Cover of Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 129, Autumn 2013 edition.

In 2011 I was fortunate enough to land a role as Lead Designer for two sister publications, the Asia Pacific edition of Architectural Review and (inside) Interior Design Review, both published in Melbourne, Australia. Although the relationship between well established U.K. publication The Architectural Review (first published in 1896 and still going strong) and this Australian made edition was never explicit I wanted to treat the title with a similar reverence (footnote: I had worked on the U.K. edition’s website under the direction of Violetta Boxill a few years prior to this).

Art Director Sabine Selbach had already set the tone for relaunched version of the title by refreshing previous layouts and paper stock and bringing them in line with their sister title, the aforementioned (inside) (also featured on this site although I would go onto completely reworking the typography and design for that title). She also introduced Norm and Lineto's LL Replica as the lead typeface for the title.

After researching the typeface and flicking through screenshots of the original specimen I quickly realised there was a very strict underlying grid that not only related to the content of the title (with its rigorously documented structural details) but could also be used to give physical pages and layouts a similar rigorous underlying structure.

I made note of the size of the angles sliced out of the corners of the terminals in proportion to the letterform’s body and started to use similar measures on the page grids. Where previously type was set based on page dimensions or left to float along horizontal guides, now any object positioned within the page had to adhere to a grid set by the typeface and its construction details. Even images were given the same subtly sliced off corners as was an identifying feature of the letterforms.

Over the course of five issues (one year) different body copy typefaces were trialed before settling on Atlas Grotesk as a similarly formal compliment to Replica. By the end of my tenure the title had a new editor and a shift in focus that linked even closer to the U.K. edition and a raft of typefaces from The Architectural Review’s heyday under the guidance of editor/art director J. M. Richards were bought in alongside Atlas & Replica.

The title would continue with art director Samuel Szwarcbord employing a direction that felt like a clean sweep for the title, whilst maintaining the typographic choices that had helped brand it … including a starring role for Replica.

Inside Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 126, August–September 2012 edition.

Inside Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 126, August–September 2012 edition.

Inside Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 126, August–September 2012 edition.

Inside Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 128, Summer 2012/2013 edition.

Inside Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 128, Summer 2012/2013 edition.

Inside Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 128, Summer 2012/2013 edition.

Inside Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 129, Autumn 2013 edition.

Inside Architectural Review Asia Pacific, Issue 129, Autumn 2013 edition.

Singapore Art Book Fair (SGABF) is an independent annual multi-day festival specialising in contemporary art books & zines. The 2018 edition of Singapore Art Book Fair saw the move to a fully independent operation for the first time. Currency was engaged from the outset in the ideation process, implementing a considered identity and strategic approach to achieving the project’s aims to recalibrate its focus and encouraging a growth and maturity in the audience’s cultural palette. [Currency website]

All names and titles are typeset in a complex combination of capitals from the Minotaur superfamily (Sans, Beef, Lombardic & Sans Lombardic) and Century Expanded. Body text and all other information are set in the open-source typeface Chivo.

Harbour is used throughout this lookbook (34pp) for upcoming fashion designer Charlotte McDonald. Her A/W16 Regeneration menswear collection focuses on regeneration in Glasgow and Manchester.

Typographie: Schrift und Graphik mit Letraset was an exhibition that ran in Darmstadt, München, and Zürich in 1978–79. This 8×8-inch 72-page catalog was designed by Christof Gassner and features his own work along with dozens of other designers who used Letraset.

Design: Christof Gassner

Design: Helmut Langer

Design: Christof Gassner. Promotional material for Deutsche Letraset. The last image was used for the cover of LetraTime.

Design: Friedrich Friedl

Design: Christof Gassner. German translation of a quote by Henri Michaux: “Qui s’est abaissé devant une fourmi, n’a plus à s’abaisser devant un lion.” – “Those who have bowed to an ant do not have to bow down before a lion.”

Design: Christof Gassner. German titles of various plays by Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About _, King Lear, Richard III. For more, see Schauspiel im ZDF.

Design: Christof Gassner. Various film titles: Le Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows), The Third Man, Daddy Long Legs, Scarface

Blackbird poster

This poster was made with the Gilroy font. It’s part of a series of Dutch bird typo posters. Together with geometric shapes, the letters visualise the bird’s characteristics.

Two-colur poster, screen printed.
Size: 420×594mm (A2)

A fictional identity for a jazz bar called Futura. Futura has been chosen because, due to its geometry, it seems to be the perfect meeting point of past and future, just like jazz music. Also, Futura was published in 1928, in the age of jazz. The identity makes use of a vibrant pattern of J's. Rotated by 30°, the uppercase J resembles a saxophone, or a note. In the pattern, it is used filled but also outlined, resembling half and quarter notes.

