The publication Der Prozess ist der Parcours – Wie Antworten über Fragen staunen oder wie Spiele Wissen infrage stellen (“The process is the course”) is a publication and documentation of my Master project made at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle. It captures the process of the exhibition and the multimedia and participatory exploration of curiosity. It is about the potential, the downsides and the promotion of curiosity. It is an attempt to spatially represent this driving force, allowing for mishaps that enable moments of critical self-reflection and knowledge production, and methods that stimulate curiosity. In particular, it focuses on playing, questioning, establishing connections and moments of irritation.

The softcover publication has 128 pages and measures 125×185 mm. It comes with a silver scratch-off sticker and changing papers.

Typeset in EB Trainer Grotesk Regular by Antoine Elsensohn of Électro-bibliothèque,
Adelphe by Eugénie Bidaut of Bye Bye Binary, and HAL Timezone Mono by HAL Typefaces. Concept and design by Alexandra Vögtle.

The masthead in Honda debuted in Issue 27 (vol. IV, no. 1). The secondary typeface is ITC Souvenir.

Debuting in 1976 as The Dragon, the magazine was variously also known as Dragon Magazine and Dragon. It was (or became) TSR’s monthly magazine in support of the immensely successful table top role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons in its various editions and successors, as well as other RPGs (published by TSR and others).

Dragon launched with hand-drawn lettering for its masthead (and a very zine feel), but from issue 27 (July 1979) onwards the masthead for The Dragon was set in ITC Honda. Honda, or lettering based on it, was used for the masthead until issue 274 (published in 2000). A redesign that starts with Issue 181 recreates the masthead with a stretched lettering, still base on Honda. Another redesign based on Honda again begins with issue 225 (see below).

Issue 204 has the surtitle “American gothic humor in gaming”, a dropped D in Dragon, and an airbrushed cover that is a pastiche of Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The man is wielding the traditional pitchfork (a trident), but now both figures are wearing merchandise tee-shirts: TSR (the owners of Dungeons & Dragons) for the man and Dragon for the woman (in, of course, Honda). The woman offers the traditional stern look and a set of polyhedral dice.

Issue 225 (January 1996) marks another redesign of the masthead, but still based on the Honda font: modelling the lettering in 3D and on a curve. This issue also introduces what I might be tempted to call “1990s DTP style”; that is, many fonts and colours and angles brought together with exuberance. I have peeked into the covers of the next few issues and can report that this style continues. The font choices, or at least the ones I can identify, for issue 225 also have a very 1990s vibe: stretched and rotated Helvetica Black Oblique for “Building a Better PC”, stretched Lithos with a shadow for “I’m OK, You’re One Dimensional”, Tekton with an offset shadow effect for “Back In The Saddle (Again)”, Omnia (with a scaled “the”) for “the greyhawk grimoires”, and stretched Charme for “Campaign Classics”. Issue 273 from July 2000 was the last to feature a logo based on Honda.

Issue 37 ft. a logo with flat fill and thin contour

Honda also used for the secondary text here, with the flying frogs aka Awful Green Things, in their own box, so the text is over a flat background.

The colour of the masthead changes from issue to issue, often to suit the artwork. Here picking out the Dragon’s eye and the harpist’s highlights. Secondary type is in Baskerville AI.

“Dragon” in outline only, over the artwork, for a sort of transparency effect. Secondary type is in ITC Zapf Book.

Starting with Issue 128, the word “Magazine” was added to the logo, shown in tracked-out caps from Eurostile Bold Extended.

Since Issue 181 the Dragon masthead is stretched into custom lettering, but still based on Honda. A gradient fill and a shadow also become part of the masthead. Illustrated here in Issue 204, about which I’ve said more in the text. Secondary type is in Antique Olive.

Flashy redesign debuts in Issue 225. The stretched “Dragon” masthead is back to more conventional Honda, but modelled in 3D.

Le Papier du Mois (“Paper of the Month”) was created in collaboration with the Lyon-based printer Bouquet Crozat and Fedrigoni, the Italian manufacturer of high-end paper.

The year is already well underway… Will the dice be loaded? A meeting point between minimalism and opulence, this finishing technique plays with contrasts: on one side, the sobriety of the paper; on the other, the dazzling, almost surreal shine of full-tuning Las Vegas-style gilding. Undoubtedly, the brilliant reflection of truth.

The featured printing techniques include black letterpress, matte silver and diffraction hot stamping, silver embossing on Tintoretto Ceylon Cumino 350g/m² paper.

This is soft-core mid-century erotica, originally published in 1961 under the title Las Vegas Lust, was updated for the 1970s. It's been speculated that Dean Hudson was none other than the novelist Evan Hunter a.k.a., Ed McBain.

For Finnish rap artist Costi’s second Playmaker drop, the objective was to design a Western-and US-themed collection inspired by collegiate apparel, prominently featuring a distinctive collegiate-style with stretched Mesquite on a curve.

The collection includes two shirts in black and white and a crewneck with fitting track pants, all showcasing the same artwork in different styles. The track pants, as shown in the video, feature various college-type logos from up to down, inspired by several sport apparel from the NBA, incorporating the initials P and M for Playmaker. Additionally, the U-shaped horseshoe serves as a subtle reference to “University.”

For the logo on the track pants, we chose Vivaldi for its subtle and nostalgic feel. Its understated design ensures the logo blends in without standing out too much. In between the prints you can find a little quote – “There’s gold in the river” – written in the font used in his latest album cover for Coast to Costi, Celtic Garamond.

