Security Guarantees is the title of the Pavilion of Ukraine at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

The Ukrainian Pavilion addresses the unfulfilled security assurances provided to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum (1994) in exchange for relinquishing its nuclear arsenal. The project reflects on the fragility of peace and the resilience of the Ukrainian people.

At its centre is Zhanna Kadyrova’s The Origami Deer. Installed in 2019 in Yuvileynyi Park, Pokrovsk, on the site of a dismantled Soviet Su-7 aircraft, the sculpture was realized with executive and technical support from Denys Ruban. Rooted in the tradition of park sculpture, it reinterprets this legacy through a contemporary form.

This exhibition was curated by Ksenia Malykh and Leonid Marushchak, with architecture by Oleksandr Burlaka, and technical direction by Denys Ruban.

The visual identity was designed by Ostap Yashchuk with the typefaces KTF Roman (Kyiv Type Foundry) and Periodica (Mint Type). The website was designed and developed by Dmytro Prutkin and Oleksii Nasirov using Times New Roman.

Terzo Tempo is my Master’s thesis made at Università Iuav di Venezia under the supervision of Luciano Perondi and Fiorella Bulegato. It examines the evolution of typographic design applied to football jerseys. Through historical research, the project shows how jerseys have become culturally and economically significant. The focus is on the development of jersey numbers, which have transformed from purely functional elements into meaningful symbols of identity.

Typography shapes how numbers (and the players who wear them) are perceived, influencing a team’s image. To explore this, sixteen typeface families were developed: some reinterpret existing football fonts, while others were created from scratch to test their appropriateness and public perception in kit design.

This is a fine art catalog on the works of Marina Apollonio, one of the most representative artists of international optical and kinetic art. It was published by Marsilio Arte on the occasion of the retrospective of the same name: Marina Apollonio. Beyond the Circle, shown at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, curated by art historian Marianna Gelussi.

All titles and opening pages of the book were set in Octothorpe (Iván Moreno, PampaType), the ideal visual complement for the occasion given its sense of optical exploration and generative art possibilities. The text typeface is LL Circular (Laurenz Brunner, Lineto).

Elisa Gyssels developed the visual identity for Connessioni estetiche (Aesthetic Connections), a collective exhibition at Sala San Leonardo in Venice, Italy. This included the design of the identity system, posters, flyers, and wayfinding.

The main challenge was to promote the exhibition without featuring any individual artwork, given the show’s collective format. The identity is built around abstract calligraphic strokes and typographic compositions in Redaction. The color palette draws inspiration from the muted tones of the Venetian Lagoon.

The Shape of What Remains is an exhibition project presented by Aea: Culture Initiative at the Venice Design Biennial. The exhibition takes its title from American writer Lisa C. Taylor’s novel about the slow return to life after tragic loss. It consists of six compartments shaped by the lived experiences of émigré women – all of whom, for various reasons, had to leave their homes and are processing this loss through creative practice.

Silvia reconstructs an old house. Lisa collects antique objects once broken and repairs them. Professional painters Kimia and Alisa improvise music in a makeshift studio. Nanka cultivates a garden on uncertain ground. Olena discovers her grandmother’s tapestry, abandoned midway.
Sarah, in a foreign city, walks its hills, studying vanishing native flora.

Spectral by Production Type is in charge of the exhibition’s typography (including the exhibition booklet that the visitors have to bind by themselves, while the name of the art show is set in a slightly modified version of TXT Long Hand by Illustration Ink.

The exhibition booklet was left unbound so that visitors could pick the stories they wanted to take home and bind the booklet themselves in the exhibition space (all binding materials were provided).

Julien Creuzet represented France at the 60th Venice Biennale, held from April 20 to November 24, 2024. His catalog carries a title that stretches like a great wave: Attila cataracte ta source aux pieds des pitons verts finira dans la grande mer gouffre bleu.

The 368-page volume, designed by Alliage and WIP Office, centers on a constellation of collages and seventy text fragments from authors of the African diaspora. White is replaced with silver ink that catches light like reflections on water, while the black layer is removed so that darkness itself shines and the images vibrate in unexpected colors.

