The annual report of Kunstverein Kunsthalle Basel gives members an insight into spendings, acquisitions and overall financial management.

The Annual Report 2018 was designed by Barbara Acevedo Strange and Anton Stuckardt. It represents the first use of the G2 Ciao typeface by Gruppo Due.

Grafika 1 (1970), ft. Bauhaus Prisma K from Ed Benguiat’s Bauhaus Prisma & Prisma Bauhaus. This series of multiline faces was introduced in the same year and showcased in PLINC’s Art Deco-themed Alphabet Directions No. 11.

Covers for various clip books of line art issued by Harry Volk Jr. Art Studio, Pleasantville, New Jersey. See the previous post about the clip books issued in 1955 for more information on Harry Volk Jr. Art Studio.

These booklets belong to a subseries titled Grafika. It was introduced in 1970. Until 1972, 18 numbered issues were produced. From No. 19 on, the number was no longer shown prominently, and Grafika were merged into the regular series of clip books. Collector Bart Solenthaler comments:

Volk published several titles in addition to the regular clip books – including Grafika – that started out with a distinct mission, but they all eventually became interchangeable in content to their other offerings.

Although not yet used for the first issues, ITC Fat Face soon emerged as the identity typeface for the Grafika series, and was maintained for later additions, see e.g. No. 113 from 1980. Like ITC Avant Garde Gothic and ITC Ronda, ITC Fat Face is the work of Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase. These three typefaces were all released in 1970.

Grafika 2 (1971) ft. ITC Avant Garde Gothic, with the numeral 2 from Craw Modern or similar tucked into the counter of the monocular a.

Grafika 3 (1971) appears to use a solid, filled-in modification of Bauhaus Prisma. When compared to Bauhaus Alpha or Bauhaus Geometric (PLINC’s precursors of ITC Bauhaus), the differences are most notable in the counters of R (not round) and A (much larger), as well as the K with more even arms. G was trimmed for tighter spacing.

Grafika 5 sees a return of Bauhaus Prisma K, here with an “Arabic” numeral. This thick-thin-thin-thick-thin face is also used for No. 7.

Grafika 8 (1971) proudly features ITC Fat Face, with ligatures for ra and fi. While the latter was included in the font, the former appears to be a clever custom invention. This eventually became the de facto logo of Grafika.

Grafika 9 (1971) uses a phototype version of Clearface. According to the One Line catalog (1971), Photo-Lettering, Inc. offered the design in 4 weights and 2 widths, plus italics. In 1978, ITC released a version in 4 weights, credited to Victor Caruso. ITC Clearface is narrower than the variant used here. The text in light lowercase letters inside the counter is set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

Grafika 11 (1971).

Grafika 12 (1971).

Grafika 14 (1972). “A Gallery of Contemporary Art” is in tightly spaced ITC Ronda.

Grafika 15 (1972).

Grafika 16 (1972).

Grafika 17 (1972).

Grafika 18 (1972).

“America” (No. G20, 1972) ft. tightly spaced caps from Futura Light, with a custom CA ligature. The small text here is set in all-caps Helvetica.

“Design Devices” (No. G22, 1972) ft. Advertisers Gothic.

“Ad Animals” (No. G25, 1972) ft. Mania.

The Book Block / O Miolo do Livro is a manual on industrial bookbinding, compiling the most common techniques and what you can do with them. Built for quick consultation. Thoroughly illustrated. Available in a Portuguese and an English-language edition. Published by design studio 0. itemzero and printer Gráfica Maiadouro.

Uivo is used throughout.

Insula Vol.1 is the first volume of a dystopian comic series. Each one will talk about a specific technology that adapts the character’s perception of their new environment. Riso printed and published by Fidèle Éditions. The cover and comments are set in Self Modern, featuring its alternate a.

From publisher Atelier Éditions:

Michael Jang spent nearly four decades working as a successful commercial portrait photographer. Unbeknown to the world, however, he was assembling a vast archive of thousands of remarkable images, authoring several now-iconic series: The Jangs (1973), Beverly Hilton (1973), San Francisco (1973–1987), Summer Weather (1983), College (1972–1973), Punks & Poets (1978–1980), and Garage Band (2001). Jang revealed nothing of that vast archive for almost 40 years until 2001, when he submitted a number of images for consideration to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. His work attracted immediate acclaim, and for the past fifteen years he has revealed those images in a series of national and international exhibitions and books. The artist’s first major monograph, Who Is Michael Jang?, introduced by long-time collaborator and SFMoMA curator emerita of photography, Sandra S. Phillips, offers readers an eagerly anticipated examination of Jang’s truly idiosyncratic oeuvre.

For the book typography, Capucine Labarthe picked Continua by edition.studio and Mabry by Colophon.

Brasilia is a monothematic magazine of designs students of Hochschule Hannover, under the art direction of Hanover-based design studio Bureau Bordeaux (Jasper Eisenecker, Arne Meyer, Christian Vukomanovic).

