Commissioned by the agglomeration of the Pays de Gex, the bermuda curatorial team has taken over two heritage sites: the Fort l’Écluse and Voltaire’s Château. Une Clameur (“A Scream”) brought together around twenty local and international artists whose works range across the breadth of the visual arts, from painting to performance, by way of sculpture, film, photography and audio installations.

Founded in 1974, the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is a leading institution for contemporary art in Switzerland and internationally. Dedicated to exhibition, research, experimentation, and dialogue, the Centre has spent the past fifty years championing emerging and established artists while engaging with the major cultural and social questions of its time.

As the institution enters a new phase marked by the renovation of its exhibition spaces (2025–2029) and its temporary relocation to L’Arcade in central Geneva, a new transitional identity was developed by Spectrodrama and implemented by noncitizen. Conceived to accompany this period of transformation, the visual system operates across exhibitions, off-site programming, publications, signage, and digital platforms.

Designed to reflect the Centre’s evolving presence both within Geneva and beyond, the identity provides a flexible framework that connects physical and digital experiences while supporting a programme that continues to expand across multiple contexts and formats.

SC Walla (Sale Character) is paired with Robert Huber’s RH Euro Ginevra.

Over a period of five years, photography students from the advanced training in photography at the Centre d’enseignement professionnel de Vevey (CEPV) engaged in a parallel exploration with students from the Atelier de la conception de l’espace (ALICE) in the school of architecture at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, forging complementary discourses about image making. Every copy of the book is unique and manually shuffled by the students, presenting pairings of images and text in a different order.

Design thinking has created divisions in the discipline: either designers are too theory driven or simply practitioners. Those feeling lost can easily turn to a language meant to inspire creative production in easy to pitch ways, where rhetoric uses design to keep power at bay, to celebrate hegemonic beliefs which are used to indoctrinate designers in bad education, incapable of imagining different futures. If you take away the post-its, the A3 papers and the markers, can designers think?

Led by Antonio Gramsci’s advice that knowing thyself requires compiling an inventory, design critic, educator and researcher Danah Abdulla pays tribute to the late architect, activist and critic Michael Sorkin, whose original list “Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know” inspired this updated version targeted at designers. The iterative list is not meant to be a definitive how to guide, but to spark conversations, to prompt critical thinking and to help designers reconfigure their discipline.

Published by Onomatopee in 2022 and reprinted by Set Margins’ in 2024 and 2025.

Every year, the canton of Geneva in Switzerland organises a public event called La semaine de la démocratie to celebrate, promote and explain the democratic process. To promote this event, they select an agency to work on the branding of the year event with a theme that is chosen by the organisers, the Chancellery of Geneva.

In 2024, Parson Research was selected as the agency with the theme of ‘cultivating democracy’. The selected design therefore aims to reflect this theme by seeking inspiration in a blend between the Art Nouveau style and a modernist angle. I chose the Huggy typeface as the headline font to reflect a soft and welcoming tone. With it heavy form and curved stroked, it lent itself well to the effects and deformations that the titles required. As a secondary, complimentary typeface, I decided to use Matryo that offered a better legibility for continuous reading and setting out the smaller texts, especially for the event programs. With its wide weight range and narrow proportions, it suited the tight confines that the layout imposed.

Art Handling in Oblivion assembles five art collections that have been stolen during key historical events, either by regimes or organised individuals. Seizure of art is one of most hidden and underestimated objectives of war. Behind conquering campaigns lurk hidden stories of deprived cultural heritage and devastation of the enemy's cultural identity. Some of the discussed collections have been found and restituted, others are still in hostile possession or missing.

The book is published as Volume 1 (#501) of the paperback series fink twice by edition fink, originally presented by Rob van Leijsen as his Master thesis for the Spaces & Communication course at HEAD – Genève in 2012.

Art Handling in Oblivion was awarded as one of the Most Beautiful Swiss Books of the year 2014 and received a honorary appreciation at the Best Book Design from all over the World competition in Leipzig in February 2015.

The research zine Publishing Anecdotes brings together insights and reflections from thirteen practitioners – both individuals and collectives – across the diverse field of artistic and critical publishing. Each contributor was invited to share a short anecdote from their practice, be it a thought, an image, a memory, or anything they felt relevant.

