LP front cover.

Musical interpretations by artist Ellen Sundberg of the late writer Bodil Malmsten's (mother of the designer Stefania Malmsten) poetry, published by independent publisher Teg on LP, CD and digital formats. Ellen and Bodil never met but come from the same small village in northern Sweden. They both “own” their first names in a way. Styrene worked well here. Farnham was previously used for Bodil Malmsten’s collected poems, also designed by the studio.

[More info on Discogs]

LP back cover.

LP with label.

Insert.

The Black School is an “experimental art school teaching radical black history”. Founded by Joseph Cuillier III and Shani Peters, this multifaceted school is building a community center, hosting festivals, running workshops, and more — all with the goal of creating agents of change. The founders are responsible for the org’s look, with help from Mitchell Reese Johnson and web designer Kacy George. Generously spaced ITC Honda serves as the brand's wordmark and headline type, balanced with Poppins for body copy. These two work well together to create a feeling of strength while remaining approachable.

From The Black School website:

The Black School brand identity is inspired by the history of independent community run schools throughout Black history. The visual identity is anchored with the recurring motif of composition notebooks to playfully reference a common experience for American school children. The brand was designed to unify a broad range of activities and initiatives by The Black School.

Ogg Display joins ITC Honda for event flyers.

Poppins serves as a secondary typeface for web buttons and text.

Mauella (@mauellaaaa) is a high-end print lab based in the fields of Valencia, Spain. They offer analog hand prints of the highest quality and provide a rental service for 16mm cameras around Europe. Two series of three promotional posters each were designed by Pénélope Delaur (@pepefolio) to communicate on both the rental and print services provided by the lab.

A little lockdown project, attempting to learn about some of the most iconic jazz musicians whilst also doodling. For the type I settled on a combination of Parabole Display and Atlas Grotesk [not Atlas Grotesk, see comments], adding Lyon.

Flower Power is a collection of unique T-shirts designed by Martès in collaboration with Boogypaper and Bureau Brut.

This joint work emerges from the original typeface Boogy Brut which is the very core of the project. The aim was to expand its horizons by developing a whole apparel series around its formal features, and cultivating a cross-disciplinary practice while combining everyone’s expertise.

The set makes use of various styles of Boogy Brut in multiple weights and sizes, including Boogy Brut Poster as well as Boogy Brut Wild Black and Boogy Brut Wild White.

The O.T.W. zine is a promotional publication distributed in Vans stores throughout Brazil. It aims to reaffirm the cultural bases of the brand through interviews, articles, and images related to the three main pillars of the Vans universe: action sports (skate, surf and BMX), music, and art.

In 19×25.4 cm format, containing 100 pages printed in offset on Couché Fosco 150g and Offset 90g papers, the publication comes in a silkscreened plastic packaging, and includes three stickers.

Flyer for “Welcome to Greenland”, a cannabic experience by Dum Dum Studio in collaboration with High Social Dinner. Photograph by Lea Stuedahl.

Four typefaces in use: Serial A and Clarel Serif from Dum Dum Studio plus Millionaire from Altiplano and Windsor Elongated (originally from Stephenson Blake).

In the name of ♥︎ is a reference to “In the name of love” by Sarah Ahmed, published in Borderlands e-journal (2003). This work explores the use of the heart symbol in the context of social media, e-commerce and the rise of nationalist mindsets in Europe. Beyond its usual conventions (a symbol for love), how does the ♥︎ facilitate a design of trust to conceal privacy breach and to fuel stricter border closure politics?

This poem is part of an installation and a video. Five women and non-binary are reading a spoken-word piece on the female body and the idealisation of the nation-state.

The poem mixes VTC Carrie from Tré Seals (Vocal Type), Ortica Linear by Benedetta Bovani and Zorn from Laura Csocsán.

See also the post about the book In the Name of ♥︎, published as Onomatopee 192.

Poster design for Lux Éditeur’s reprint of Mémoire de feu (Memoria del fuego), an outstanding Latin American eye view of the making of the New World and a classic of political engagement, original research, and literary form by Eduardo Galeano.