Set in AL Sigla Neretta and Neretta Corsiva, typefaces designed by Alex Lescieux as a revival of Umberto Fenocchio’s FTC Sigla, an Italian version of Times, the catalog emphasizes Creuzet’s shifting, diasporic poetics. Like its title, it moves and resonates, highlighting diasporic histories and decolonial stakes, where poetry, collage, and voice converge in a tide that resists erasure.

Nieuwe Instituut presents SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness, the Dutch contribution to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia, developed in collaboration with curator Amanda Pinatih and social designer Gabriel Fontana. Hosted at the Rietveld Pavilion in the Giardini in Venice, the project reimagines the sports bar to question how architecture shapes social dynamics.

The museum describes the projects as follows:

How can architecture resist exclusionary social norms? How can we create spaces that nurture new ways of coexisting? SIDELINED explores these questions by presenting an alternative sports bar, continuing designer Gabriel Fontana’s investigation into social dynamics in through the lens of sport. By subverting traditional norms and suggesting deviations, the Dutch Pavilion strives to change the rules of the game.

Sport, as both a reflection and producer of societal conventions, shapes group identities and can often be divisive, polarising and exclusionary. Fontana challenges these structures by understanding sport as an architectural system—one that regulates spaces, bodies, and behaviour—opening the playing field to inclusivity, empathy, and solidarity.

In collaboration with designer Koos Breen, artist Jeannette Slütter, curator Amanda Pinatih, and including works by a range of artists, researchers, and others, SIDELINED shows how built spaces can be hostile or welcoming, encouraging new ways of thinking about bodies, spaces, and identities.

Responding to the Biennale’s theme of Intelligens, the pavilion stages encounters that disrupt the norms of sport and its architecture, inviting visitors to engage through play and observation. The font used for the pavilion is WT Skrappa by Jacob Wise.

Who Are We Cheering For? is the sports newspaper accompanying the exhibition.
The newspaper was developed by Gabriel Fontana and Amanda Pinatih, edited by Maia Kenney and produced with the help of Frank Verkade and Charly Blödel. It was designed by Doğa Gönüllü, using the typefaces Feraz by Giulia Boggio and Literata by Irene Vlachou, Veronika Burian, Vera Evstafieva and José Scaglione.

French graphic designer Léo Grunstein uses BVH Anto Plot to compose the catalog for the French Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Description of the project by the publisher Flammarion:

This book explores architecture’s ability to meet the challenges of climate change, conflict, and instability in the world. How can we continue to live on this planet while inventing new ways of life in the face of these challenges?
Living with the Existing, the Immediate, the Broken, Vulnerabilities, Nature, Combined Intelligences.

The catalog features contributions by Pascal Amphoux, Marie-Ange Brayer, Matthieu Duperrex, Michel Lussault, Gregory Quenet, Magali Reghezza-Zitt, Isabelle Thomas, Chris Younès and Anna Yudina.

A noi della partita non ce ne frega un cazzo (“We don’t give a damn about the game”) is a research-based editorial project developed as a final thesis for the Graphic Design course at IED Milan in 2021.

The book investigates the Italian Ultras movement from the 1960s to the 1980s, analyzing its origins, evolution, and visual language. It is divided into two sections.

The first part presents six key Ultras groups through historical accounts and visual analysis of their emblems, mottos, and iconography. Each chapter contextualizes these symbols within their local, cultural, and sometimes political environments, highlighting how they served as tools of identity and distinction both within and across stadiums.

The second section, titled Grammatica Ultras, explores the scenographic and performative practices of the movement, such as choreographed banners, smoke displays, and massive visual compositions that transformed stadiums into stages of collective expression. This part reveals how Ultras developed a unique aesthetic grammar that evolved alongside shifts in media, technology, and generational codes.

Through extensive archival references, interviews, and critical commentary, the book portrays the Ultras not merely as sports fans, but as a subcultural force with its own symbols, rituals, and resistance to commercialization and mainstream assimilation.