The “Sheriff” badge pairs Bernard Condensed with an unidentified slab serif.

Chilean design studio Comunas Unidas (run since 2004 by Myrna Cisneros and Manuel Córdova) was in charge of the art direction, illustration and design of the first vinyl LP by Chilean band La Golden Acapulco.

The design uses only the first version of the Mazúrquica typeface family in its original three weights (later, in 2020, Quintana-Font released a 2.0 version). The interior features a fold-out poster with handmade letterings.

[More info on Discogs]

Bastardo Grotesk by Giulia Boggio in use for a poster and flyer announcing a John Cage related workshop. Würfelwurf translates to “dice roll”. The poster and flyer were designed by Thea Kleinhempel. From the website of the John Cage Organ Foundation Halberstadt (translated from the German):

Halberstadt’s musical history includes a very “crazy” project, namely a 639-year realization of the organ piece ORGAN²/ASLSP by the American composer and avant-garde artist John Cage (1912-1992).

Crazy in the sense of “out of place” because it does not fulfilll the conventional expectations of music lovers of a concert, such as melody and rhythm or being able to hear it to the end in its entirety. The musical piece is being performed since 2001 and will finish in the year 2640.

One can experience a time and sound experience of a very unique kind in the almost thousand-year-old Burchardi Church since the beginning of the 3rd millennium. A truly trans-epochal time-piece, a sound-space between past and future, a worldwide recognized reference project of modern music and art.

Dada 1916-1923 is the editorial transcription of the poster-catalogue created by Marcel Duchamp for the famous Dada retrospective of 1953 at the Sidney Janis Gallery. Inspiring from the principles of randomness and uncertainty typical of Dadaist aesthetics, the catalogue breaks away from traditional graphic conventions by using dice to determine the arrangement of elements on the page. The roll of two dice determines the coordinates for the typographic composition within a 6×6 grid, creating a unique and random layout for each page of the catalogue.

Cover for the 1991 Accolade, Inc. computer game software catalog, featuring a mix of seemingly incompatible fonts, which was a popular post-modern trend in the late 1980s and early 1990s. From Wikipedia:

Accolade, Inc. (later Infogrames North America, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher based in San Jose, California. The company was founded as Accolade in 1984 by Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead, who had previously co-founded Activisionin 1979. The company became known for numerous sports game series, including HardBall!, Jack Nicklaus and Test Drive.

Other type treatments found in the catalog’s interior pages can be seen at the Internet Archive.

Example of the Interior pages of the catalog. The justified, multi-colored text on the left page is Neue Helvetica 55 Roman. On the right page, “Golf” is ITC American Typewriter Medium Condensed, “NEW” is Compacta Light, the body and caption text is a mix between Neue Helvetica 57 Condensed and 77 Condensed Bold. (The text of the game – over the image of Jack Nicklaus – is Cheltenham Condensed, in caps with small caps.)

A fine addition to my humble but growing collection of Motter Ombra used in East Germany:

Spielbox is a compendium of six games produced by VEB Piko in Sonneberg, probably in the mid-1980s. Othmar Motter’s display masterpiece is used in lowercase letters for the name, with a die in place of the i dot.

The Thuringian town of Sonneberg is known “as a center of toy production and was dubbed the ‘toy capital of the world’ in the 1920s.”

Corporate brand identity and packaging design for Monopoli Music from Helsinki, Finland. The record label was founded by the Finnish rap artist Adi L Hasla in 2019.

The logo consists of a radar circle and a dice. The circle symbolizes the radar of finding new promising artists, while the dice reminds us that new music is always a gambling.

To introduce the record label, Adi L Hasla decided to bring the message of his founding and building with musical artists to the two video clips for “Monopoli” and “Money”.

Stationery.

Shown here are the different design approaches and combinations for possible typefaces, including Denver. The final design of the logo uses Sequel 100 Black with Messapia for secondary text.

Arkham Horror: Third Edition is a cooperative board game for one to six players who take on the roles of investigators trying to rid the world of eldritch beings known as Ancient Ones. Based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, players will have to gather clues, defeat terrifying monsters, and find tools and allies if they are to stand any chance of defeating the creatures that dwell just beyond the veil of our reality.

From the publisher's website, Fantasy Flight Games:

The year is 1926, and it is the height of the Roaring Twenties. Flappers dance till dawn in smoke-filled speakeasies, drinking alcohol supplied by rum runners and the mob. It’s a celebration to end all celebrations in the aftermath of the War to End All Wars.

Yet a dark shadow grows in the city of Arkham. Alien entities known as Ancient Ones lurk in the emptiness beyond space and time, writhing at the thresholds between worlds. Occult rituals must be stopped and alien creatures destroyed before the Ancient Ones make our world their ruined dominion.

Only a handful of investigators stand against the horror. Will they prevail?

The game logo is set in Birmingham. The numbers on the dice (2009) are set in Arnold Böcklin. The distressed font found in “Rulebook” and “DICE SET” is Ugly Qua by Manfred Klein. The “Call of Cthulu” logo is derived from Columbus.

Choctaw Casinos has adopted eye-catching rainbow typography using the Refrigerator Deluxe typeface by Mark Simonson for their latest campaign. This typography treatment was carried out consistently across multiple platforms: billboards, website, magazine ads and more.

The Choctaw logo is set in Trajan and Gill Sans; the body copy on the website is set in Encode Sans.

Brand identity for Par Hasard Studio