A poem written by Charles Knowles Bolton about a historical figure in Connecticut. The decorations are by Ethel Reed, but the printer or book designer is uncredited. The publisher, Lamson, Wolffe, and Company, wrote the following in their 1896 catalog:

It is printed in a a dark brown ink, in an old style antique type, on heavy, hand-made paper of natural tint, with deckled edges and uncut leaves. The book is appropriately illustrated by Miss Ethel Reed, who has drawn also the title-page and cover designs. […]

“Much of the attraction of Mr. Bolton’s little volume lies in the admirable illustrations and letter-heads by Miss Ethel Reed. These designs are in the ‘poster’ style, and in their cleverly massed effects and bold outline have considerable charm and originality.” — The Literary World.

The design is typical of the Arts & Crafts movement, favoring bold strokes in both artwork and type. Old Style Antique is the US import of Miller & Richard’s Old Style Antique No. 7, a 1850s–60s design that regained popularity in the early 1900s. It was later revised as Bookman.

The main title type is a mystery. It seems to match Boston’s Old Style Antique No. 2, but that W!

Multiple styles and widths from the Staff Collection by R-Typography are used on the Saber Fazer website. The project aims to offer a window into Portuguese traditional arts and crafts:

Saber Fazer, initiated by the Portuguese DGArtes, showcases traditional Portuguese handicrafts as both tangible and intangible heritage. The website offers rare photos and comprehensive information about the arts, practicing artisans, and their distinctive creations. This platform serves as a gateway to understanding techniques, raw materials, regions, natural landscapes, and historical contexts.

Conceptualized by The Home Project Design Studio. Joana & Mariana from Porto executed the design, while V-A Studio from Lisbon developed the digital platform.

Viktoria and Römische Antiqua in use for an advert from 1906 for the handicrafts by the Rheinische Glashütten-Actien-Gesellschaft.

The Rheinische Glashütten AG in Ehrenfeld near Cologne was one of the most important glassworks in the Rhineland from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Their glassware in the styles of historicism and Art Nouveau has been awarded numerous prizes and medals at international and national arts and crafts exhibitions and world fairs. Designers such as Peter Behrens, Joseph Maria Olbrich, and Koloman Moser worked for the company.

This large format hardback monograph on the work of C.F.A. Voysey is thoughtfully and beautifully designed using the typefaces Kingfisher for text and Waters Titling for display.

The book was edited by Karen Livingstone together with Max Donnelly and Linda Parry, and designed by Robert Dalrymple. It measures 220mm × 280mm and was published by V&A Publishing in 2016.

Alternate round-backed capital E of Waters Titling is used to great effect. Set together with Kingfisher Small Capitals.

The full scope of Kingfisher’s number sets are utilised – lining figures, oldstyle figures, small capital figures, and superiors.

PULP, the Pop-Up Lab for Papermaking, is a hypothetical pop-up workshop event designed to promote the idea of paper recycling in our daily life as well as to provide a place for people to experience the craftsmanship of papermaking. The pulp defines the nature of the paper. From recycled materials to the pulp, from pulp to the final paper, the handmade texture brings transform to life. To convey the ideas and engage more people from the urban area, PULP focuses on the concept of processing, lab, and transforming.

Following the idea of Arts & Crafts, the font chosen for the logo is Jürgen Huber’s Hothouse (Supertype). Designed in 2001 for The Glasgow School of Art, it’s inspired by the lettering of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Hothouse is paired with the reverse-contrast sans Gopher (Adam Ladd, 2019) for text.

This is a personal project created for portfolio purposes only, and no parts were used commercially. For more images, please visit the project page on Behance.

Book design, posters and exhibition design for 100 Years of Art Education in Tallinn,
designed by Stuudio Stuudio. From the Academy's website (translated):

The history book compiled for the 100th anniversary of the Estonian Academy of Arts consists of research articles. The writings with an emphasis on educational history illuminate new aspects and junctions in the formation of a central art school. The activities of the Estonian Art Society in establishing the school, the role of Voldemar Päts, the swallowing of the Tartu Art Institute, the Student Science Society and the teaching of red subjects in the ERKI, the turn of the urban patrols, the neoliberal challenges to EKA, etc.