Contributors include Björn Giesecke, Peter Schmidt (Books People Places), Simon Wahlers (Edition Zweifel), Samuel Bänziger, Rosario Florio, Olivier Hug and Larissa Kasper (Jungle Books), Sabrina Fernández Casas & Patricio Gil Flood (Macaco Press), Paul Soulellis (founder of Queer.Archive.Work), Lauria Joan (Pseudopress), Vida Rucli (Robida), Roland Früh, Eléa Rochat, Léa Gallon, Julien Guazzini, Vincent Chanson, Pablo Arnaud, and Camilla Brenni (Sans Soleil), Freek Lomme (Set Margins’), Jonas von Lenthe (Wirklichkeit Books), and Mio Kojima (Futuress).

The publication was initiated, edited, designed, and published by Roman A. Karrer in August 2024 and marked the end of his research residency at ABA Berlin.

It It has 48 pages measuring 138×190 mm and was Riso-printed by Drucken3000 (Alexander Branczyk & Florian Haberstumpf) in an edition of 100 copies, using Medium Blue and Silver Metallic inks on Clairefontaine Tropheé Rose 80g/m² and Metapaper Rough Warmwhite 90g/m².

Special thanks to: Pro Helvetia, ABA Berlin, Emma Affoua Kouassi

The Sahaja Yoga website from Switzerland uses Reforma 2018 (PampaType) for titles, phrases and all main texts, plus Renner* a.k.a. Jost* (indestructible type*, 1997, based on Futura by Paul Renner, 1927) for secondary texts.

In a Baroque church in the canton of Jura, the artistic duo Boudry/Lorenz has created a rollercoaster that also serves as a sound piece voiced by Colin Self.

The visual communication gives a feeling of psychedelia in reference to the sculpture. The geometry of the kaleidoscope could be a nod to the structure of the luna park ride, or the echo of Self’s lament in the space.

Making full use of the variable capacities of Purple Haze, the design uses several weights and instances overlaid on top of each other, and printed in a restricted set of spot colours, creating additional tones as a result of the transparency of the inks. The supporting typeface is an early version of Display Grotesk, designed by Chi-Long Trieu and set to be released with Dinamo.

When things go down, hopefully they go up straight after.

All-caps Flash for the poster signed by D. Wust-Calame, printing: Imprimerie du «Journal de Genève»

Drawing is a common practice in the field of botany to visually describe a plant. Allowing interpretation, even cheating, a drawer dare said, scientific illustration has didactical advantages over photography. From 1960, when Charles Baehni was director of the institution, and during more than 30 years, the Botanical Garden of Geneva in Switzerland employed a dedicated team of women for the task. Their names appear vertically, often along the stem of each illustrated plant: Line Guibentif, Saskia Pernin-Wikström, Suzanne Van Hove, Danielle Wüst-Calame.

Housed by the lake, on the first floor of the historical building called La Console, the “atelier de dessin et décoration” comprised a complementary team dedicated to decoration (advertising or graphic design nowadays).

The series of posters entitled “Tulipes” announces most likely outdoor “exhibitions” of the tulip flower in bold colours with various typefaces leading to a striking effect. Showcased below, these posters symbolise the porosity of practices, the warmth as well as importance of drawing by hand, from that era.

To conclude, when I was conducting my research for proper dates and names, working in this very institution as an in-house typographer, I spotted this remark in one article by Line Guibentif from 1984: “Made with simplicity and economy of means botanical illustration should be as easy to read as clearly typeset text.” (translated from French by the author).

Acknowledgments: Samuel Anderegg, Pierre Boillat, Patrick Bungener, Martin Callmander, Sylvie Dunant, Mona Mahmoudian, Raoul Palese, Nathalie Rasolofo, Rodolphe Spichiger, Gisèle Visinand

Letraset’s Desdemona for a poster signed “SaskiaW”. Note that the 9 is an upside-down 6.

All-lowercase Baskerville Old Face

All-lowercase Monotype Grotesque and Helvetica for a poster signed “Line G.”, printing: Imprimerie du Journal de Genève

Hand-rendered (?) Cooper Black with non-standard forms for U (inspired by ITC Souvenir?) and P. “Rocailles” is shown in an unidentified wide slab serif. Volta fett with a trimmed R leg and unbracketed serifs would come close [see also the comments]. This poster is signed “SaskiaW” and was printed by imprimeries populaires. Smaller text is in Helvetica.

