The Piano

The Piano begins with a loud BANG: piano keys fly around and become the start of something entirely new. Sven Völker views the keys as play materials and continually transforms them into—sometimes very loud and sometimes very quiet—animals.

The Piano playfully encourages children’s creativity and demonstrates how much can come from very little. The style of drawing here reveals the construction of the illustration. The onomatopoeia also creates spaces that can be wonderfully played. Does a dog go “Woof Woof” or “Wau Wau” or … ?

The picture book includes a dictionary that translates English onomatopoeia into German. The funny new vocabulary provides plenty of inspiration to create new sound words.

Emojization. Visual Communication with Emojis

A means of expression for billions of people, emojis have established their function in our everyday lives. Increasingly complex in quality and quantity, these written language companions have long since transcended the realm of written communication to become a pop culture phenomenon of their own. This handbook “Emojization. Visual Communication with Emojis” is a manual and source of inspiration for anyone seeking to understand and use the full potential of emojis in visual communication.
It combines cultural, historical, and theoretical backgrounds with practical application examples. Selected works from recent years demonstrate the formal diversity of emojis and offer inspiration for one’s own work. Specific cases are used to show how emojis can be used in very different ways in the implementation of design tasks and creative projects to thus become part of visual identities.

Photodarium 2025

The popular classic Photodarium is now appearing for the 13th time and will delight us again in 2025 with an instant photo and a little story of our own. The high—quality tear-off calendar shows artistic and intimate snapshots of 365 well-known photographers and newcomers, professionals, and Polaroid fans from all over the world.

On the front of each calendar page there is an analog Polaroid photo, printed in its original size and finished with a special glossy finish that creates a real Polaroid feeling. On the back there is a small text with the often very personal story of the picture as well as information about the photographer and the Polaroid film used. And of course printed in the tried and tested quality and glued and bound by hand.

The Photodarium (formerly Poladarium) is a well-assorted gem and an eye—catcher for your desk, window sill, cake buffet, hat rack, shop window, bedside table … and of course the perfect Christmas present for all friends of analogue photography!

Alekos Hofstetter – Tannhäuser Tor III

The subject of the Tannhäuser Tor series of works by draftsman and painter Alekos Hofstetter is the relationship between space, time, and distance.
For his creative process, Hofstetter employs changing perspectives on architecture and its history over time. Through his unique power of imagination and sensitivity, Alekos Hofstetter creates a new relationship to the spatial dimensions of existence in his artworks, which are mostly created using mixed media (including ink, colored pencil, and permanent marker) by superimposing iconic, emblematic architectural representations with lettering, elements from comics, and the aesthetics of graphic techniques.

REBEL PRINTS—The Poster Rex Manifesto

Lars Harmsen and Markus Lange, the visionary duo behind Poster Rex, know about the power of signs. Their posters combine contemporary aesthetics with uncomfortable images from our turbulent times, often in a political and/or socio-critical context. Poster Rex represents pop culture and the enduring strength of creativity and human resilience, the rebellious spirit of Poster Rex provokes and awakens hope.

This is evidenced not only by the screen-printed posters but also by the powerful statements of over 25 designers and artists they’ve collaborated and printed with on-site, including notable figures such as Peter Bankov (CZ), Edwin van Gelder (NL), Mirko Borsche (DE), Götz Grämlich (DE), Ariane Spanier (DE), Officina Arara (PT), Yetkin Başarır (TR), and many more …

REBEL PRINTS—The Poster Rex Manifesto is a selection of screen-printed posters created over the last 10 years in collaboration with Poster Rex and artists from around the world.

Unique original screenprints from the Poster Rex sessions will be offered exclusively in the Slanted Shop to accompany the book. More info here.

Jim Avignon: Business as Unusual

The painter, illustrator and conceptual artist Jim Avignon is one of the most unconventional characters in the current German art world. Vibrant colors and unpretentious materials, a good dose of wit and an enormous output are his trademarks.

