From Folkways:

Collected in County Down in 1960, these field recordings present the songs, processional music, and of course, the lambeg drum beats characteristic of Northern Ireland’s Protestant population. Samuel Charters’ extensive notes provide ethnographic accounts of the aesthetics of lambeg drumming, although they avoid much discussion of the drums’ inescapable political context.

No designer is credited, although it’s likely by Ronald Clyne, who designed most of the covers for Folkways Records. The art depicts the monument to Francis Crozier in Banbridge.

[More info on Discogs]

Three-color variant

I saw Revue a lot in France, on trucks and signs. It took me a while to find out what font it was. Gives me a 1970s feeling.

The Protestant Church in Düsseldorf consists of 17 congregations as well as facilities at hospitals, schools and youth centers. A new corporate design supports the transition to a modern future and communicates values and goals.

The design development was preceded by a strategic process in which a citizens' report, an internal survey and personas were developed to capture the needs of the people. The services of all congregations were structured and categorized for the first time.

The redesign creates a modern, uniform design line that reflects the self-image. The new logo shows houses arranged to form a cross - a symbol of community and faith.

The renaming from “evangelisch in Düsseldorf” to “Evangelische Kirche in Düsseldorf” strengthens the identity and recognizability. The key visual offers a wide range of possible applications. The shapes, reminiscent of church windows, stand for vitality and diversity.

In addition to personal contact, the website is the most important point of contact for parishioners and interested parties today. The new website is designed as a large service portal to make events and dates visible and promote community life.

The corporate design also characterizes the new headquarters “Haus der Kirche” with modern colors, font and key visuals, which are used in the interior design and signage.

The implementation process starts with three pilot congregations. An implementation kit and an online corporate manual will support the introduction of the new design to ensure a uniform external image.

To mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant hymn book, the German postal service published a stamp in January 2024. The stamp shows a stylized illustration of the hymn book and the church of Lutherstadt Wittenberge. I translated the historical theme into a contemporary, modern design , making visual reference to a church window that is illuminated. This effect intensifies when the stamp is arranged in a row with the margin of the sheet of ten stamps. GT Walsheim fits perfectly with the reduced, geometric illustrations and gives the stamp a modern character.

In addition to the stamp, two first issue postmarks were created for Berlin and Bonn, as well as the margin of the sheet of ten, which continues the design of the stamp beyond its format. The stamp is available in all Deutsche Post shops and online. The date of first issue was January 4, 2024.

The church in the village

In Germany more and more people are leaving the Christian Church. In 2022, for the first time, the majority of the population no longer belongs to the Church. The institution increasingly loses its social relevance nowadays. But what happens to the numerous church buildings that are left behind when the people leave?

Most of them will no longer be needed nor used as sacred spaces. Either they are subsequently rededicated, sold and repurposed. Moreover they remain in an empty state or getting demolished. Buildings nonetheless that are still visible in the cityscape, hardly changed externally, but in many places already are filled with new life.

The work deals with the phenomenon of church closures: converted, repurposed and also empty churches. What remains of the building and its appearance? What do the converted spaces tell us about current needs and developments of society? They can inspire us to reimagine possibilities with our own surroundings.

This book was made as Master’s thesis in HfK Bremen’s Studio Culture and Identity
96 pages, 21×28 cm, printed in an edition of 10 copies

The joint magazine of the Evangelischer Kirchenkreis Dortmund and the Diakonisches Werk Dortmund und Lünen has the programmatic title Mensch, (with comma). The subtitle translates to “reportages from diaconia and church in Dortmund.” And that’s what this annual magazine is all about: up-close photo reports on the people who work for the local diaconia and church, their work, and their projects – as well as the people who they’re working with.

Designer Andreas Homann comments (translated):

The magazine thrives on large-format, ‘humane’ images and contemporary typography. The two different fonts used for emphasis are striking. On the one hand, a wide, warm-looking typeface for sublines and quotations. The Mensch, wordmark was also derived from it. On the other hand, there is a condensed headline font that can stretch out to become really tall. The typeface choice references classic reportage magazines.

The “wide, warm-looking typeface” is Fabian Dornhecker’s Residenz Grotesk (La Bolde Vita). The condensed headline font is our Compilation Grotesk (Calderón), which comes with a height axis that allows the glyphs to expand vertically. Body text is set in Deni Anggara’s Alliance No.1 (Degarism Studio).