Book design and research by Giorgio Craparo, with editing by Mattia Salvia. The book was
printed by PressPoint, Milan, using CMYK plus white ink, on Fedrigoni Ispira Rosso Passione 290 g/m² and Artic Paper Munken Print White 90 g/m². The publication is in Italian, has 40 pages measuring 21×29.7 cm, and is perfect bound.

Visuals for the Pavilion of the Republic of Slovenia at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Sculpture and a piece of architecture, with the strange nomadic structure serves both as a paradigmatic foreigner, oddly out of place in the historic cityscape of Venice. From MG+MSUM:

At the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Slovenia is presenting Garden Secret for You, a project by the conceptual artist Nika Špan, curated by Vladimir Vidmar. This is the first time that the Slovenian pavilion has taken the form of a project in public space, thus addressing two underlying preoccupations: the lack of a permanent national pavilion and the title theme of the Biennale exhibition – Foreigners Everywhere. Both a sculpture and a piece of architecture, the strange nomadic structure thus serves both as a country’s pavilion and as a paradigmatic foreigner, oddly out of place in the historic cityscape of Venice.

Visuals are designed with Spektra Tekst, by Dotless Type. Spektra Tekst is a youthful offspring of Type Salon’s Spektra. Designed in five weights for both Latin and Cyrillic scripts, Spektra Tekst offers versatility and adaptability to various design needs.

Niger et Albus is the official catalogue of the Venice Biennale Theatre 2024, designed by Tomo Tomo Studio. A book that goes from black to white, crossed by silver. Cross-cut by alchemical fascinations and the universe of combinatorial play. A voyage of discovery and deconstruction that interprets the pivotal theme of this fifty-second International Theatre Festival, a labyrinthine and fragmentary journey but also one of discovery and ascent, from black to white.

Composed entirely in Union, with widespread use of all caps to allow the typographic composition to draw a page grid as regular as possible, so as to integrate with the basic grid pattern made up of all the squares that from time to time appear or disappear on the page. Printed in three colors on normal, black, and transparent paper.

Edited by Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte. Editorial co-ordination by Flavia Fossa Margutti. Published by La Biennale di Venezia.

Raccogliere magazine focusses on the Venetian intertidal zone and community through the lens of a more-than-human actor and plant called salicornia. It grows in the fragile salty marshlands known by the locals as the barene. There, the salt-loving plant solidifies the soil beneath with its intricate red roots and thereby creates the conditions for itself and other plants to thrive.

Over the last decades salicornia has become an indicator for the manifold challenges present within the lagoon. Spotted by local farmers on their land, the plant indicates the rising levels of salinisation and thus the loss of agricultural land due to global warming. Recent years saw the plant growing even further up the sweet-water river Po, which is alarming to ecologists and climate scientists alike. Some say that Venice could be regarded as the forefront of global warming today, as flooding and salinisation threaten the ecosystem and livelihoods of many.

Both UNESCO’s protection of the marshlands as well as the MOSE construction have affected the fragile intertidal zone even further. While the former may unwittingly contribute to the loss of marshlands since privately managed sites are kept up better, the latter has been met with scepticism as it failed to protect Venice from flooding meaningfully, whilst having been a rather extensive financial investment in a city that struggles financially (see Alberto Barausse’s interview). The challenge of mass tourism and cruise ships have had further impacts on the local community, leading many to leave the city due to lack of housing.

The list may go on yet bearing this in mind, we wondered on how these different agendas in this fragile ecosystem might be mediated, if at all? What might be actions of regeneration that local Venetians may consider or already practice? We talked to scientists, NGOs, chefs, artists and designers about combating these challenges and their individual long-term efforts and responses in the face of global warming. The magazine features these conversations and their respective projects, all of which promotes resilience and regenerative actions. Not at last they suggest a different vision and understanding of Venice and its crucial ecosystem.

The design of the zine takes visual cues and references from the Venetian lagoon landscape and it is printed on RISOgraph (rice-based inks) with three colours on recycled offset paper. The typography combines Rainer with Lacrima’s Serif and Senza styles. Body copy is set in Lacrima and ABC Whyte. Printed in Germany with Herr & Frau Rio.