Illustrations by José Francisco Borges.

To The Streets zine is a compilation of illustrated works by eight artists: Ailadi, Carmen Pizarro, Kana Philip, Gabriel Ebensperger, Catalina Bu, Matias Prado, Jana Traboulsi, and Rufina Bazlova. They are from five different parts of the world: Chile, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Belarus, and New York; all places where protesters have taken to the streets. This publication aims to take a look at this global movement and communicate to each other, and to the world, that you (we) are not alone.

Design by Gonzalo Guerrero, with texts by Lysandra Ohrstrom, using Cannon used throughout. The zine is available from Secret Riso Club.

From design studio Meat:

Chinese Protest Recipes is a project of resistance. It is a very personal project that protests against racial inequality in the food world. In this moment, as we struggle to get through a racial pandemic, this project acts as a form of culinary and literary protest, through the lens of Chinese food.

Calling for a decolonized approach to cuisine, Chinese Protest Recipes urges us all to look beyond what has been validated by Eurocentric culinary accolades or institutions – and toward an exchange of cultural knowledge produced and perfected with patience, practice, and love. The project uses a stripped back visual language inspired by the raw emotion of protest graphics.

Started originally as a takeover on @doofmagazine, the official recipe book just dropped as a free digital download. In exchange, donations are encouraged to support Black Lives Matter. A limited edition risograph printed version, and t-shirts will be released soon, with 100% of the proceeds going to support Color of Change.

Right Grotesk is used for headlines in combination with New Diane Script. Running texts use Helvetica and Untitled Serif. An unidentified typeface is used for lines of Chinese text set in a small point size on the top and bottom of most pages [edit: it’s Lantinghei, see comments].

Lazuli is a music festival organized by Splitzer and Imported. The very first edition should have taken place in Chartres, France in June 2020. The event was unfortunately cancelled, like many others, due to the pandemic.

The identity was designed by Montreuil-based studio God save the screen, combining Grandmaster for the name of the festival with Feixen Sans Edgy for all the other info. It plays with simple shapes, RGB-like colors and a subtle depth brought by layers of bitmap rasters.

The poster was shown in the book Annulé, a project “initiated by Parade studio which publishes the graphic work created for musical events cancelled due to the 2020 crisis linked to Covid.” [source]

The cover typography uses Radio Grotesk with the letter E taken from Langulaire.

Feminism + Business : a proposal to rethink, redesign & dare to dream investigates how we might imagine a new paradigm in business based on feminist business principles and explore opportunities for adoption at the core of business.

The research project is a Master thesis by Kristin Hall, created at Hyper Island’s Digital Management course. The academic essay explores how we might nurture more holistic and human-centred organisations, and where the adoption of feminist business principles results in new opportunities for all.

Read more at Kristin Hall’s Medium page.

The table of contents is set in Gosha Sans with Radio Grotesk for headings.

Introduction page, again with a mix of Radio Grotesk and a single glyph from Langulaire. The outlined 1 is from Langulaire.

The typeface chosen for the staged text is Aktiv Grotesk.

Cover

Mediterraneo Blues by Iain Chambers was published by Tamu Edizioni in December 2020. It’s a book about “music, postcolonial melancholy and maritime thoughts”.

The Mediterranean blues is rap, electronic, raï, rebetiko and trap, and is the soundtrack in the metropolis of the south of the world, from Cairo to Nairobi passing through Naples, where there is no distinction between authentic music and imported music.
The sounds do not respect national borders and carry with them the traces of the destruction and at the same time of the survival of European colonialism, because that history is inscribed in the languages and rhythms of today.

The cover, with an illustration by Giulia Rizzi, pairs Program (Emigre, 2013) by Zuzana Licko with Aja, drawn in the early 1980s by Gustav Jäger and published by Berthold.

For the spine, back cover and the body text of the book interior, designer Greg Olla used a combination of Capraia by Giulio Galli and Arkit by Erasmo Ciufo. Both typefaces ara avalailable from CAST.

