Speculative Enquiries: Aesthetic, Ethical, and Epistemic Technologies is a 2023 conference theme and research focus from the European Culture and Technology Lab+ (ECT Lab+), that explores how speculative design, AI, and the arts can reshape future technologies.

The posters are animated and visualize speculative versions of the title across different times and places.

Paper Trails: Publishing Methods as Connective Tissue was a featured exhibition and event from artist Loizos Olympios at Tapper during the Limassol Art Walks in October 2023. The exhibit explored publishing as a medium, part of the city-wide, multi-venue arts event featuring artist-run spaces and performances.

Wazdan is one of the top global developers of online casino games. The award-winning company is a leader in the industry, employing over 200 specialists and engineers, and releasing more than 40 titles annually for over 1,500 partners worldwide.

Instead of relying on typical playful casino tropes, we decided to focus heavily on B2B communication and the Wazdan’s technical specialisation. This approach allowed us to enhance the company’s expert image and boost its legitimacy. Additionally, we introduced the tagline ‘Online Gaining’, which encapsulates the key messaging of the industry, setting the client’s competitors far behind in terms of the quality of marketing communication.

To introduce a rebrand that authentically represents the client, we first needed to understand them. We built a strong partnership and became part of the Wazdan family. This relationship allowed us to grasp the nuances of how the company operates and what its priorities are. The visual identity focused mainly on specialisation, games, playfulness, and technology. The logo was refined from its previous version, where the triangles were separate. We merged them to symbolise the unity of Wazdan’s team. The verbal identity centred on presenting unique strengths, attitudes, and values. While the key messaging focuses on gains, the company adopts a non-cynical approach, valuing both business partners and players.

Work on visual and verbal architecture involved over 1.5 years of analysis and refinement. The iGaming industry is known for its extremely vibrant imagery and extravagant loot piñatas. This presents a challenge when designing a more subdued, informative, and structured brand communication. Continuing with game aesthetics for the sake of coherence was not an option. Instead, we had to adapt the existing products to new templates for websites and collateral materials. We utilised gradients as a flexible tool to complement the vibrancy of the games and solutions offered. The text architecture focuses on user comfort and maximising the accessibility of key information.

The brand font, Wazdan Sans, is a fork of Plus Jakarta Sans.

RodrigoTypo’s Tobi is used for Hero Wars, a series of video games by Nexters.

LIFEBLNC’s purpose is to mitigate water scarcity by providing an alternative solution to water-stressed nations. In order to highlight certain statements, they use Grato Grotesk all over their website. TT Hoves serves as body text.

LIFEBLNC is the first large-scale global exporter of high-quality water in bulk shipments. Water scarcity is an intergovernmental problem, which is defined by the quantitative lack of fresh water resources. The UN General Assembly established the Sustainable Development Goal 6 to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030.

The Eastern Mediterranean University Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the city of Famagusta in Cyprus has involved Cristina Chiappini as a teacher in the project/exhibition Othello International Art and Design, asking her to interpret the story of William Shakespeare's Othello in a modern key.

In the words of Christina Chiappini’s student team members:

Within the Communication Design Laboratory 1, managed by Cristina Chiappini, and thanks to the help of Enrico Gisana for the motion design part and Karen Venturini for having introduced us to the theme of femicide and gender violence, we have developed with the class a path in a contemporary key to what was the tragedy of Desdemona, perhaps one of the most spectacularized feminicides in the history of the theater, which reminds us so much how the media amplify current cases of feminicide.

The team worked with “moving images”: static images that tell other stories through movement and the duplication of parts. In the movement, in the speed, in the slowness a path of identity and narration is created, in which there is no need for sound.

The sentences taken from Othello are still lacerating, in the distrust and superficiality of a blind and full of himself Othello. Shakespeare’s words are dressed in contemporary images of 20th century women, normal women and symbolic women. They are all part of that tragedy, in which psychological and physical violence takes them all, regardless of age, historical context, their socioeconomic status, by color.

It’s crazy but it's true to see that after 420 years nothing has changed!

Project by Cristina Chiappini with the special collaboration of Enrico Gisana and Karen Venturini
Teaching assistant: Thomas Monaldi
Students: Giorgio DeLazzari Pinnelli, Sophia Manconi, Elia Mosconi, Beatrice Bonelli, Martina Damiani, Francesco Volpini, Samantha Fabbri, Francesco Pergolini, Luca Vulpinari, Alessia Curti, Caroline Riva, Marco Zelotti, Peter Lazzari

text composed in Nure by Fabrizio Schiavi

Cover image: Radar station, 2018. Artist: Stelios Kallinikou.

Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance, Protest documents and reflects on the curatorial research process behind three coherent exhibition staged in Gothenburg, Lahore and Nicosia. The project explores the affective meanings of drone technologies on photography and human rights and is a collaborative initiative between HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, the Hasselblad Foundation, Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (NiMac) and the National College of Arts in Lahore.

Bringing the cities Gothenburg, Nicosia and Lahore together through shared photo-based research is an endeavor to make apparent the differential meanings of visibility, of vulnerability and resistance. The triptych of exhibitions is an effort to produce a “geography of thinking” about drones shaped in part by the political and ethical implications of the asymmetry of seeing and not being seen, the proximity and physical distance to drone warfare and the political contexts of Sweden, Pakistan and Cyprus.

The subtitle is screen printed around the edges of the book, connecting to the idea of the triptych and implications of visibility and orientation adressed in the texts.

Benton Sans is the main typeface for all typography except the running text, which is set in Lyon. On the cover, Benton Sans is paired with other typefaces for the translations of “Warfare, Surveillance, Protest”. Swedish is set in Benton Sans; Graphik Arabic is used for Urdu, and Greek is set in a combination of Graphik and Benton Sans.

Editors: Sarah Tuck, Louise Wolthers
Copy editors: David Price, Sarah Tuck
Texts by: Wajahat Saeed, Ran Slavin, Daniel Jewesbury, Stelios Kallinikou, Sajid Khan, Ignacio Acosta, Salman Khan, Efi Savvides, Mhairi Sutherland, Vicky Pericleous, Kathrin Maurer, Yiannis Toumazis, Ellada Evangelou, Imran Qureshi, Sehr Jalil, Markus Miessen
2022, English, softcover
352 pages (on two different paper stocks), 15×20 cm
ISBN: 9789198606560

Design by Karl Stefan Andersson
Published by Art and Theory Publishing

Posted as part of a little survey about websites for conferences on typography and graphic design – how do these specialist events present themselves typographically, in 2013?

The 5th International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication takes place at the University of Nicosia, and it wants to come across as academic and matter-of-fact. No dazzling banners, hardly any images. No responsiveness. Black on white, with one color for emphasis. This Helvetica feels very different than the one used for AGI Open.

The design is not adventurous, but very tidy and well-arranged. The typographic treatment of the speakers list looks dry, but it does a good job at presenting lots of information in a clear and compact way. The header graphic uses some humanist sans – maybe Myriad, but the type is almost too small to say for sure.

Webfonts: ✗
Designer credits: ✗
Typeface credits: ✗

Today, the European People’s Party (EPP) held an extraordinary party summit in Limassol, Cyprus. The typeface behind the EU bigwigs is Thomas Phinney’s Hypatia Sans.