Page 27 – slanted

Balancieren auf dem Gedankenstrich

Between silence and talking.
A diary for thought space with calendar.
Can you balance on a dash? Communication designer Irmgard Sonnen shows that you can do it very well in this book, which stands, so to speak, between silence and speeches. Those who remain silent move in the field of tension between speech and silence. Silence is a strategy of how one would still like to be heard, and embodies a space of resonance in which others can notice that the silencer is silent because he is silent. What is silent could talk a lot. (Michael Kröger)
Irmgard Sonnen creates analogies worth reading about the unspeakable, the gap in memory, the void, the space in between. With texts by Heinrich Heine, Keinrich von Kleist, Christian Morgenstern, Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Walter Benjamin, Man Ray, Hans Brög, Karl Riha, Jürgen Kisters, Michael Kröger and many others as well as an epilogue by Wilhelm Schmid.

Anna Blume ist rot. Farbe als Ereignis

Positions, essays and poems on colors from the fields of art, poetry and psychology of perception are vividly and readably linked with one another.
The book contains statements and works by important representatives of Informel, Abstract Expressionism, Colour Field Painting and Action Painting.
With works by Yves Klein, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Robert Ryman, Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Gotthard Graubner, Katharina Grosse, Bernd Schwarzer and others.

Dieter Fuder. Der Funke der Semantik. Designtheorie als Erkenntnismethodik

For a period of two semesters a seminar worked on a congenial enquiry and reprocessing of both research and teaching of Prof. Dr. phil. Dieter Fuder (1947-2011).
The aim was to clarify the metareflexive view of his teaching. The dialogue of text and picture follows a logic which refers to the second view and invites to discourses. The photographs serve as catalysts for broader images.
“visualize what makes you think”
Dieter Fuder defined the sparks of semantics, the imaginary significant, as a blank in the image thus challenging the observer’s process of reflection transcending the mere transmission of information.
Project manager: Prof. Irmgard Sonnen
Photography: Kathrin Tillmanns (accr. Designer)
Students: Anna Gepting, Bianca Gorny, Kristina Hapich, Maja Hoffmann, Julia Kehlenbach, Daria Kruschinski, Letizia Margeritha, Sirin Simsek, Annika Strathmann, Tobias Textor

Visions of the Bauhaus Books. Exploring Connections to Contemporary Graphic Design Practice

The 14 Bauhaus books, edited by Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, were published between 1925 and 1930. Their authors discussed design principles, practices, and science of art approaches from various perspectives. Johannes Rinkenburger examined and researched the contents and key concepts of this avant-garde series of books along with their backgrounds and context and deducts their useful application and importance to current design schools.
Based on design experiments, new links and correlations are established and methods shown that reveal and apply the legacy of Bauhaus, one of the historically most important design schools worldwide, to contemporary design. In the visual illustrations, which make up a large part of the publication, individual concepts and methods of the Bauhaus books are combined, contemplated on and implemented using today’s graphic design methods and techniques.

notamuse – A New Perspective on Women Graphic Designers in Europe

As a response to the predominantly male presence in the design scene, this book exclusively presents works by exceptional female designers. It is not about discovering something inherently “female” and defining “feminine” design, but to counter the male-dominated discourse of the sector. The carefully selected graphic works stand on their own and range from commissioned assignments via free artistic projects to the area of design research. They open new perspectives on how diverse contemporary graphic design can be.
This presentation is complemented by interviews conducted with 22 female designers, sociologists and design theorists. To shed light on the lacking visibility of women in the design sector, the editors especially focused on the design philosophy, perceptions, and ideals of the respective sectors and the experiences encountered in everyday work situations.

Play Life—Neighbors in the Western Balkans

People around the world define themselves again through an old phenomenon: nation states. The nation as a savior in a complex world. One’s own state is glorified and lowers other nations in an imaginary hierarchy. Historically, nation states are a young phenomenon. Only since the French Revolution have people sought identity in language, borders and nation. Before that, kings ruled over a multitude of countries and peoples. Many languages were spoken in their territory and the population belonged to different religions. In absolutism, the king held the people together.

New political ideas and economic production approaches required new identification mechanisms. Language, race and border now formed a nation. National myths emerged that historically established this new definition of the state. The Germans used the war against France in 1871, a German king was proclaimed emperor—although in 1815 Germany still consisted of more than 39 states that united to form the German Confederation. The new states of the Western Balkans used similar approaches to define their national identity. Some built pseudo-historical buildings and sculptures to underline the historical existence of their nations, others used religion and reinterpretations of historical moments in the Balkans to substantiate their belief in the right to dominate other nations. Looked at from the outside, it looks like a mimicry of commonly used patterns for building nations—it looks like “Play Life.”