Flyleaf

Frontespiece

Internal spread

Internal spread

Backcover

“No es mi presidente”: Not my president.

“Our generation has come together for this,” said 20-year-old Evelyn Borja.
“This is the first time I feel a part of politics.” — REUTERS

On the evening of November 9th 2020, Peruvian president Martín Vizcarra was ousted by the national congress on the basis of ‘moral incapacity’ and just five months apart from new elections. Vizcarra had attempted to stamp out deep-seated corruption. Based solely on unproven suspicions, the Peruvian congress ousted him, violating due process and constitutional order. Peru was facing a coup after 20 years of democracy.

The country was shortly ruled by de-facto president Manuel Merino (who previously led the Congress presidency). We, Peruvians, are furious at a group of politicians that have put us in high instability in pursuit of their petty disputes. In the middle of a devastating pandemic, economic recession, and high rates of unemployment, we brace for even harder times. The protests against his government, which occurred throughout the country (as well as in foreign cities around the world), left the death of 2 young protesters, Inti Sotelo and Bryan Jack Pintado, by the excessive police brutality and repression on the night of November 14th (14N). At the noon next day, and with several ministers who had already resigned from the de-facto government, Manuel Merino resigned from the presidency of Peru.

The first series of posters was created an hour after Merino was declared president by the Congress of the Republic. It originally consisted of 3 posters (which was later expanded to 47) and was later titled ‘Not my President’. The base poster, where Merino’s face can be seen along with the repeating typography, was shared by several internet users the night he took office. For the following days – thanks to the open-source license –, the poster obtained a greater reach within the first protests in the city of Lima (and later in other larger cities in Peru). The expanded series, also open source and free to be modified, was shared with the public on Thursday 12, being able to help the protesters to have ready to print A3 posters to be taken to the streets.

The content of these was designed to make a call to action to citizens, to be ironic about the situation through a much more millennial language – with references from pop culture – and criticize and deny the political position of the de-facto president.

“Peruvian: wake the f* up, tomorrow is too late.”

“Gracias por esta inestabilidad” translates to: “Thanks for this unnecesary unestability”.

City of Cusco during protests

FUERA! set in stretched and shivering Tusker Grotesk Super, translates to: “OUT!”

“Peruvians, the time is NOW”

The 2020 catalog of Kenning Editions. On the cover, “AUDRE” is set in Halyard Display, and “LORDE” is custom lettering by Mirko Velimirović, done with a dry steel poster brush. When opened, the front and back of the catalog reveal a poster with the full portrait of Audre Lorde, drawn by María Octavia Russo.

Designer Faride Mereb writes:

When I designed the catalog, the look I was going for was one of old newspapers or broadsides. At first, I chose a transitional roman italic and a gothic sans, but decided to step out of my comfort zone. It was suggested that I used Texturina as an alternative, which I loved. Body text is set in Minion.

I tried to improve the hierarchy by using different weights and point sizes suited to each type family. For example, the heaviest weight of Halyard Display felt very eye-catching and news-papery to me.

I wanted the publication to be recognizable in any form it took: folded once, twice, while being read, or seen from a distance. Audre Lorde is the protagonist, my concern was that she be portrayed as such. With this design, people are able to frame it, use it as a poster, or paste it on the street after reading.

One of the reasons I love ephemera is because how we use it changes with time. This is meant to be one of those publications.

The animated gif is an abstraction of the book dimensions and their respective ISBNs. “Kenning Editions” is set in Halyard Display Black and “.com”, “catalog” are set in Texturina Italic. The gif is used to advertise the catalog across Kenning Editions' social media, specifically Instagram.

Image from Ana Mendieta’s Untitled: Silueta Series, Mexico, 1976.

Et Al. is an editorial platform on Instagram (@etal.mag) which aims at conciling ecological engagement and the way skincare and other consumer goods are being produced nowadays. It gives advice on the sustainability of products, while also offering important ecological information and explaining how our means of production is affecting the planet.