The typography uses mainly Baton, available from Fatype; paired with Times for smaller texts.

Open Craft – Queer Materialism is an Arts & Crafts exhibition displaying works by 30 artisans at Stadsträdgården, Örebro, Sweden, June 8–September 1, 2019. The exhibition is shown in a greenhouse environment, thus becomes part of the daily operation at the location.

Queer is something that does not align, which does not meet our expectations. Queer occupies a different position, challenges conventions and opens up new interpretative opportunities. Queer is not static, since categories are established and become conventions, is a queer approach always in the border country, heading for the unexplored. — opencraft.se

The graphic concept takes inspiration from crafts such as patchwork reflected in patterns and shapes as well as the layout of the typography. The title typography is custom-made and the colour palette reflects the soil, greenery, sky, and sun at the location of the exhibition.

The typography uses two typefaces with roots in the late 19th, early 20th century: Or Lemmen is inspired by Antiqua, a typeface designed by Belgian neo-impressionist painter Georges Lemmen; Maple (Process Type) takes cues from early grotesks. Both typefaces are used within the catalogue and on the poster. The monospaced Neue Machina (Pangram Pangram) is used for captions, links etcetera.

Head over to It’s Nice That for an interview with designer Lina Forsgren.

Detail, showing all-caps Maple Regular; Or Lemmen Light and Light Italic; and Neue Machina Regular.

Source: www.instagram.com Poster design: Gerwin Schmidt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christopher Dresser for Hukin & Heath, spoon warmer, 1880. Photo: Martin Adam.

Source: www.instagram.com Poster design: Gerwin Schmidt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Marcel Breuer/Thonet, B25 armchair with reclining backrest (“Sitzmaschine”), 1928/1929. Collection Gerald Fingerle.

Most posters in Berlin’s urban space unfortunately aren’t worth a long look. When a poster in the subway for once succeeds to catch my eye, chances are pretty high that it’s one by Gerwin Schmidt. The accomplished designer from Munich has been responsible for the posters by the Bröhan-Museum for several years now, and he always manages to come up with something surprising. His work for the museum doesn’t adhere to a fixed corporate design. He uses all kinds of typefaces, in playful arrangements, sometimes involving stretched letterforms, perspective effects and other imaginative treatments that dogmatists would frown upon.

Source: www.instagram.com Photo: Sylvia Hinz. License: All Rights Reserved.

The third poster from the series, on display in front of the museum. It depicts Gerrit Thomas Rietveld’s toy barrow, c. 1920. Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019. Object photo: Thomas Goldschmidt.

The current exhibition that’s on display at this museum “for art nouveau, art deco, and functionalism” is titled “From Arts and Crafts to the Bauhaus. Art and Design – A New Unity!”

To mark the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus, the exhibition at Bröhan-Museum will explore the prehistory of the Bauhaus and contextualize it within the Europe-wide emergence of modernism. It will show decisive steps in this development including the Glasgow School, Vienna Jugendstil, Deutscher Werkbund, and the Dutch group De Stijl leading up to the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau. With around 300 highlights—furniture, graphic design, metal art, ceramics, painting—from fifty years of design history, the exhibition will seek to explain this pan-European discourse on design.

For the poster series to this show, Schmidt did a literal typographic interpretation of its title and theme. Each of the three key terms is rendered in a typeface that immediately evokes the corresponding style and spirit. Schmidt explains:

“About two thirds of the exhibits stem from the period before the Bauhaus, so it would have been inappropriate to use a Bauhaus-like font for everything. On the other hand, using a Jugendstil typeface for the word “Bauhaus” would have looked odd, too. Hence the mix.”

Source: www.instagram.com Poster design: Gerwin Schmidt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Richard Riemerschmid, table, 1899. Alternative poster design (unused).