For the first time an opulent monograph allows a comprehensive insight into the complex oeuvre of the artist, who has always sought confrontation with the establishment and who could never decide whether he wanted to be pop-art, street-art, Picasso on acid or whether he was simply the fastest painter in the world.

Avignon’s narrative about “things not going as planned” is full of concise quips and not without a certain delight. He expounds his peculiar relationship with the art market and describes the exhibitions that finally put him on the map as an exceptional artist. We get to read about odd detours into the world of commerce, a stolen bear, paintings that need ironing, call-for-help socks and how a mural almost landed him in jail. Avignon spills the beans about the high and lows of one of the strangest careers the art world has seen in the last 25 years—expect a lot of detail, an ironic undertone and an abundance of images.

Accompanying texts written by ATAK, Sandra Prill, and Lars Willumeit.

Neoangin

Das musikalische ABC (The musical ABC) is a joint project by Anja Lutz and Jim Avignon created for Typo Berlin 2014.

This synesthetic experiment merges music, illustration and typography in the most entertaining and unorthodox way. Avignon, who is also internationally known as performer Neoangin, has written a song for each letter of the alphabet for which Lutz and Avignon created corresponding visual interpretations on 26 spreads. The musical show has it’ s world premiere at Typo Berlin 2014 and can be followed by leafing through The musical ABC, analogue to the notation of a classical concert (only much more entertaining). The music is also available for online streaming. Enjoy!

Introduction by Kathrin Passig

Online streaming: The musical ABC

Typodarium 2025

Type design is the most subtle instrument of visual communication. Letters, the elementary particles of every design, are primarily decoded in order to capture text. In the face of this serving function, we quickly forget how strongly type design influences the reception of the text. Beyond conscious perception, type interprets the content it contains. Creatives who are aware of this subtle touch in the design process cannot discover enough new typefaces.
Typodarium supports them in this with a daily dose of typography. Every year, Lars Harmsen and Raban Ruddigkeit scout new type designers from all over the world and elicit the latest trends in type design from them. These are then incorporated into the current Typodarium.
It has never been so nice to literally have your eye on the pulse of the times. Breathe the spirit of 2025 into your designs, nonchalant topicality ideally with a never-seen-before bonus …

Zero Waste Ballpoint Pen in Red

Handmade and 3D printed from truly biodegradable bioplastic in Hamburg, Germany. 100% recyclable, climate-neutral and made entirely from European material. The Ballpoint Pen in Red comes in environmentally friendly recycled packaging and is part of our own recycling program.

Housing: Biodegradable bioplastic, Austria

Refill: Metal, extra broad in black, indelible according to ISO 12757-2, climate-compensated, Germany

Spring: Piano wire, Germany

Packaging: Recycled paper, Switzerland

Manufactured in: Hamburg, Germany

Mechanics: Screw

Zero Waste Ballpoint Pen in Black

Handmade and 3D printed from truly biodegradable bioplastic in Hamburg, Germany. 100% recyclable, climate-neutral and made entirely from European material. The Ballpoint Pen in Black comes in environmentally friendly recycled packaging and is part of our own recycling program.

Housing: Biodegradable bioplastic, Austria

Refill: Metal, extra broad in black, indelible according to ISO 12757-2, climate-compensated, Germany

Spring: Piano wire, Germany

Packaging: Recycled paper, Switzerland

Manufactured in: Hamburg, Germany

Mechanics: Screw

Gert Dumbar, Gentleman Maverick of Dutch Design

Gert Dumbar (1940) is one of the most influential—and colourful—graphic designers in the postwar design field, both in the Netherlands and abroad. As a young partner in Tel Design, he designed one of the most iconic symbols in the Dutch public domain, the logo for the Dutch National Railways, NS, to which he has added countless designs for other clients with his own Studio Dumbar. Applauded or reviled, Studio Dumbar has left an indelible mark on Dutch and international visual culture.