The identity, naming, brand and social strategy was created by Some Days Co, relying on multiple visual aspects. The logotype, set in a customized version of LL Bradford by Lineto, is an abbreviation of the Latin et alia, meaning “and others”, implying an indeterminate list of things: this widens the range of possible aspects to approach for the editorial platform, but also reveals that it’s concerned with everything, here meaning the most important, planet Earth. Cardinal Fruit from Production Type is used for text posts, most of the time ecological statements or information. Cardinal maintains the classical appeal of the logotype, but with a twist: here we can see the synthetic aesthetic that is at the heart of the design. Because what is being said deals directly with the impact of different industries on the future, we notice the artificial look of Cardinal, making it almost sci-fi. The identity also comprises artistic images of nature, where all-caps Founders Grotesk by Klim Type Foundry subtly delivers the credits.

CANALS is four part editorial journey, telling the story of the history, development and expansion of the iconic Amsterdam canals. It explores the early beginnings of the city, through the 17th-century until today.

The website, an initiative of designers Marcus Brown (Amsterdam) and Aristide Benoist (Malaga), uses the history of Amsterdam's channels for an exercise in web-based storytelling. All elements of magazine design come along: a storyline that is followed while browsing (like in a magazine, scrolling horizontally); punctuated with visually impressive section openings, drop caps text columns, an alternation and repetition of image, headings and text. The color palette follows the Amsterdam coat of arms (red, white and black), with additional color provided by archive images.

The star of the design is Kris Sowersby's Maelstrom Sans: a design with extreme contrast as its main ingredient, juxtaposing anything it is paired with, legible only in short words – and used just so, to great effect. To aid legibility, words set in Maelstrom are tracked. At the other end of the typographic spectrum is Commercial Type’s Graphik which, set in small size for columns of body text, ensures calmness and regularity.

In between these two, the designers use three condensed fonts for headlines, streamers, drop caps: Coign (Colophon) is a collection of condensed sans serifs. The website uses 37B (one of the less narrow styles), always in capitals. Grifinito, the compressed sibling to R-Typography’s Griffo and Griffito is used mainly for streamers. From chapter two, Caslon Graphique Compress D appears once per section. The Compress style is included with the URW version of Caslon Graphique (Red Rooster Collection has a similar but lighter style as Caslon Extra Condensed).

From More Than A Vote:

More Than A Vote is an official non-profit organization. We are Black athletes and artists working together. Our priority right now is combating systemic, racist voter suppression by educating, energizing, and protecting our community in 2020.

From CNN:

More Than a Vote— a voting rights organization led by NBA star LeBron James — signed up 10,000 volunteer poll workers, reaching a major milestone this week in its effort to combat systemic, racist voter suppression. The organization, made up of prominent athletes and artists, has focused its "We Got Next" poll worker recruitment effort — a partnership with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) — in primarily Black electoral districts ahead of November's general elections.

The website and the stoppage time video shown below use a strong yellow and black color palette, with Plakat Black (Out of the Dark) used for headlines, supported by Pitch (Klim Type Foundry).

Protect Our Winters (POW) is a community of athletes, scientists, creatives and business leaders advancing non-partisan policies that protect our world today and for future generations. Climate change has put outdoor playgrounds at risk. At Sid Lee Montreal, we created The Outdoor State, a campaign to stand for these playgrounds together, and protect them for our future. In parallel to the campaign, we rebranded POW. We choose bright colors to reflect the energy of POW with new colors representing the earth: dirt, rock, sand.

We also created different brand elements: hand drawn graphics to indicate the journey to the accomplishment. They are part of an adventure and tell a story. Organic shapes created from the layout of national pars, lakes, forests, etc.. representing outdoor playgrounds. Boxes are reminiscent of the cartographic elements. Using to indicate informations, stats, captions, etc…

The typography pairs a few weights/widths of GT Alpina with Sharp Grotesk and some snippets of Space Grotesk.