The Balkans have been multicultural for centuries. The different dynasties tolerated the mix of religions, languages and traditions. The photographs in the book show seemingly casual everyday situations, but why 15 years after the Kosovo war is still the ruined Ministry of Defense in Belgrade? Why are over 2,000 new monuments in Skopje?

Only since the collapse of the Yugoslav Republic have nationalist forces established marginal differences as a pattern of separation. The most serious example of a nationalist reinterpretation is language. Serbo-Croatian has been a language with a grammatical system since the 18th century. Following the collapse of Yugoslavia, the successor states developed new names for politically motivated reasons: Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. These can not be defined linguistically as mutually independent languages. Rather, it is about slightly different realizations of a macro language and thus de facto the same language system—Serbo-Croat.

Color and Type – Mehrfarbige Multi-Layer-Schriften entwerfen und anwenden

Multicolored-Multi-Layer-Fonts—never heard of? For several years now, courageous type designers have been mixing up “black art” with multi-color multi-layer fonts. Multicolored fonts use an extension of the OpenType format and bring color to reading.

So far, this has been an insider trend. But now Mark van Wageningen is presenting his research on multicolored fonts. He systematically examines how color and type interact. Which contrasts work how. How multicolour, form, style and legibility influence each other. And whether the whole thing also works in small font sizes for continuous text.

In a colourful typographic workshop, he imparts the know-how you need to design and apply multi-coloured fonts. Your key to completely new expressive possibilities in the design of type, typo and text. Analog and digital. Help shape the new mega-trend!

100 Whites

White not only plays an important role in Japanese culture in general but also in the work of designer Kenya Hara. In 100 Whites, Hara gives one hundred specific examples of white—such as snow, Iceland, rice, and wax. On the basis of these examples he discusses the importance of white in design—not only as a color but as a philosophy. Hara describes how he experiments with the different whites he mentions, what they mean in the process of his work, and how they influence design today.
100 Whites is the extension of his previously published book White. The new publication explores the essence of white, which Hara sees as symbolizing simplicity and subtlety.

The Monocle Guide to Shops, Kiosks and Markets

Revealing Monocle’s 100 favorite shops worldwide, from the independent fashion boutique to the department store that takes up a city block, this is a new practical guide complete with case studies, a collection of sharp essays, snappy interviews, contacts and tips – a toolbox for the retail-minded and those with their own shop in prospect. The Monocle Guide to Shops, Kiosks and Marketsis a handbook for the shopper and any aspiring shopkeeper, stocking a wealth of insight and inspiration. Now, may we show you around?

Monocle was launched by Tyler Brûlé in 2007 as a monthly magazine briefing on global affairs, business, culture, design, and much more. Today, Monocle is a complete, media brand with a suite of travel guides under its belt, a 24-hour radio station, a film-rich website, retail ventures around the globe, and cafés in Tokyo and London. Besides their London HQ they have seven international bureaux in New York, Toronto, Istanbul, Singapore, Tokyo, Zurich, and Hong Kong. At their core is the simple belief that there will always be a place for a print brand that is committed to telling fresh stories and sending photographers on assignments.

Limited Prague Special Edition / Photographic Newspaper + Czech Design Map

The Czechs are the most proficient beer drinkers in the world with 156 liters per capita and year. A good reason for photographer Dirk Gebhardt to capture Prague’s “drinking cathedrals”—yesterday bars with a mixture of brutal Tristesse and desperate reality. The photos are published in form of a newspaper in black and white, with an accompanying text by Jan Arndt as part of the Prague special edition.

Hodit Šavli—Throw the Saber

Publisher: Slanted Publishers
Photographer: Dirk Gebhardt
Text: Jan Arndt
Volume: 48 pages
Format: 24 × 32 cm
ISBN: 978-3-9818296-8-6-6
Paper: Holmen TRND 1.6 52 g/m²
Print: Stober

Alongside this photographic journey, the Prague special edition contains a Czech Design Map—a practical printed map for design shopping. You can find an overview of 116 shops where you can buy tasteful gifts, Czech products, and local goods. The printed map has an online companion, so you can also search the map by city or location and find out which shops are closest to you.