Originally established in 1824 as Berliner Missionsgesellschaft (BMG), the Berliner Missionswerk (“Berlin Missionary Society”) supports churches and development projects in the Middle East, in Africa, East Asia, Russia, Cuba, North America and Europe.

WeltBlick (“World View”), a magazine published by Berliner Missionswerk triennially, covers developments and news on its projects and their partner churches abroad.

Berliner Missionswerk’s identity mainly uses JAF Facit; the magazine WeltBlick designed by Katrin Art of Hellowork is set in Utopia in tight combination with Facit. The two typefaces share similar attributes such as somewhat narrow proportions and slightly squarish bowls – the typography of the magazine is a good example of how you can combine two families effectively.

The wordmark uses caps from the Black weight of Adrian Frutiger’s Vectora.

Bureau 205 has designed these Bibles in 2010. There are two Bibles, one in French and one in Malagasy. Shown here is the copy in Malagasy. Texts are composed with Alcalá and titles with Maax. The numbers have been specially drawn for chapters and verses.

“‘In the beginning was the Word,’ the Bible says about the origin of all things. For Huldrych Zwingli, ‘the word’ was both inspiration and instrument in his confrontation with God and man. The ‘word’ is thought of as a central element of the Reformation — and as an interface between theology and literature — to the present day.”

Exhibition Das Wort at Strauhof to commemorate 500 years of Reformation in Zürich. Graphic realization by Atelier Pol in collaboration with the curatorial team Rémi Jaccard and Philip Sippel, as well as the designer and scenographer Simon Husslein. The typefaces in use are from Suisse, designed by Swiss Typefaces.

Evangelisches Frankfurt is the newspaper of the Protestant Church in Frankfurt. It was designed by German newspaper designer Jan Famira.

The newspaper gets published five times a year and is sent to all Protestants living in Frankfurt free of charge. It seems the newspaper’s new design has easily convinced the audience as the post by a regular reader suggests: "The new design is really well done, very beautiful, appealing, and lively. Thanks a lot for that!"

Art director Jan Famira puts it this way: "Evangelisches Frankfurt has chosen its 40th anniversary to introduce readers to a completely redesigned newspaper, with a new nameplate, headline and body type. Among our core objectives was an improvement of legibility, especially for older readers. The newspaper’s new text face, Sindelar, along with an increase in text size, makes reading the paper far more easy."

Sindelar’s great legibility qualities can been seen throughout the newspaper.

Source: www.flickr.com Médiathèque protestante de Strasbourg. License: Public Domain.

You’re not supposed to use swash capitals in a row, or throw them in whenever you feel like it. You’re not supposed to use terminal forms at the end of every word, or use an ‘ß’ to print French. You’re not supposed to change font size before you’ve even finished the first word of your title. And if you must do these things, the title page of an edition of Calvin is certainly not the obvious choice as a site to deploy such excesses.

Good job nobody told printer Jean Crespin, who does all of those things together on one page on his edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion and … well, I’m not sure I’m going to say he gets away with it, but presumably he didn’t get hauled off to prison, so we’re counting that as a success, right? Crespin clearly was keen to show off the increasingly intricate italics of his time in his typography to celebrate his friend’s magnum opus.

Source: books.google.de Hendrik D. L. Vervliet: The Palaeotypography of the French Renaissance. License: All Rights Reserved.

The character set of Robert Granjon’s Paragon Italic. See also The Golden Compasses by Leon Voet, Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren

So what font is this? It looks a lot like Robert Granjon’s Paragon Italic (c. 20 pt), shown in Professor Hendrik Vervliet’s monumental Palaeotypography of the French Renaissance — it is the only font in the book that seems to include all the ligatures, terminal forms and swash capitals Crespin uses. (With two exceptions: it doesn’t include the ligature for ‘es’ and the second swash cap ‘M’ with a centre loop. Vervliet mentions but does not describe an alternate swash ‘M’ that was in circulation from the 1560s. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to see a reprint of the specimen in which he mentions this appears.) Supporting this, he lists that the font reached Geneva and the printing of Jean Crespin in 1558, two years before this edition. The 'a' in the largest line of roman type also looks a lot like it might be font C in this picture, a 48pt, which Vervliet also mentions Crespin using. (One development in this period of printing Vervliet mentions is use of increasingly larged-size mixed case on title pages rather than exclusive use of titling capitals, although in this case the largest sizes are caps-only. And in practice, many of the example uses Vervliet shows do use letterspaced swash capitals, although this is one of the most ostentatious I've seen, and particularly in a font that — unlike many other italics of the period — included non-swash capitals as an option.)

