What did it mean to wear a pearl? Or having a diamond ring?

Through the analysis of almost one hundred selected masterpieces in the Uffizi Galleries' collection, we discover how jewellery plays an important role in iconography, or simply enriches the moral description of the character. Other times, on the other hand, the jewel, by showing an execution that can be traced back to a precise place and environment, allows us to understand the cultural inclinations of a character or to place them geographically. Author Silvia Malaguzzi guides the reader to discover the language of jewellery thanks to a very rich harvest of images and the beauty of the detailed reproductions of many of the most famous works in the history of art.

Diamanti Rubini e Smeraldi (“Diamonds Rubies and Emeralds”) is published in Italian by Nomos Edizioni.

The Legion of Honor was the sole West Coast venue for the first major exhibition of Tudor portraiture, textiles, sculpture, silver, jewelry, and manuscripts in the United States. The exhibition followed the development of the arts in England from Henry VII’s seizure of the throne in 1485 to the death of his granddaughter Elizabeth I in 1603.

We sought to capture the typographic zeitgeist of the Renaissance through the mixed use of Blackletter (Respira Black) paired with Humanist Roman (Dear Sir/Madam). The text is either fully justified or creates conical shapes using a kind of tapered typesetting. Inspired by the hyper-ornamentation of book artistry from this era, the primary lock-up variation is finished by a dingbat in the shape of the Tudor Rose, the heraldic emblem of the House of Tudor. The exhibition title wall featured gilded three dimensional letters using gold leaf foil. For aided legibility, a custom T was created.

Graphic identity: Lizzie Baur
Exhibition graphics: Meghan Moran, Kate Agarwal
Exhibition design: Xiaoxi Chen, Tristan Telander
Art direction: Amy Browne, Benjamin Shaykin, Alejandro Stein
Installation photography: Gary Sexton

When renovation works started in the courtyard of the Prince’s Palace of Monaco in 2014, restoration experts discovered antique decoration under crumbling layers of old paint. The resurfacing of these late-Renaissance frescos led to further examination of other parts of the castle and more scraping off paint inside the edifice – about 600 square meters in total.

The figurative key visual in this post depicts a minor character of the grand Ulysses fresco that adorns the ceiling of the throne room. It is part of a campaign held in 2022 when the freshly restored frescos were first presented to general public. This campaign and the general visual identity of the Prince’s Palace are the work of studio Guénola Six.

On the posters and in the logotype, there is a mix of two typefaces. “Palais de Monaco” (or “Palais Princier”, respectively) is typeset in capitals from Mars Wide, designed by Alaric Garnier and released by Production Type. The remaining parts show Neue Haas Unica, a revival made by Toshi Omagari at Linotype. The same strategy reappears in the brochure where Mars serves for the headlines and Neue Haas Unica for the reading text.

While Neue Haas Unica can be described as a calm sans-serif of narrow proportions available in a wide range of weights, Mars is exactly the opposite: it deliberately comes in only one weight and three widths (Condensed, Standard, Extended) and calls for attention as much as for clear decisions.

Exhibition logo in Polish and English

Przebudzeni. Ruiny antyku i narodziny włoskiego renesansu / The Awakened. The Ruins of Antiquity and the Birth of the Italian Renaissance is an exhibition curated by Mikołaj Baliszewski and shown at Warsaw’s Royal Castle in 2023.

The exhibition logo and visual identity takes clues from Renaissance typography. The theme of the exhibition was the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century, which was primarily inspired by the rediscovered heritage of antiquity.

Podpunkt designed a custom typeface dubbed The Awakened, which they used in the logo, posters, ads, accompanying prints, promotional video, exhibition catalog, and exhibition typography. It is paired with Cirka. The text typeface in the catalog is Fazeta.

Printed matter

Exhibition catalog

The Donatello retrospective shown at Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie features branding and visual identity led by two design studios based in Berlin: Polyform and Studio Edgar Kandratian. The studios chose Ogg Display for the show’s typography and messaging. The scale of the project is impressive, and includes the exhibition's advertising campaign, print materials, and gallery text.

Donatello was a prominent figure in the Italian Renaissance. Ogg’s “classical” and refined aesthetic made it quite fitting for the exhibition of the sculptor. The studios’ use of Ogg, from all-caps to all-lowercase to the forward-rolling of the O in the titling, capture the movement and gestures of the typeface, too. Ogg was inspired by its namesake lettering artist’s book jacket designs, and the typeface’s timeless elegance has already made it a contemporary classic.

“Close-ups of the main motifs bring the great emotional power of the works into focus,” says Polyform’s Katrin Middel. “The typography is inspired by ancient and renaissance fonts. A subtle intervention in the typography adapts the orientation of the letters to the viewing directions of the sculptures.”

The physical exhibition closed doors, but you can still take a virtual tour (in German).