Czech Design Map 2019

Publisher: Czech Design Map
Editors: Anna Štysová, Kateřina Novotná
Format: 13 × 21 cm (folded), 61 × 21 cm (opened)

bauhaus journal 1926-1931

One hundred years after the founding of Bauhaus, it’s time to revisit bauhaus journal as significant written testimony of this iconic movement of modern art. In this journal, published periodically from 1926 to 1931, the most important voices of the movement are heard: masters of the Bauhaus, among others, Josef Albers, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, and Oskar Schlemmer, as well as Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gerrit Rietveld, and many more.
They address the developments in and around the Bauhaus, the methods and focal points of their own teaching, and current projects of students and masters. At the time primarily addressed to the members of the “circle of friends of the bauhaus,” the journal published by Gropius and Moholy-Nagy makes tangible the authentic voice of this mouthpiece of the avant-garde. The facsimile reprint is intended to give new impetus to international discussion and research on the Bauhaus, its theories and designs.
The exact replica of all individual issues are accompanied by a commentary booklet including an overview of the content, an English translation of all texts, and a scholarly essay which places the journal in its historical context.

Painting, Photography, Film

Offered a position at the Weimar Bauhaus in 1923, László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) soon belonged to the inner circle of Bauhaus masters. When the school moved to Dessau, Moholy-Nagy and Walter Gropius began a fruitful collaboration as joint publishers of the Bauhausbücher series.
In addition to designing and editing the Bauhausbücher, Moholy-Nagy produced a title of his own: the legendary Painting, Photography, Film. In this book, Moholy-Nagy’s efforts to have photography and filmmaking recognized as art forms on the same level as painting are propounded and explained at length. The artist makes the case for a radical rethinking of the visual arts and the further development of photographic design to keep pace with a radically changing technological modernity.
Alongside theoretical and technical approaches and forays into the nature of the medium, Moholy-Nagy uses an extensive appendix of illustrations to provide a thorough survey of the numerous possibilities that photography and film could offer—from press photography and scientific imagery to Moholy-Nagy’s own abstract photograms and New Vision photographs.
This English translation of Painting, Photography, Film is based in content and design on the 1925 German first edition, making the latter available to an international readership for the first time. The publication includes a brief scholarly text providing crucial contextual information and reflecting on the history and legacy of Moholy-Nagy’s book.

New Design – Neoplasticism, Nieuwe Beelding

Although Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was not an active member of the Bauhaus, his name is often mentioned in connection with the art school. Mondrian, cofounder of the De Stijl movement in the Netherlands, called for a strict reduction of visual language to orthogonal composition and primary colors, which met with great approval in Bauhaus circles. His rigorous geometric compositions of verticals and horizontals and strident palette of essential colors were important to numerous Bauhaus masters; Mondrian’s influence appeared in Bauhaus architecture, product design, typography, graphic design, painting and beyond.
It is therefore not surprising that Mondrian’s essays on art theory, most of them written for the De Stijl journal, were translated into German and published as number five in the Bauhausbücher series. New Design starts with a philosophical foray into art, which Mondrian describes as a figurative expression of human existence—an expression which will find its natural conclusion in his own concept of a “New Design.” Mondrian then considers the relationship between painting and architecture and dares to take a far-reaching look at the future of Neoplasticism, which he imagines revolutionizing design and architecture around the world.
Harry Holtzman’s renowned translations of Mondrian’s selected essays appear in New Design as a complete compilation for the first time. The publication is true to the content and design of the German first edition of 1925 and includes a brief scholarly commentary.

International Architecture

When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1924, it was finally possible to publish the first of the Bauhausbücher that Walter Gropius (1883–1969) and Làszlò Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) had first conceived of in Weimar. The series was intended to give insight into the teachings of the Bauhaus and the possibilities it offered for incorporating modern design into everyday aspects of an ever-more-modern world.
First in the series was Gropius’ International Architecture, an overview of the modern architecture of the mid-1920s and an early attempt to articulate what would come to be known as International Style architecture. In a brief preface, Gropius summarized the guiding principles he identified uniting the avant-garde around the world. But the real thrust of the book is visual, with an extensive illustrated section showing buildings in Europe and the Americas. According to Gropius, these illustrations show the “development of a consistent worldview” that dispensed with the prior decorative role of architecture and expressed itself in a new language of exactitude, functionality and geometry.
Published for the first time in English, this new edition of the first of the Bauhausbücher is accompanied by a brief scholarly commentary. Presented in a design true to Moholy-Nagy’s original, International Architecture offers readers the opportunity to explore the Bauhaus’ aesthetic and its place in the world as Gropius himself was trying to define them.