“For Brasilia #1, we once set up some pretty rough typographical ground rules that specify the layout grid, the logo placement and the use of three typefaces—MT Grotesque, Times and an additional style font, that varies from issue to issue and fits the topic,” says the Bureau Bordeaux team.

The additional style font chosen for issue #3 is Dominicale Alpha (Altiplano Typefaces).

Issue #3 of Brasilia considers the notion of “waiting,” approaching the subject from all angles in a series of written, illustrated and photographic editorials.

Covers

Elvin Hu designed this book series of printed scripts from popular musicals as an unpublished student project.

Hu approached series from the perspective of a book buyer: “When someone buys a script book, they either love theatre scripts, they have a favorite show in mind, or they are buying it because their professor or director told them to.” He wondered if he could design a unified series where readers could easily spot the script they are looking for, even when all the books look essentially alike.

His solution was to fill the cover with the initial letter of each title. Using colors from each show’s original branding, he was able to give each script some sense of individuality while have them fit nicely into the larger visual system.

When it came to choosing a typeface for these gigantic initials, Hu says, “Fit became an obvious choice because of its versatility and eye-catching design when used as at a large scale.” Fit is also used to set the title on the back cover, with words sometimes split to create interesting text shapes.

Meanwhile, FF DIN is used in all the places where actual legible text is needed: the titles and themselves, the spines, as well as author names and supplemental text on the back cover.

Hu also gave the covers an intentional slightly-worn look, a nod to the many pirated photocopied scripts on the market.

Back covers

Spines

Wicked, front cover

Wicked, back cover

Dear Evan Hansen, front cover

Dear Evan Hansen, back cover

Rent, front cover

Rent, back cover

Next to Normal, front cover

Next to Normal, back cover

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, front cover

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, back cover

Proto Grotesk was chosen for a series of wine labels designed by Copenhagen-based Studio Tobias Røder. The typeface is used with its alternate single-storey a and g which are accessible via Stylistic Sets 1 and 2.

From Studio Tobias Røder:

Anders Frederik Steen makes biodynamic wine. At his chateau in France, he produces some of the purest, most uncompromising wines on the planet. And he likes to do it by hand. This includes the labelling of the bottles, which, to a designer, presents a maddening challenge: What do you do when you can never be sure any of the labels are in the same spot? Or worse still, when they’re all likely to be more or less askew?

Our solution was as simple as it is obvious. We made the labels round. And we kept the typography slanted, circular or upside down, thereby obliterating the concept of straight angles. Now, no matter how you slap them on, you just can’t go wrong.

A blessed side-effect of the circular design is that Anders Frederik Steen’s wines stand out from the crowd. In a world of squares, he is literally the round peg. And wine lovers everywhere seem be taking note.

In collaboration with Anders Frederik Steen, Per Holm Henriksen, Flemming Holm and Søren Rønholt.

Also, in keeping with Anders Frederik Steen’s stubbornly uncompromising attitude, the labels are edible. Not a trace of additives anywhere, in the wine or on the label.

A new identity system for the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) and ShortFest as a hypothetical brand identity project at ArtCenter College of Design.

PSIFF is one of the largest festivals in North America, welcoming over 135,000 attendees each year for its lineup of new and celebrated international features and documentaries. ShortFest is the largest short film event in North America, and operates under the Palm Springs International Film Festival as a platform to feature emerging talent.

As a rebranding, I proposed a modern visual identity system that draws from the local vernacular of Palm Springs. The PSIFF identity, and its sister micro-identity ShortFest, use mid-century modern aesthetics paired with bright colors and wood type influences from the same time period. The multi-colored confetti graphic element celebrates the diversity of voices that are showcased at the festival.

A series of three posters for the PSIFF announce “Palm” “Springs” “2019” with big type, mixing layers and shapes of Bixa, a design that started out as an exploration of wood type by Mark van Wageningen in 2015. The concept – reconstructing lettershapes by printing their deconstructed parts in four print runs / four colors – was published as a (color) webfont in 2016, and as a digital typeface family in thirteen styles in 2017.

In the phototype era, film font makers went bonkers with “flair” variations, appending swashes and hyper-extended glyphs to classic typefaces without discretion. Do these mutant growths work better with a scripty ball-terminaled display face like Allegro? I’ll let you be the judge, but it sure makes me want to grow some pineapple plants!

Allegro Flair from Lettergraphics: The Complete Library, Collectors Edition, 1976.

Great series of posters from Crystal Zapata for Bricktown Sound Dance Party at The Hungry Brain, Chicago.

Printing house Joon (“a line” in Estonian) specialises in personalised printing services and special solutions. Their new identity, developed by AKU using GT Walsheim, leaves a lot of room for though – clean, striped surfaces inspire to write down new ideas and make them happen.

Three colours refer to the main business areas. The simple system adapts well to various applications and stands clearly out amongst competition.

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