Zipper and Helvetica for a poster signed “SaskiaW”, printing: Imprimerie du «Journal de Genève»

Artistik for a poster signed “D. Wust-Calame”, printing: Imprimerie du Journal de Genève

More Helvetica, including stacked glyphs for the months for a poster signed “D. Calame”, printing: Blanc-Wittwer SA (not part of the Tulipes series, provided here as a bonus for the eyes)

Solo Mute Pan is a collaborative exhibition project that brings together for the first time Olga Kokcharova and Laurent Güdel, two sound artists whose common ground is their work with listening and sound spatialization. Using various recording and amplification techniques, Olga and Laurent auscultated the Kunsthaus building during the hot summer 2022. Their respective approaches consider phonography (the writing of sound through microphones) not only as a documentation process, but also as a performative and musical act. The project is published by activeRat.

Designed by Vincent Devaud, the cassette cover art features exclusively Artex, designed by Valentin Brustaux and released by Optimo.

[More info on Discogs]

Published following Rosemarie Castoro’s exhibition at MAMCO, this monograph contains new texts, archival documents, and numerous exhibition views, making it the most comprehensive book on the artist to date. Published by MAMCO and JRP|Editions.

From JRP|Editions:

This monograph on Rosemarie Castoro (1939–2015) spans the New York-based artist’s entire practice. She called herself a “paintersculptor,” and is known for her singular take on the modernist narratives of Minimal and Conceptual art. In her SoHo loft—where artists such as Lawrence Weiner, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Carl Andre, and Yvonne Rainer met—she developed a willfully complex practice, emphasizing the analytical and inter-personal, and favoring transgression and metamorphosis over orthodoxy and linear progression. She was a central figure of the New York scene of the 1960s and 1970s, participating in numerous landmark exhibitions, and appearing in several of Rainer’s performances.

Designed by Gavillet & Cie, the book uses François Rappo’s Tiny Gothic.

From WRWTFWW Records:

Music For A Cosmic Garden is a collaborative album by Japanese ambient/environmental legend Takashi Kokubo (Ion Series) and Italian & Swiss trombonist Andrea Esperti (Esperti Project).

Recorded during the heights of the pandemic and completed in February 2021, the splendid ethereal soundscape created by Kokubo and Esperti is available in limited double LP, digipack CD, as well as digital.

For fans of environmental, ambient, cosmic escapes, the works of Midori Takada, Hiroshi Yoshimura, and Satoshi Ashikawa, meditative atmospherics, and gardening in space.

Cover design by Nicolas Eigenheer featuring Void by Malte Bentzen, released by Optimo.
Art cover drawing by Martial Derry.

Second cover page of the 2023 Sustainability Report from MSC Cruises

The cruise company MSC Cruises was founded in Naples in 1988 following the merger of the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) with the shipping company Lauro Lines. Starting out as a family business, it developed into a leading provider of cruises over the following decades. Today, the Geneva-based MSC Cruises is the third largest cruise brand in the world and is known for its luxurious ships, Mediterranean hospitality and exclusive travel experiences.

The brand agency Magic Pencil, commissioned to completely revamp the MSC Cruises brand, takes a modern design approach: “With our unique Brand User Experience strategy, we seamlessly combine the customer experience with sustainability goals. In this way, we ensure that a brand continues to develop in a targeted manner and remains at the forefront in an ever-changing world.”

The team led by Blaise Jeanneret, Vincent Gosset and Patrick Graf were responsible for the digital brand design–from brand colors to text styles. “A crucial aspect of our design approach is the careful selection of the font,” emphasizes Patrick Graf. The choice fell on the Pangea family: Light, Regular and SemiBold for the global website and Pangea Light, Regular, SemiBold, SemiBold Italic and Bold for the printed matter.

Advertising brochure MSC World Cruise January/May 2025, pages 2–3

Excerpts from MSC Cruises’ 34-page sustainability report, set in various weights from the Pangea family

Pangea is also used in MSC Cruises apps. (Advertising brochure MSC World America 2025/2026, page 34)

Post Tenebras Lux. Les vitraux du Musée Ariana is an exhibition at the Musée Ariana, the Museum of Ceramics and Glass in Geneva. The exhibition’s visual communication was developed by the Geneva-based studio Giganto, and the scenography was created in collaboration between Giganto and Narrative.