I adore anything @aaronsprinkle does, and his new band Blank Books has an awesome EP out. I love it so much I made my own packaging concepts for it and they are allllmost as rad as the album. http://blankbooksband.com/releases — @EephusLeague on Twitter

Bethany Heck is not only a top-notch writer on her Font Review Journal website, she’s also an incredible and passionate designer that carefully experiments with the typefaces that she reviews.

Maelstrom is the large yummy type, which I chose because it's so good for large-scale because of its insane thick-to-thin contrast. You can use it large and it still lets air through because the strokes get so slender. Proto Grotesk is used on the CD itself and the vinyl concept, and I found it's odd angularity and the AWESOME spur on the "a" were really nice compliments to the curves in Maelstrom. It's got the same svelte lines against blocky slabs. I used Untitled Sans on the wrap sticker, because I wanted that to feel like a neutral, utilitarian addition to the "extra" of the rest of the design—an imposition necessary to share all the information necessary for the album instead of a flashy stylistic detail. [1]

Proto Grotesk has already been featured. Maelstrom & Untitled Sans will surely follow!

Playlist is a group compilation featuring works by more than 50 international artists. Conceived as a playlist de coeur by the owners of the Erratum Galerie, on the walls unfolds a spectrum of small-sized paintings displayed edge to edge, according to a simple principle of formal affinities and associations: a sort of visual mixtape of pieces by various artists.

This arbitrary arrangement provides the opportunity for some movements. The borders of each canvas become transitions. They take on new importance beyond the usual hierarchies and rules of seeing. The optical center is allowed to travel across the surfaces, and the installation evolves paintings into an elusive ensemble, which aims at soliciting a plurality of readings.

The purpose is not to drown the individual paintings into a larger whole, but rather to activate free shuffling between the different dimensions and genres of painting. It is about playing with “limit-situations”, to literally use the words of Olivier Mosset — that is to say painting as a becoming. From illusionism to materiality, from the cosa mentale to the readymade, Erratum hopes to initiate a friendly conversation between the contemporary practices of painting. An audio edition completes and extends the installation on display. Available on CD, it contains a second playlist of sounds and recordings submitted by the artists.

Credits:
Dean Annunziata, Linda Franken, Raphaël-Bachir Osman, Franck Rausch (Idea & concept)
Daniel Seemayer (Graphic design)
Lily Matras (Text)
Zoë Harris (Editing)

Content Desert is a book that collects the 2-D graphic work of artist Mark Price.

The collection’s title presages an almost unfathomably absurd question to pose in 2017, “What would a moment without content look like?”

Content Desert is a post-internet object, a journey through graphic refuse amassed and extruded over several stylized chapters. The book brings together a multitude of hijacked glyphs, damaged vectors, stolen sentiments, and product mockups reimagined and recontextualized at the moment of content’s obsolescence. The resulting volume of deeply compromised images occupies a liminal space in the world of intelligibility.

Through the transformation of once-was content into high contrast and stylized detritus, Content Desert is an envoy from yesterday to tomorrow, delivering its anti-message through deconstructed forms, abandoned logos, and nonfunctional iconography, operating as though it were reliant on a befuddled and obtuse navigation application.

The 450-plus pages anachronously proceed from its obnoxious tag line of “1,000,0000 years of broken graphics … load more, know less”.

“Content Desert is a way to view the internet the way the bots might. A broken window into branded nightmares, a treasury of all the aesthetic pieces we are leaving behind without a second thought. This tightly constructed volume is the perfect physical distillation of a digital world. Chaotic, powerful, funny, at war with itself and you in the best way.”
— Maxwell Neely-Cohen, Author of Echo of the Boom

“Content Desert is an ominous graphic novel, that, at its heart, yearns for meaning. It skewers the consumer class hunger for more, especially when promulgated in the aesthetic of less. Yet, despite the assault of "anti-meaning," we ultimately want Price's labor—which feels arduous—to matter. It's in that desire that we experience the intimacy of Content Desert: in the dissolution of superlative individualism, what is value?”
— Jenna Crowder, Founding Editor of The Chart

“Content Desert is seemingly without precedent or clear genre. It's an artwork, graphic anti-novel, brand identity, art book and conceptual object. It's also a work of dadaist poetry. It cannot be scrolled easily though you should not give up trying.”
— Lee Tusman, artist and curator

More at twxx.us.

Poster made for a Neubad poetry slam event. Ace Regular in use.

Music plays such a vital role in our lives from the early days of childhood, through our teenage years and even beyond our days it defines us as human beings. Music can be inspiring, entertaining, exiting and apparently it can be weaponized. Between 2002 and 2006 the US forces in Afghanistan, Cuba and Iraq opened so called discos for interrogation of prisoners of the so-called global war on terror. During the interrogations the prisoners would be subjected to loud music and strobe lights, from which the discos gained their name. This publication forms the foundation of the sound installation THE DISCO shown at the exhibitions Regarding: Bunker and Double Bandes – Brest et Brême.