Signum. La Gloria del Renacimiento en el Reino de Murcia is the name of an exhibition that spoke about the glory of the Renaissance times in Murcia, a coastal region in the south of Spain. It was a golden moment in the art of the country.

We were asked to conceptualize, create, design and craft the catalog to this show, deliverables that had to emanate the essence of the exhibition as well as being clear, informative and respect the adequacy of the format. Things being like this, we decided to go to the source to get inspiration; we turned into the first published books from the Renaissance times. We decided we would do a modern version of those titles, both for the exhibition graphics and for the catalog, because it was a nice homage to pay to the topic and those times in history in which culture changes and evolves so much the world becomes a better place.

The editorial pieces were completed with Bembo, a renaissance typeface, revisited in 1929 by Monotype. It was a wonderful opportunity to take aesthetic choices that would reflect the true nature of the exhibition. Edited by Juan Ignacio Ruiz López, the book was published by Gobierno de la Región de Murcia.

Detail of the lettering on the cover

The Terrace of the Map Room in the Uffizi Gallery is an environment whose murals represent the geographical maps of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, painted in 1588 to 1589 by Ludovico Buti and Stefano Bonsignori, while the wooden ceiling was decorated with paintings by Jacopo Zucchi that were transported from the Palazzo Florence in Rome during 1588 at the behest of Ferdinando I.

This volume, published at the end of the restoration that brought to light the qualities of style and technical peculiarities, documents the genesis and reasons for the commissioning of the room, its collecting history and the events that have marked it over the centuries, to finally arrive at the current perspectives.

In over 370 images (the result of an ad hoc photographic campaign) and with the multi-disciplinary contribution of 30 authors, not only the historical and artistic events of the environment are presented but also the analytical documentation of all the restoration works that have allowed to return the Terrazzo to the public in all its original splendor.

Published in both Italian and English by Nomos Edizioni, this precious volume pairs Sole Sans with Rialto dF, recalling the italian renaissance with dropcaps at the beginnings of the chapters. On the cover, type is playing with the wall paintings creating different layers.

Cover

Front and back cover

Cover of Italian and English edition

Italian and English spines

Table of contents

Opening pages

Restoration section double page

Opening page detail

Restoration section detail

Flecha in italic and roman styles on the book’s spine

Celestial Intelligences: Angelology, Cabala, and Gnosis: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Quest for the Perennial Philosophy by Greg Kaminsky, is a book that explores the life and ideas of Italian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and his angelology in order to interpret the process of spiritual ascension that he prescribed in his Oration.

This publication was released in three different editions: a Standard Edition (shown here), a Collector’s Edition, and an Artisanal Edition with slipcase, all in limited copies.

Illustrations and typography by Joseph Uccello.

The imprint is set in Calluna and lists the typefaces used for typesetting the book. Marbach and Px Grotesk are not shown in the images included here.

The title page features an early use of Chassi (2021, here with red initial C), paired with Heldane.

The frontispiece chart uses LL Catalogue and Stanley Italic.

Chapter beginning with Flecha in Extralight and Italic. The main text is set in Calluna, the footnote in LL Catalogue.

A drop cap from Flecha

Studio Work worked with Karamela, a new fashion brand offering quality, timeless pieces, ready to wear for refined women in Croatia and Australia.

The brand strategy and look and feel was developed to tie in with the business's objectives – being available to the Croatian and Australian market, with a brand aesthetic to match their fashion ethos of timeless, modern pieces that make women feel comfortable and beautiful.

The name Karamela means ‘caramel’ in Croatian, a beautiful reference that we used within the brand. To separate Karamela from their competitors, we created an identity that celebrates Croatian culture, lifestyle, and beauty, with a modern twist. With references to Romanesque architecture and the Renaissance, we used shape, colour, photography and typography to give the brand soul and a point of difference.

Donated to the Louvre Museum by the heirs of the baron, collector and philanthropist Edmond de Rothschild, the set of works from the German Renaissance was shown in Luzes do Norte an exhibition held at Museo de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) in 2012. The exhibition featured 61 prints and drawings on paper, with works by Dürer, Altdorfer, Schongauer and 23 other 16th century artists.

The catalog, designed for Bizu design under direction of Ana Starling, uses Requiem throughout.

Живопись и опыт в Италии XV века is the Russian title of Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. First published in 1972 by Oxford University Press, the influential book by British art historian Michael Baxandall was made available to Russian readers by V-A-C Press in 2019. The translation was provided by Natalia Mazur and Anastasia Forsilova.

The book typography by Dmitry Gusev and Mikhail Filatov uses Newton.

“Concertos Renascentistas” (“Renaissance Concerts”) was the name given to the 2019 season of the Canção das Iluminuras orchestra. The objective of the season was to hold concerts that would give greater visibility to the musical production of the Renaissance period, a period normally associated with its incredible production of visual arts, but little remembered when it comes to its musical production, and with a good part of its main composers having few appearances in the programming of the traditional orchestras.