Dumbar produced a vast amount of work, for an enormously varied clientele, from avant-garde theatres to the central government, from hospitals to multinationals. That work and the Werdegang of its namesake are now—for the first time—described and interpreted with great verve by the two authors in a richly illustrated book.

Gert Dumbar, Gentleman Maverick of Dutch Design considers this fabulously versatile oeuvre in its time and context and examines the various roles Dumbar played—that of artist, provocateur and “design director”, student and teacher, cultural initiator and mediator. Unique is the treasure trove of sketches from the Studio’s archives, which were abundantly sampled for the book. It provides insight into Dumbar’s independent, agile mind, his gift for engaging talented young designers, and his ability to time and again seduce his very diverse commissioners to tread unconventional paths.

Max Bruinsma is a design critic, editor, curator and lecturer. He was the editor-in-chief of Eye: The International Review of Graphic Design (founded by Rick Poynor). He has written on design extensively, and has been teaching in many international positions.

Leonie ten Duis is an art historian and writer. One of her best-known books is The World Must Change: Graphic Design and Idealism / De wereld moe(s)t anders: grafisch ontwerpen en idealisme.

September 2024, Valiz supported by Creative Industries Fund NL, het Cultuurfonds and Jaap Harten Fonds Foundation

Claudia Reinhardt: Witwen / Widows

“I have always been fascinated by the dark bedrooms with their heavy oak matrimonial beds, the living rooms that were never used (at most when visitors from outside came), and the kitchens that had to be always spick and span and tidy. Symbols of a German childhood. Mirrors of a war generation that will soon no longer exist. For several years I visited more than thirty widows and photographed in their apartments. In my native town of Viernheim in southern Hesse, in Berlin, Hamburg, in the Ruhrpott and in Norway. I worked with a medium format camera, a cumbersome technique that gave me time and required a lot of patience.

I didn’t want to photograph the faces of the women, but rather in their apartments, to trace their inner state of mind. I found metaphors for their sadness, their melancholy and secretiveness. A difficult task, because for these women, home is not something to be shown and exhibited. Privacy is sacred to them. I was tempted by this challenge. This is exactly the essence of my photography. To gain access and insight. To tell hidden stories with pictures.” (Claudia Reinhardt, April 2020)

Conversations Across Place

Conversations Across Place (CAP) provides a publishing platform for international artists and writers engaging with landscape in the broader sense of geography, ecology, space, place, built and “natural” environments. Contemporary discourse focused on decolonial, feminist and queer methodologies is underscored through a variety of subjects and themes in order to reveal historical and present-day entanglements. The format of “conversation” – of translation and dialogue – frames this project, which originated in a process-based workshop. Artists, writers and architects gathered to converse across the borders that divide places and disciplines, enacting the tangling that already exists in our plural ecosystems.

Volume I: The first volume of Conversations Across Place grapples with the reflexive relationships of extraction, ruination and reverberation, working towards solidarity across places and perspectives. Within and between the essays, texts, interviews/conversations and artwork that make up the book, landscapes both metaphorical and material are mapped onto each other producing new images of liminal times and spaces that provide a critical opportunity to reassess diverse relationships to the world. The book uses queer and decolonial methods as explicit tools of disorientation, questioning the clarity of time and space that rises from a Western cis-heteronormative and imperial context. Rather than a field guide, this book proposes a constellation of material – a horizontal network made of various perspectives which together may point in new directions.

List of contributors:

Shruti Belliappa (writer) / Nicola Brandt: Artist (Founder and series editor of Conversations Across Place) / Ama Josephine B. Johnstone: Speculative writer, artist, curator and pleasure activist / Peter Coffin: Conceptual artist / Denise Lim: Decolonial sociologist and Fellow at Yale University / Solveig Lønmo: Art historian and curator / Lorenzo Nassimbeni: Architect and conceptual artist / Lipika Pelham: Writer, broadcaster and filmmaker / Elisa Schaar: Curator and art historian / Hildegard Titus: photographer and activist / Sumayya Vally: Architect and founder of collaborative architecture studio Counterspace / Frances Whorrall-Campbell: Artist and writer (Guest editor and curator of Conversations Across Place)

Book recommendations

“If there was ever a time when we needed new intellectual maps and new cultural thinking, it is now, if ever there was a time for inspiration and beauty, it is now, if there was a time for us to share the message that this volume has to offer, it is today. This is a timely and astutely considered book that offers affecting and important reflections on this complex moment of cultural adaptation.”