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Raccogliere magazine was designed and edited by Sigrid Schmeisser. This originally emerged out of a bigger project (Project Raccogliere) conceived with design duo Daniel Garber and Amalia Magril.

The limited magazine is sold through independent bookshops and by Sigrid Schmeisser. The core of the magazine which is to map and featuring resistance practices and regenerative projects (BluePages) continues online.

The book Storie Spaziali per Maschi del Futuro is a collection of 12 fairy tales written by Francesca Cavallo and illustrated by Luis San Vicente. The book design by Francesca Zucchi features Marcus from MA-MA Type in combination with GT Sectra by Grilli Type.

From Amazon:

The 12 fairy tales take place on 12 imaginary planets. Each one deals with the formation of male identity: from the relationship with the father figure to the management of power imbalances, from the recognition of emotions beyond anger to the courageous exploration of one's own identity, from the discovery of a romance that does not require heroes to the importance of knowing how to take a step back and repair what has been broken, inside and outside of oneself.

Desire Lines is a collateral pavilion of the Venice Art Biennale 2024. The project brings together three independent European cultural institutions: Proforma (UK), Begehungen (DE), and PASE (IT). Their goal is to build connections between artists from the European scene through residencies, exhibitions, performances, and other events. This edition features the work of artists such as Edgar Leciejewski, Margret Hoppe, Max Magaldi, Pierpaolo Ovarini, and Omari Taylor.

The visual identity is initially built around the concept of an apparent grid – both evolving and flexible – that serves as a foundational structure. It evokes the idea of a modifiable playground, a dynamic visual framework reflecting the diversity of creative approaches and perspectives of the invited artists. The logotype block unites the three entities, reinforcing the idea of connection and links, symbolized by a line that takes shape, illustrating the various possible paths. Each line becomes a guiding thread, a metaphor for the exchanges and connections woven between the different cultural actors and the spaces they occupy.

Leonardo De Marchi, a designer based between Berlin and Venice, released the publication The Sprout and Other Stories. This project was developed over the last few years and features visual material and texts written under De Marchi’s alias “Jester U.” (or Jester Umbra). The book, published by Bloom Fase, was launched on May 4th, 2024 at Spaxio X. The layout was set in Eurostile Bold Extended and HAL Timezone, published by HAL Typefaces. Bookshots by Giovanni De Marchi.

Words by Leonardo:

Possible worlds that introduce filtering destinies: portals to an everyday life that flows, changes and returns. Characters and atmospheres out of synchrony with the normal flow of time. An agglomerate of impressions, figures and scenes, collected during movement in space and mind-freeing attempts.

The covers and the various slanted pages

The two publications were born within a collaboration between Iuav of Venice and the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and were developed in the Communication 2 laboratory held by Professor Luciano Perondi, assisted by Bruno Calza.

The aim is to tell the story of the data on PNRR and PINQuA in an innovative way, with the only constraint being the omega-point bound A4 format.

The first book gives an overview starting with the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) at the European level and then focusing on the Italian situation. This track ends with an introductory sentence to PINQuA (National Innovative Program for Housing Quality). The second book, on the other hand, provides a general overview of PINQuA, with a specific focus on Mission 5 of the program.

The graphics in the book were created with a program created through P5.js, which repeats letters and changes their size based on the gray value of a previously uploaded image.

To further bring out this need for a change of perspective and to mark the fact that things change if people want them to, each page, in fact, undergoes a rotation of 11.25° from the previous one, leading the book to make a complete rotation of 180° as a whole, an aid in this is provided by the “handles”, visual cues that suggest how to position the hands to support the book while reading. This solution not only facilitates the enjoyment of the printed material, but also adds an interactive and functional element to the design.

Some internal pages

Inner page (rotated position for reading)

Inner page (starboard)

Posters

Video with all the pages

July Type’s typeface JT Picolo is used for both Latin and Cyrillic text throughout the exhibition Repeat after Me II by Open Group in the Polish Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale. The exhibition, curated by Marta Czyż, runs until 24 November 2024.