The season featured three concerts, and that was the starting point for the creation of the visual identity system. With the idea of "renaissance", we created three suns with interchangeably built formats. Each sun becomes central to each concert, and the color palette was built on the vivid colors of paintings by Renaissance painters. Furthermore, the arch shape was fundamental for the compositions, as it is a very present form in Renaissance architecture.

Kessler was chosen for the titles due to its inscriptional inspiration, which retrospect to the renaissance graphic repertory. Harbour was chosen as the first support font for the secondary information, and Acumin as the second support font, used on long texts and some captions.

The subject of this doctoral thesis in the field of editorial design (at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice) was the preparation of a text about the design of books in the 16th century in Poland and the graphic design of the publication. The resulting book has a general and popularizing nature. The aim of the project was to provide the collected and structured material showing the formation of the Polish Renaissance book to people interested in the history of books, as well as experienced and beginner graphic designers.

The graphic concept of this project is based on the division of text into 2 parts, each with respectively 5 chapters assigned. Book structure is extended and multi-layered, it required typefaces crafted to work together in close harmony. Visual cohesion was needed. Superfamily Tempera (Tempera Biblio and Tempera) was designed for setting continuous text in books, offering a collection of economically proportioned sans and serif typefaces with efficient spacing and low contrast. For this project, I have used 10 styles, and two widths, occasionally using the built-in swash characters, ornaments and other advanced OpenType features.

More about this project can be found at Behance.

This new book presents new conclusions about Leonardo da Vinci’s early life as an artist and amplifies his role in Andrea del Verrocchio’s studio. The book features three essays finely set in Thesaurus, presenting recent scientific analysis about the attributions of paintings to Leonardo. The dust jacket and the cloth binding underneath are set with Thesaurus Display Medium.

L’arte per l’arte (“Art for Art's Sake”) is an art exhibition in Ferrara's Estence castle. The project was organised by the municipality of Ferrara in collaboration with the Ferrara Arte Foundation. This exhibition, the third in a series of exhibitions, is dedicated to the enhancement of the historical and artistic heritage of the city which became inaccessible after an earthquake hit the area in 2012.

The focus now shifts towards the period from the 5th to the 18th century. The richly frescoed rooms of the south wing and the Camerini del Castello will host four important paintings owned by the ASP, the Centro Servizi alla Persona in Ferrara, Masi Torello and Voghiera, deposited at the Museums of Ancient Art. — ferrarae.com

Until 1 July 2018, Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, Italy presents the exhibition Bellini/Mantegna. Two Masterpieces Compared. Two depictions of the same subject – the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, one by Giovanni Bellini, the other by Andrea Mantegna, are shown side by side for the first time in history.

At first glance they look completely alike, and yet you understand that the two mirror-works have completely different personalities. But who came up with the marvellous composition?

The design process was characterized by concepts such as comparison and mirroring. The two artists are represented in a balanced way, communicating at the same time the stylistic differences. The mirrored construction allows reading the image in two ways. The logotype is based on two typefaces derived from Roman capitals (used by both artists within their works), opting for a more graceful style for Mantegna and a more linear style for Bellini. This choice is derived from the comparison of the two works, where Mantegna’s gives greater sacredness to the figures, embellishing them with haloes and decorations, while Bellini’s places the characters in a more familiar and human dimension. [paraphrased from the Italian press text]

The font chosen for Mantegna is Charlemagne Bold. Carol Twombly’s display typeface is inspired by versal capitals of late tenth-century England which in turn revived classical Roman letterforms. Bellini is typographically represented by a customized pairing of elements found in History, Peter Biľak’s playful layer system based on Roman inscriptional capitals. The wordmark combines History 04, a monolinear sans serif skeleton, with History 09, a layer of long tapered serifs. Of the latter, only the top serifs were used. The proportions of E and L were adjusted, maybe to compensate for the different lengths of the two names.

Christoph Dunst’s Novel Sans is used for secondary information on the poster and the book cover as well as for the texts in the exhibition. The standard typeface used in the visual identity of Querini Stampalia is Futura. It here appears for the museum’s name alongside the stylized ‘Q’ mark which was designed by Studio Camuffo in 2002.

​Exhibition design by We Exhibit. Graphic design together with Studio Visuale.

Kudos to Rinaldo for the helpful pointers — grazie mille!

The catalog accompanying the exhibition is published by Silvana Editoriale.

Hélène Marian together with Doc Levin redesigned the programs issued by the French National Renaissance Museum since 2014. They are all set with a colored (or reversed) Francesco, which turns out to be inspired by types cut in the Renaissance.

The typography is very refined: alternates ‘a’ & ‘e’ are used (with open counterforms rather than obstructed ones). So are discretionary ligatures, oldstyle figures and the rarely seen fleurons.

See more pictures on the websites of Hélène Marian and Doc Levin.