– Augustus Casely-Hayford, OBE, Director, V&A East

”Conversations Across Place: Reckoning with an Entangled World, Vol. 1 is a compelling collation of novel and enlightening perspectives organised around the idea of landscape/place. This collection of essays, interviews and images is provocative; creatively and imaginatively engaging with a host of critical contemporary paradigms through a wide and venturous lens.”

– Mark Raymond, Director, Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg

Timewarp

Timewarp by Lorenzo Petrantoni, graphic artist, illustrator, designer and artist from Milan, Italy, known for his reinterpretations of historical figures from the 19th and 20th centuries in his particular personal aesthetic. His works are created by using 19th century engravings from old books he finds in bookshops, libraries, markets and fairs around the world. Using hand-made collage, Petrantoni combines and assembles these engravings to create unique and striking images.

His compositions have become iconic, used by renowned brands like Coca Cola, Nespresso, New York Times, Newsweek, Samsonite, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and many more, as well as museums, publishers, and galleries worldwide. Thanks to his extraordinary creativity and technical mastery, Petrantoni gives vintage images new life and meaning, transforming them into works of contemporary art.

Timewarp presents these works from recent years and is a fascinating journey through time, where the past merges with the present through the creative genius of Lorenzo Petrantoni.

Collision + Hand-Signed Prints

When the book Collision was printed, Lars Harmsen was able to save some of the printed sheets. He took them to his screen printing workshop in Italy, where he overprinted them with colorful motifs, creating a series of unique pieces. No two prints are alike.

We have carefully selected and compiled five hand-signed, unique prints. The result is 20 sets of 5 prints each, which are included as a special edition with the book Collision. Exclusively available in our shop.

POSTER REX screen print / RAUSCH / Mirko Borsche

Unique POSTER REX screen print from the session RAUSCH together with Mirko Borsche in Munich, September 2015. In the Format 64 × 91 cm.

Poster Rex was founded in 2014 by Markus Lange and Lars Harmsen after a screen printing workshop in Cuba. In the following years, the two designers conducted numerous printing sessions and workshops around the world, inviting local designers to create experimental posters. Each session focused on predetermined themes from politics, current events, and social issues, emphasizing one thing above all: attitude!

What emerged is an impressive testament to the enduring power of creativity and the deeply human capacity for hope, often accompanied by a call to take concrete action. The poster collection now includes over 3,000 unique pieces.

Get the new book: REBEL PRINTS—The Poster Rex Manifesto

Lars Harmsen and Markus Lange, the duo behind Poster Rex, know about the power of signs. Their posters combine contemporary aesthetics with uncomfortable images from our turbulent times, often in a political and/or socio-critical context. Poster Rex represents pop culture and the enduring strength of creativity and human resilience, the rebellious spirit of PosterRex provokes and awakens hope. This is evidenced not only by the screen-printed posters but also by the powerful statements of over25 designers and artists they’ve collaborated and printed with on-site, including notable figures such as Peter Bankov (CZ), Edwin van Gelder (NL), Mirko Borsche (DE), Götz Grämlich (DE), Ariane Spanier (DE), Officina Arara (PT), Yetkin Başarır (TR), and many more …

REBEL PRINTS—The Poster Rex Manifesto is a selection of screen-printed posters created over the last 10 years in collaboration with Poster Rex and artists from around the world.

Grafikmagazin 04.24 – Illustration

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 “Illustration”. The topics portray how imaginative, eclectic, and playful graphic design can be while featuring successful branding concepts and niche ideas.