Hublot’s Big Bang Book is a 126-page chrome monolith, conceived as a spatial object, retracing 20 years of innovation, know-how and vision for this high-end watch collection.

The famous Swiss manufacturer of high-end watches Hublot (LVMH Group) chose Agence LaPetiteGrosse to produce the book celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its iconic Big Bang model, to be revealed at Watches and Wonders Geneva 2025.

It offers an exciting immersion into the brand, beyond the watches, through a history of visions, passion and know-how. Our challenge was to transcribe all this journey into an exceptional publication. Our basis was a common thread running through the history of the Big Bang, the Lab Tech visual universe.

We opted for strong, assertive typefaces: Euclid Mono by Swiss Typefaces and Gotham by Hoefler & Co., accompanied by MVB Sacre Bleu. The layflat binding allowed the creation of a full chrome block by Nava Press. Four stacked copies equal a perfect cube.

Art direction by Pauline Pierre & Jefferson Paganel.

From Supero:

The Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA) is the leading professional association for specialists in construction, technology and the environment. Represented by 18 cantonal sections and one international section, the SIA has 16,000 members active in the fields of architecture, landscape and engineering. Its mission is to defend and promote Swiss building culture at the professional, political, social, economic, environmental, cultural and educational levels.

An early version of TWK Everett by Nolan Paparelli used for the SIA Geneva's 2021 activity report and 2022 greetings card, designed by Supero.

Photo by Hélène Maria

Footnotes issue E front cover

Footnotes is a type design periodical published biennially by La Police. The fifth issue opens with an article by Florian Hardwig on Permanent drawn by Karlgeorg Hoefer, a seemingly-forgotten German Grotesk that designers worldwide have studied-by-drawing off-grid.

Thanks to Sébastien Morlighem, we're now well aware that Pierre-Louis Vafflard cut types for the Didot dynasty, beautiful ones.

The third essay, from the One-off series – contextual type projects from graphic designers – sheds some light on the Belgian figure of Fernand Baudin through a digital re-enactment of his many (hand)writings by Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé.

The last contribution overlaps theory with practise, past with present. A designer’s journey, from the educational binder of Swiss teacher Walter Käch full of lessons to digital redrawings of his template letterforms by Dinamo and Omnigroup (ABC Walter Neue and ABC Walter Alte).

To conclude, the traditional last page entitled Proofs showcases in-progress typefaces from the contributors: Mercator (Laurenz Brunner), Zero, Ninety, Linus (Charles Mazé), LP Jung, Olympia Manuscript No. 4 (Mathieu Christe), Walter Compressed, Slab, Mono (Dinamo, Omnigroup), and Didot Vafflard and Vafflard (Dávid Molnár).

As with every issue, each article is typeset with the related typeface(s), some in-progress and unreleased. The generous iconography also tries to pleasantly surprise the reader with unpublished material.

Footnotes issue E: article 19

Footnotes issue E: article 19: This spread showcases six digital versions of Permanent drawn by (from left to right): Laurenz Brunner, Fabian Harb, Mathieu Christe, Lorenzo Mason, Connor Davenport, Alberto Malossi.

Footnotes issue E: article 20

Footnotes issue E: article 21

Footnotes issue E: article 22

Footnotes issue E: Proofs: On the left a real offset printing testing space to the authors and previously unseen designs to the readers. On the right, the index to navigate the dense content.

Foootnotes issue D front cover

Footnotes is a type design periodical published biennially by La Police. The fourth issue opens with an article on Telefont and the last Dutch telephone book along with all the methodology behind it by Martin Majoor. Sourced from the author’s archive (edition February 1996), an original sample was inserted manually by the editor into each copy.

The second essay dives into Ikarus, a digital tool that describes letterforms, studied in-depth at the University of Reading and beyond by Ferdinand P. Ulrich.

Then, from the One-off series – contextual type projects from graphic designers – Joost Grootens tells us about the genesis of the myriad of symbols that makes Ceremony, one book design at a time.