Photo: Blythwood. License: Public Domain.

A remake in Hoefler Text and Cormorant Garamond. While Hoefler Text has not really the same colour on the page, it contains almost all the crazy alternates.

Can modern typographers replicate this? Very closely, actually. Shown above is a remake in Hoefler Text (and Cormorant for the largest type), which has almost everything you need, including both swash Ms, terminal forms, the ampersands and long s — pretty much the only things missing are the italic ‘at’ and ‘th’ ligatures. Two and a half decades on, it’s startling how comprehensive the feature set of Hoefler Text is in replicating the Renaissance style — in an interview Hoefler has mentioned as an early influence ATF’s legendary 1923 specimen which shows ATF Garamond’s many italic alternates — although the general build of Hoefler’s italic is darker and higher-contrast than this. Adobe’s Garamond Premier (below) is even closer in build but doesn’t include the ligatures for ‘es’ and (terminal) ‘nt’, nor the centre-loop swash ‘M’. More stylised digital fonts in this vein with a lot of loopy alternates are Garalda and (more condensed) Thesaurus, although I haven’t used either.

Florian Hardwig. License: Public Domain.

Another replica using Garamond Premier, with adjusted spacing. The italic display and subhead styles of Robert Slimbach’s revival are directly based on Granjon’s Paragon Italic (see Paul Shaw’s Revival Type) and thus come very close in regard to the shapes.

Crespin seems to have liked letterspaced swash capitals when he could get them — I add below an additional image of a different book printed by him the year before using what looks like the same italic. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any articles discussing his aesthetic choices and how they fitted (or didn’t fit) usual tastes in Calvinist printing of the period. I'll add anything I find at a future date in the comments section.

Source: books.google.com Google Books. License: Public Domain.

Accord de plusieurs passages des Saintes escritures … — a different book printed by Jean Crespin in 1559, using what looks like the same italic.

A slightly earlier edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (in Latin) was that printed by Robert Estienne, a leading printer of the period and another defector from Paris to Calvin’s Geneva, who had died the year before Crespin’s edition was published. Its use of roman only on the title page, like most early Calvin editions, seems more in line with what modern audiences might expect the printing of a Christian text to look like.

Source: archive.org Internet Archive/Princeton Theological Seminary. License: Public Domain.

Another edition of Institutio christianae religionis, printed in 1559 by Robert Estienne (Robertus Stephanus)

The South Tyrolean office for communication and design Doc conceived the identity for the exhibition Luther und Tirol. The event focuses on the topic of Protestantism in Tyrol, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517.
Ironically, Doc make prominent use of ITC Bodoni, a digital interpretation of the types by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813), who spent 8 years of his career as a typesetter in the Vatican’s Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples).

Billboard ad “There is enough for everyone.”

Brot für die Welt (“Bread for the World”) …

is the globally active development and relief agency of the Protestant Churches in Germany. In more than 90 countries all across the globe we empower the poor and marginalised to improve their living conditions. Key issues of our work are food security, the promotion of health and education, the access to water, the strengthening of democracy, respecting human rights, keeping peace and the integrity of creation.

When Brot für die Welt merged with Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst in 2011/2012, Factor Design overhauled the brand architecture and the visual identity and introduced the contemporary and sober Galaxy Copernicus as the main typeface.

The iconic logo in Antique Olive had to make way for something less distinctive. The new logo doesn’t use a font. It retains a few traits like the orange squircle o and the t with the bracketed top left and the curved tail. In combination with the other generic Grotesk letters, the result feels like a botch job, though — it’s neither fish nor fowl.

Annual report 2011

Various leaflets

First page of Aktuell #52 (7/2015). Layout: János Theil

Cover of Analyse #48 (2/2015). Layout: János Theil.

Ad “Weniger ist leer” (Less is empty)

Before the relaunch in 2011/2012, Brot für die Welt used Antique Olive both for the logo and, in lighter weights, for most other purposes. Some of their regular publications like Aktuell or Analyse used ITC Weidemann as complimentary text typeface.

Cover of Global Lernen 2010-2, a triannual publication directed at teachers. Layout: Studio für Mediendesign Christoph Lang, Rottenburg

First page of Aktuell #07 (6/2011). Layout: Jörg Jenrich.

Cover of Analyse #01 (6/2011). Layout: Jörg Jenrich.