Pedagogical Sketchbook

Active at the Bauhaus between 1920 and 1931, teaching in the bookbinding, stained glass and mural-painting workshops, Paul Klee (1879–1940) brought his expressive blend of color and line to the school—and, with the second volume in the Bauhausbücher series, beyond its walls.
In his legendary Pedagogical Sketchbook, Paul Klee takes a theoretical approach to drawing using geometric shapes and lines. Evincing a desire to reunite artistic design and craft, and written in a tone that oscillates between the seeming objectivity of the diagram, the rhetoric of science and mathematics, and an abstract, quasi-mystical intuition, Klee’s text expresses key aspects of the Bauhaus’ pedagogy and guiding philosophies. And while Klee’s method is deeply personal, in the context of the fundamentally multivocal Bauhaus, his individual approach to abstract form is typical in its idiosyncrasy. In this book, he presents his own theory about the relationships between line, shape, surface, and color in the visual space.
In the present volume, the 1953 English translation by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy is combined with the design and physical qualities of the original German edition from 1925.

Pixel, Patch und Pattern – Typeknitting

In Pixel, Patch and Pattern, two worlds collide: the vibrant coolness of digital typography and the decelerating craft of knitting. Rüdiger Schlömer takes you step by step into the world of letter knitting. With sample alphabets, for which he translates fonts from well-known type designers, Schlömer lays the foundation for your typographic expression with needle and thread. Threads become lines and modules grid. Typographic knitting is not a new craft trend, but a graphic approach to a crafting technique that holds in most of us a slumber, from which it just wants to be awakened.

For digital designers, who also want to do something analogue—and knitwear in the spell of letters.
With writings by Andrea Tinnes, Zuzana Licko, Christian Schmalohr, Typotheque, Nouvelle Noire, Fidel Peugeot, Pieter van Rosmalen and many others who have never seen your typedesign so “knit table.”

With tricks and practical tips from more than ten years knitting experience and countless examples by Rüdiger Schlömer and his knitting supporters.

Total Armageddon—A Slanted Reader on Design

Total Armageddon is about design. And culture. And complexity, notably how we, as a global civilization, deal with science fiction, taste, social media, the cities we live in, aesthetics, PowerPoint, burkas, Big Tech, full-contact sports, and other thorny topics. A collection of both essays that are brand new, as well as the very best essays from past issues of Slanted Magazine, written by the most vital and vibrant global voices in writing on design and culture today such as Steven Heller, Piotr Rypson, Gerry Leonidas, Yoon Soo Lee, Kiyonori Muroga, and a host of others.

The book celebrates 15 years of independent publishing and brings together the who is who of authors and essays from 32 issues of Slanted Magazine. With financing this special publication on Kickstarter, we attempted to integrate our audience and followers to be a part of the creative process, a publication for our loyal friends and also new design enthusiasts alike.

Total Armageddon comes with essays by Can Altay, Eran Bacharach, Simon Baker, Emanuel Barbosa, Laure Boer, Gerda Breuer, Dr. Nadine Chahine, Doug Clouse, Olga Drenda, Jori Erdman, Marcus Farr, Kenneth FitzGerald, Charlotte von Fritschen, Amélie Gastaut, Martin Giesen, Jonathan M. Hansen, Steven Heller, Ilka Helmig, Will Hill, Lorena Howard-Sheridan, Natalia Ilyin, Mr. Keedy, Marianna Kellokoski, Matilda Kivelä, Toshiaki Koga, Iwona Kurz, Carolina Laudon, Yoon Soo Lee, Gerry Leonidas, Christine Lhowe, Tim Loffing, Mathieu Lommen, Ian Lynam, Dermot Mac Cormack, Georgios Matthiopoulos, Julia Meer, Silas Munro, Kiyonori Muroga, Randy Nakamura, Alexander Negrelli, Ingo Niermann, Panos Papanagiotou, Natassa Pappa, David Peacock, Louise Rouse, Piotr Rypson, Niki Sioki, Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès, Thierry Somers, Sonja Steppan, Agata Szydłowska, Aleksander Tokarz, Alexander Torell, Angela Voulangas, Rene Wawrzkiewicz, Wolfgang Weingart, and Onur F. Yazıcıgil.

Awarded with DDC Award.

SPEED

SPEED provides an insightful and personal look into the subcultures scenes of of transportation in its various forms and beauty. Photographed by Horst Friedrichs between 1997 and 2018 and in collaboration with Creative Director Lars Harmsen the book showcases two decades of photography on these active groups. The photos are defined by the acute styling and attention to detail that seamlessly transport the reader to a world of cars, motorcycle, scooter, and bicycles.

Auslöser Magazine Issue 1

Auslöser Magazine is a bilingual (German and English) indie print magazine that focuses on the human stories behind the camera. The Auslöser Magazine Issue 1 (available since March 2019) features 4 long-form in-depth interviews with Friedl Kubelka, Yanina Boldyreva, Wolfgang Zurborn and Brian Finke. Also, there is a behind the scenes photo reportage at the famous publishing and print house STEIDL, and in detail a very special camera from the WestLicht camera museum.