In the fourth and last text, Pierre-Pané Farré explores the material qualities of 19th century stereotyped poster type.

To conclude, the usual last page entitled "Proofs" showcases in-progress typefaces from the contributors: Film, Exécutif Moderne, HB Items, Waggis, and BALI.

As with every issue, each article is typeset with the related typeface(s), some in-progress and unreleased, including Reform-Grotesk FSL, Breite fette Information, LL Unica77, Demos Next, and LP Jung. The rich iconography also tries to pleasantly surprise the reader with unpublished material.

Worth noting, this issue marks the beginning of articles from out-of-print issues being published online under "Stories" on La Police.

Footnotes issue D: article 15

Footnotes issue D: article 15. Sourced from Martin Majoor’s archive, an original sample was inserted manually by the editor into each copy.

Footnotes issue D: article 16

Footnotes issue D: article 17

Footnotes issue D: article 18

Footnotes issue D: Proofs. On the left a real offset printing testing space to the authors and previously unseen designs to the readers. On the right, the index to navigate the dense content.

2wBOX with silkcreened letters in yellow along with a stamped Y, inside “Cut Up, Random Fragments 1977–1979” by Charles Burns, published in 2012 (2[w] collection, 2wBOX Set Y)

In 1996, two colleagues in Geneva published a fanzine entitled Sûre, one as the author, the other as the publisher. The simply produced comic, a silkscreened cover with xeroxed inside pages, was a success. It sold out prior to the launch party. The team shook hands and parted ways.

A year later, the “dummy” publisher took the opportunity of his visual communication diploma to turn the one-off experience into a fully functional publishing house under the imprint B.ü.L.b comix. Following a thorough economical study of the illustration & comic branch, a pragmatic approach to resources, thus financial means, developed under the influence of hardcore music and DIY (do-it-yourself) spirit. The DIN ISO 216 norm (series A paper formats) and constraints had to be embraced and collections defined systematically, from very small to big: 2[w], 25[w], 40[w], and X[w]. Using a photocopier, five 2[w] mini-comics could be printed on an A3 sheet of paper, 8 pages of a 25[w] book on A4 or 4 pages of a 40[w]. To welcome special editorial projects, such as a skateboard deck, the format of the X[w] was free, or not defined. For bigger-yet-reasonable print runs – allowing covers to stick to silkscreen – offset printing was used.

A light bulb being part of the logotype, watts [w] that usually define the power of light, symbolise sizes in this editorial context. On a historical note, Post tenebras lux is the motto of the city of Geneva in Switzerland.

Typographically speaking, the logotype is also a system. Made of boxes, the two parts can be stacked or horizontally tucked when space is limited, typically on the spine of books. The main typeface used logically from cover to colophon is DIN 1451 Engschrift. Just one weight, no italic. Often the elongated letters were hand-redrawn to give it a craft and lively feeling in tune with the surrounding drawings.

Strangely enough and Gutenberg knows why, Erbar Condensed appears here and there as ISBN and books' reference numbers. Other fonts were featured such as Bryant, FIG Script, Lingua by Eric Olson and released by Process Type Foundry, as well as Nanoscopics Alphabet (turned 3D) by designer Matius Gerardo Grieck, published by T-26. These typefaces are not shown in this post.

Inside the books, illustrators and comic artists, when using words simply drew the letters, ultimately fitting well as a cohesive whole. Worth noting, in 1999 Henning Wagenbreth from Berlin (home of FontFont and -Shop) used one of his digital typefaces, FF Prater Sans, for his 2[w] mini-comic leporello among the 2wBOX Set D.

Over the years B.ü.L.b comix has published 157 books with contributions from 122 authors from 22 countries, often printed in-town, if not, always locally to support the trade.

“Ma rue” by Henning Wagenbreth, published in 1999 (2[w] collection, 2wBOX Set D)

“Invaçion del mar” by Christophe Lambert, published in 1998 (25[w] collection)

“King-Cat collection” by John Porcellino, published in 1998 (40[w] collection)

“catalogue B.ü.L.b comix 1996–2011”, published in 2010 (goodies)

“La librairie furtive de la constellation CX BB LP” poster by Nicolas Robel, Thomas Perrodin, Mathieu Christe, published in 2023 (posters)