The extensive “Showroom” section lets readers know other creatives and the stories behind design studios worldwide. The “Design and 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 and Publishing” section, everything revolves around 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. This particular cover was realized in six different versions from different studios and artists, each riso-printed. 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.

Risograph Art Print July

Graphic art print with bright riso colors — perfect for any room. Environmentally friendly risography print on the finest 170 g Munken paper with a high-quality feel.

Unframed.

Risograph Art Print August

Graphic art print with bright riso colors — perfect for any room. Environmentally friendly risography print on the finest 170 g Munken paper with a high-quality feel.

Unframed.

Risograph Art Print October

Graphic art print with bright riso colors — perfect for any room! Environmentally friendly risography print on the finest 170 g Munken paper with a high-quality feel.

Unframed

Creative Flow Cards

Understand the stages of creative flow. This set of cards contains 9 stages that every creator goes through when bringing an idea to life.

Use the Creative Flow Cards to identify which stage you are at right now and receive guidance on what to pay attention to while you’re here.

Superpower Cards

Superpower Cards contain 25 qualities that a high-performance team with a maker’s mindset should cultivate within. Use this tool to identify your team’s strengths and the gaps that need to be filled.

You can also use these cards for personal self-reflection to identify your personal strengths—your innate superpowers.

Worlding Ecologies – Art, Science and Activism Towards Climate Justice

How can art, science and institutional practices counteract the negative consequences of climate and ecological breakdown? How can these practices and ideas advance systemic change? Worlding Ecologies serves as an anthology of examples and wayward navigational tool, assembling eighteen authors exploring this question from their diverse backgrounds–as scientists, artists, philosophers, activists, theorists and curators–to rigorously approach urgent ecological challenges, including climate breakdown, pollution, biodiversity loss, environmental and social justice.

This book emphasizes the fundamental role of art as a vehicle and support structure for intersectional ecological thought. Whilst navigating imagination, worlding-possibility, science fact, social justice and climate action, the book prompts a fundamental role for art to create the blueprints for regenerative and sustainable more-than-human worlds. Structured alongside three sections–Science and Climate Truth; Activism and Climate Justice and Social Justice in Institutional Ecosystems–Worlding Ecologies moves from fieldwork-taking to patchwork-making, unifying the arts with science, politics and ecology into a field of synthetic thought and commitment.

Authors: Ursula Biemann, Federica Bueti, Eva Burgering, TJ Demos, Zoénie Liwen Deng, Jeff Diamanti, Lisa Doeland, Taru Elfving, Sami Hammana, Christopher F. Julien, Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, Michael Marder, Chus Martinéz, Victoria McKenzie, Margarida Mendes, Vincent Normand, Filipa Ramos, Jessica Ullrich
Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk (1988, NL) works as director and curator at RADIUS, center for art and ecology located in Delft, which he founded in 2021. Lekkerkerk published The Standard Book of Noun-Verb Exhibition Grammar (Onomatopee, 2018) and Bestiary of Corona Animals (Onomatopee, 2020).
Eva Burgering is head of production and publications at RADIUS.
RADIUS is a center for contemporary art and ecology in Delft (NL). RADIUS works collaboratively with artists and other stakeholders to tell the urgent and necessary story of climate and systems change by means of art. RADIUS does so through a continuous program, consisting of exhibitions, public and educational programs.

June 2024, Valiz in collaboration with RADIUS, center for contemporary art and ecology | supported by Mondriaan Fund, M.A.O.C. Gravin van Bylandt Stichting

Flowers in the Dark No.1

What is real and what is fiction? We can distort and disfigure our faces using various digital filters. A self-portrait is created that can only be produced in a digital world. This image plays with the viewer with its surreal look and asks is it real or fiction.

The Flowers in the Dark No.1 print with surreal surrounding comes as a DIN A1 print on 246g/qm photo paper (C Type Fuji Gloss). The print is sold unframed.