Due to the lack of copyrights a radical edit was imposed. The censorial produce was purposely reversed with the innocuous deleted and the violent unpleasant left untouched. Printed on 90g/m² 1.5 bulk Munken Cream Book, the book was published in 2017 via the publishing platform Fresh Prints at the University of the Arts Bremen.

Source: taylorswift.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Album cover. Photography by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott

“I’m sorry, but the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ’cause she’s dead.”

So ends single “Look What You Made Me Do”, the first to come out of pop queen Taylor Swift's 2017 album Reputation. In keeping with these times of constant rebranding, the image of former Myspace moonshot has been retweaked into something far more edgy, urban and contemporary.

As with the release of Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. earlier the same, it was the cover more than anything that sparked great internet reaction. Opinion seemed to have been split by those proclaiming horror by the “trend of bad design”, while others fell in claims of Swift ripping Kanye West.

Comparison: Fonts In Use. License: All Rights Reserved.

Top: the original title artwork as posted by Taylor Swift to Instagram. Bottom: Engravers’ Old English BT

The title is in a slightly modified Engravers’ Old English, with the left parts of the base strokes (sloppily) clipped. This typeface was probably chosen to resemble the logos of newspapers and more specifically that of The New York Times, most recently redrawn by Matthew Carter for the 2015 relaunch.

Source: taylorswift.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Stills from the animation on Taylor Swift’s website

Consider it aesthetically pleasing or not, it does spotlight many of the current trends in graphic design: repetition, use of system fonts and general typographic irony framed in a layered newsclip composition. It all makes a bit more sense when seen in an animated version on her official website, which feature anti-design favorite Times New Roman far more prominently. This clip also includes some Cheltenham and Franklin Gothic – two typefaces that both play a major role in the visual identity of The New York Times, next to Abril Text, a typeface which has been employed for various newspapers.

Source: taylorswift.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: taylorswift.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: taylorswift.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Animated clips announcing the single Look What You Made Me Do, again using a customized Engravers’ Old English. The hairline strokes texturing the capitals as well as the dangling descender in ‘h’ have been eliminated. ‘Y’ was given a completely new, romanized form, which comes remarkably close to the ‘Y’ found in Nemek Gothic, one the fonts modeled after the same iron-on gothic letters as seen in the “I Feel Like Pablo” merch designed by Joe Perez & Mark Seekings for Donda/Kanye West, based on original artwork by Cali Thornhill DeWitt AKA Caramel Bobby.

Source: www.instagram.com License: All Rights Reserved.

The seriffed caps that appear in the announcement graphics are from Kepler Display Semicondensed.

UKNY Music have access to the world’s very best musicians and performers from the likes of Lady Gaga to Robbie Williams. They specialise in creating captivating and one-off memorable performances at unique events.

The branding uses a contemporary black and white logo combined with dutone vibrant photography creating a memorable identity.

See more on the website of White Bear Studio.

Blippo — with two forms of S (see the alternates provided in Mecanorma’s original version) — and Baby Teeth (with a custom E?) [edit: it’s the similar Titan, see comments] echo the geometry and dark color of this cover’s background pattern.

[More info on Discogs]

Collect is an international art fair that this year took place between the 2–6 of February at London’s Saatchi Gallery. Presented by the Crafts Council, Collect gave visitors the chance to see and buy museum-quality and contemporary ceramics, glass, jewellery, wood, metal and textiles created by established and emerging artists and makers represented by over thirty of the world’s best galleries.

Collect’s brand identity, designed by Spin, draws character, play and visual interest from an economical use of Brauer Neue, and a black and white colour palette, and went on to include a variety of print communications including leaflets and catalogue, art direction, animation, advertising, signage and environmental graphics.

Read more about this project on BP&O.

The original Cartoon Network logo, used from October 1, 1992, to June 14, 2004. This logo is still in use on some of its merchandising products. [Wikipedia]

Cartoon Network’s second logo, used in various forms and styles from June 14, 2004, to May 28, 2010. [Wikipedia]

Exhibition catalogue of the diploma projects in the Master in Fine Arts (Art in Public Spheres & Art Teaching) at Hochschule Luzern. The publication features the final projects by the students as well as a photographic portrait of the city Emmen, Lucerne, where the exhibition took place.

Album artwork for James Gang’s album Rides Again, 1970. Bob Lockhart is credited for cover design and illustration. See also Miami (1974).

[More info on Discogs]

Back cover with a photograph by Tom Wright and the track list set in Franklin Gothic.

One of the most famous posters designed over many years by Michael Bierut for the Architectural League of New York. The designer has written about this particular work in “Credit Line Goes Here”, a post on Design Observer which subsequently appeared in the anthology Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007). The typeface used here is Interstate by Tobias Frere-Jones (Font Bureau, 1993).

Durana Durana:

Palco23 is an online medium providing useful information for professionals in the sports industry. Extending their projects to the offline world, the company produces content that is collected in the form of printed reports, magazines and dossiers.
Client: Cinnamon News