects (image-making), Establishing a Voice (typography), A New Vision (research and writing), and Self-Publishing (authorship). In the final week, students collaborated with Chiu to compile a final volume documenting the results of their month-long study—seen here in this book.

As the world we live in continues to change, so should the approach to educating, collaborating, and communicating with students and practitioners. The book serves as a starting point—an inspiration—for educators and students alike to engage, question, and evolve Graphic Design Pedagogy and Curriculum towards a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive future.

From an educator’s perspective, it may seem obvious to teach as we have been taught. But too often, education is taught in binaries—right and wrong—and through biases—subjective “goodness” as a measure of quality. Beyond right and wrong, this book proposes that we re-establish the hierarchical balance between teacher and student, and that philosophical inquiry—ethical, political, and representational questioning—become integral to the practice of a contemporary designer. Instead of determining what is right or wrong, we may, alternatively, discover what is possible.

Airport Wayfinding

Airports are places with multi-layered identities that millions of people pass through and where cultures meet: On the one hand, the history and the design heritage of the particular country can be identified and local characteristics are intensified and reinforced almost stereotypically. On the other hand, airports represent hypermodern functional environments in which processes are internationally standardized and maximally efficient, with a strong emphasis on entertainment and consumption.
Guidance systems navigate people through airports. The graphic language creates an image in the viewer’s head carrying the respective identity in its own compact form through color, fonts, and pictograms. The authors, both specialists in the field, decipher this identity and trace its emergence and evolution over the decades. From the perspective of information design, they examine and analyze the wayfinding systems of approximately 100 airports by aligning their identities and functions in this book “Airport Wayfinding”.

Slanted Magazine #37—AI

Available as an ebook in bookstores and on all common platforms.

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has become—besides being an over-hyped buzzword across industries (that the design world is no exception to)—a reality. We debate about the impacts of A.I. and its subsets, machine and deep learning, and consider everything from virtual to augmented realities, and how these technologies may change our lives, jobs, and social relationships altogether. 

We live in times where decisions about what we want are no longer under our control. While we believe to be free (at least in our western world), algorithms dictate our lives, hopes, and dreams. We are the parents and children, gods and slaves of the technology we invented: although it’s a masterpiece, there is a great dependence. If “algorithms will liberate themselves entirely from us,” Peter Weibel proposes, dystopian science fictions may help us clarify what we desire and do not want. 

At Slanted, we are “hands on.” We love the human spark, provoke happy accidents (scratches and glitches), explore edges, and consistently enter unknown terrain. So yes, although this is a printed issue, it could very well have been transported to a neural chip. And we definitely figured out some ways to bring the issue to another dimension: A unique motif by CROSSLUCID has been printed for each cover of the entire edition—the aesthetics between portrait, still life, and expressionist topography, alien to our comprehension of what is human, natural, artificial, and digital.

More than ever this issue made us adventurers: looking with doubtful eyes at this new world of computation, numbers, and transhumanism, where (OMG!) machines are in many areas smarter than us and, occasionally, even encoded with higher ethical and moral standards than we will ever have.

Alongside the issue, a limited Special Edition has been released, a high-quality and 100% recycled bag by LOQI with a design by artist Sofia Crespo. 

The impact of Artificial Intelligence on design and how these technologies can change our lives in one comprehensive publication!

“Slanted maintains a critical edge—both by addressing subjects such as AI in the first place, by adding written essays that provide insight, and then notes alongside each piece of work that help contextualize it.”
MAGCULTURE.COM, Jeremy Leslie

Awarded with Tokyo TDC Award.

Limited Special Edition A.I. / LOQI Bag

On the occasion of the release of Slanted Magazine #37—AI a limited LOQI bag with an artwork by neural artist Sofia Crespo has been published. It is limited to 200 pieces and available exclusively in the Slanted Shop.

Neural Zoo

Neural Zoo is an exploration of the ways creativity works: the recombination of known elements into novel ones. These images resemble nature, but it is an imagined nature that has been rearranged. Our visual cortex recognizes the textures, but the brain is simultaneously aware that those elements don’t belong to any arrangement of reality that it has access to.

Computer vision and machine learning could offer a bridge between us and a speculative “natures” that can only be accessed through high levels of parallel computation. Starting from the level of our known reality, we could ultimately be digitizing cognitive processes and utilizing them to feed new inputs into the biological world, which feeds back into a cycle. Routines in artificial neural networks become a tool for creation, one that allows for new experiences of the familiar.

Can art be reduced to the remapping of data absorbed through sensory processes?

Production: LOQI
Artist: Sofia Crespo

The bag is water resistant and made of polyester. Of course it is STANDARD 100 by OEKO-TEX® certified.

Artprint Poster Birne | Risograph Art Print

Not only delicious and healthy – but also beautiful. Summer feelings put on paper.
Environmentally friendly risography print on the finest 170 g Munken paper with a high-quality feel.
Unframed

Who invented this?

Many of the things surrounding us were once nothing more than an idea.Things that on first glance may seem small and common, like the jeans we’re wearing right now, Post-its, toothpaste or fizzy drinks, just as much as things such as the light bulb, tires, the microchip or plastic that have become an integral part of our everyday lives, as well as still others that appear to be invisible, but have undeniably changed the world we live in forever like frequency hopping that is the basis of modern technologies such as Bluetooth and WLAN, radioactivity, alternating current, which is the electricity that comes out of our plugs, or the ubiquitous world wide web.

These things that make up the fabric of our everyday lives, did not just appear out of nowhere, though, they were conceived by talented inventors, scientists, and engineers. Some are the result of teamwork, some of many years spent alone in a laboratory. Other inventions grew out of everyday situations and some were simply the result of chance. “Who Invented This?” is a fascinating trip back through history that shows how now famous scientists and inventors like Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla or Ada Lovelace, as well as lesser known, but no less creative minds such as Adi Dassler, the inventor of football boots, George Beauchamp, who developed the first electrically amplifiable guitar, or Louis Braille, who as a 16-year old came up with the idea of using dots to create a form of writing that blind people could read with their fingers, have turned their ideas into great inventions.

How they seized opportunities, had faith in their ideas, and the courage to try something new. At a time when the lack of trust in science appears to be growing and controversies about facts are on the rise, “Who Invented This?” aims to inspire creativity and spark the interest in science and engineering by connecting groundbreaking minds from the past with modern technology, culture, and medicine.

Making her children’s literature debut in “Who Invented This?,” German author Anne Ameri-Siemens is using her experience as a journalist to tell engaging stories about human development and the world around us. She previously worked for Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung-Magazin, and German television networks.

Becky Thorns is the illustrator behind Little Gestalten’s acclaimed title The World of Whales that has been shortlisted for the World Illustration Award 2020. She graduated from Falmouth University with a Fine Art degree in 2015 and now specializes in children’s illustration, literary themed works, and calligraphic lettering.

 

Slanted ASCII Poster – Artificial Intelligence

On the occasion of Slanted Magazine #37—AI, Lars Harmsen designed a poster with a collage of ASCII quotes, inspired by the works of Douglas Coupland.

“ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII).” Wikipedia