Repeat after Me II is an audiovisual video installation created by the Ukrainian collective Open Group (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga). Their work is a collective portrait of witnesses of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The videos presented were created in 2022 and 2024. All the protagonists are civilian refugees speaking of the war through the sounds of weapons they remember, then inviting the audience to repeat after them.

The graphic design of the show was handled by Full Metal Jacket Studio.

Pictures by Jacopo Salvi, Ewa Mielczarek and Janek Bersz

Holise is the brand typeface of Studio Rio, is a creative studio based in Venice, Italy, and New York, United States, and led by Clelia Cadamuro and Ella Fitch. The studio focuses on visual content creation and event production.

Fountain of Exhaustion. Acqua Alta is the title of Ukraine’s contribution to the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. From the website of artist Pavlo Makov:

The Pavilion exhibits the works of Pavlo Makov, whose artistic practices in the early 1990s focused on exploring the parallels between the human body and urban space and have since then largely shifted to elaborating the theme of “the world without us”. The artwork Fountain of Exhaustion is a serene and reflective project, which serves as a conscious extension of the original story of Fountain of Exhaustion (at once providing for the particularities of the exhibition location) and comes as a natural response to the theme Milk of Dreams.

Commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, the Pavilion was curated by co-founders of The Naked Room, Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko, and chief editor of IST Publishing, Borys Filonenko. The visual identity was designed by Ukrainian studio 3Z, using Aeroport Mono by Brownfox and SangBleu Versailles by Swiss Typefaces.

IST Publishing on the catalog:

The 2022 Arsenale di Venezia exhibition is the first time Fountain of Exhaustion has ever been displayed as a fully-functional art object with a steady water supply, even though its original conception dates back to 1995 and was initially occasioned by a local context of Kharkiv, a large city in the east of Ukraine. The book features a comprehensive chronological account of the Fountain’s development in the years 1995–2022 as well as a careful selection of archive materials, illustrating the work’s evolution over the last 25 years.

It also provides additional textual commentary by various authors, exploring Makov’s artistic practices and the spatio-temporal connotations of Fountain of Exhaustion as an art object all the while reflecting on water, rivers, and channels, overflow and desolation, personally landscapes and the pressing global issues of the day.

Antarctic Resolution is a 1,000 page study of Antarctica’s architectural, historical, ecological and climatic peculiarities. The book is the basis of an installation of the same name at the 17th Venice Biennale of Architecture which is shown in this video, explained by the book’s author/editor and the exhibiton’s curator, architect Giulia Foscari.

According to Lars Müller Publishers’ release notes:

Accounting for approximately 10 % of the land mass of Planet Earth, the Antarctic is a Global Commons we collectively neglect. Far from being a pristine natural landscape, the continent is a contested territory which conceals resources that might prove irresistible in a world with an ever-increasing population. The 26 quadrillion tons of ice accumulated on its bedrock, equivalent to around 70 % of the fresh water on our planet, represent the most significant repository of scientific data available. It provides crucial information for future environmental policies, and, at the same time, is the greatest possible menace to global coastal settlements when sea levels rise because of global warming.

On the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica, Antarctic Resolution offers a high-resolution image of this hyper-surveilled yet neglected continent. In contrast to the fragmented view offered by Big Data companies, the book is a holistic study of the continent’s unique geography, unparalleled scientific potential, contemporary geopolitical significance, experimental governance system, and extreme inhabitation model. A transnational network of multidisciplinary polar experts – represented in the form of authored texts, photographic essays, and data-based visual portfolios – reveals the intricate web of growing economic and strategic interests, tensions, and international rivalries, which are normally enveloped in darkness, as is the continent for six months of the year.

The book was designed by Giulia Foscari/UNLESS with Integral Lars Müller using Everett by Nolan Paparelli and Hariett by Jackson Cavanaugh.

Editorial assistant: Federica Zambeletti
Printing: Grafiche Antiga, Italy
20×26.4 cm, 1,000 pages
ISBN 978-3-03778-640-6

“Antarctic Resolution” exhibition view at the 17th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2021.