Source: www.instagram.com Poster design: Gerwin Schmidt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Archibald Knox (1864–1933), table clock. Alternative poster design (unused).

“Arts” is set in P22 Arts and Crafts. Made by James Grieshaber and Richard Kegler in 1995, this font family is a digital interpretation of Dard Hunter’s lettering as used for Roycroft books and periodicals between 1900 and 1910. With its square shapes and curved diagonals, it takes cues from works by members of the Vienna Secession.

For “Crafts”, Schmidt chose Bernhard Bold Condensed AKA Bernhard Antique, which today is the most prominent member of Bernhard-Antiqua. This typeface family was originally cut by Louis Hoell after drawings by Lucian Bernhard. Based on the handmade letters for his famous Sachplakat posters, it’s distinguished by wobbly contours. Bernhard-Antiqua schmalfett was first cast by the Flinsch type foundry in Frankfurt/Main in 1912.

“Bauhaus” features the iconic single case Universal-Alfabet drawn by Herbert Bayer at the Bauhaus school in c. 1926. In 1997, Bayer’s final, bolder variant of the geometrically constructed letterforms was made into a digital font by Denis and Richard Kegler and released as P22 Bayer Universal, which is used here.

Source: www.instagram.com Image: Gerwin Schmidt. License: All Rights Reserved.

A peek into the process: preliminary sketches by Gerwin Schmidt. He eventually settled on the most effective layout, with the type at the top, in stacked and staggered black boxes, and a photograph of a single object underneath. A series of three posters was selected for print.

Source: www.instagram.com Photo: Gerwin Schmidt. License: All Rights Reserved.

The cover design of the exhibition catalog picks up the typographic lockup used for the posters. The book was designed by Gerwin Schmidt together with Philipp von Keisenberg.

Source: www.instagram.com Image: Gerwin Schmidt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Announcement card, October 2018. This first application features the most direct graphic translation of the title, with the focus on the arrow that leads from Arts and Craft to the Bauhaus. See also this poster by Lucian Bernhard from 1919/1923. The smaller type is in Luigi, a private font designed by Timo Thurner. Among commonly available fonts, Michael Doret’s DeLuxe Gothic Condensed probably comes closest.

The exhibition was curated by Dr. Tobias Hoffmann and Dr. Anna Grosskopf, and designed by Katleen Arthen. It is shown until 5 May 2019. Find more information on the website of the Bröhan-Museum.

Back and front covers for Bradley: His Book, Vol. 1, No. 1

Will Bradley, an illustrator, printer, and type designer, was one of the most prominent followers of Arts & Crafts ideas in the US. This self-published magazine was a sort of portfolio piece featuring his work by himself and friends, and helped promote the products and services of his clients: makers of paper, ink, and type.

In January 1896, Will Bradley formed the small Wayside Press in Springfield, Massachusetts. One of his most ambitious projects was the publication of Bradley: His Book. In the prospectus, Bradley describes it as: “a little magazine of interesting reading, interspersed with various bits of art, and privately printed at the Wayside Press[,] Springfield, Mass.”

When Will Bradley began to seek out new clients after relocating to Springfield, Massachusetts, he discovered an abundance of paper mills. Bradley used the Mittineague Paper Company’s Strathmore Deckle-Edge Book Paper in the first issue of Bradley: His Book, along with the products of two other paper companies that had commissioned advertisements for the issue. Mittineague was the first client of the Wayside Press in 1895 and continued the relationship even after merging with the Woronoco Paper Company and reincorporating as the Strathmore Paper Company in 1911. The company’s sample books often featured reprints of Bradley designs. — Alexander Johnston and Jaime Margalotti

Like other Arts & Crafts printers, Bradley favored dense pages and dark printing, with Gothic ornamentation though in a more naturalistic mode. The type (Jenson Old Style from ATF) is a typical turn-of-the-20th-century Jenson: heavy with exaggerated features. The book also features Bradley’s namesake typeface, released by ATF at about the same time, and another revival of Gothic styles.

Ad for American Type Founders’ Co. for which Bradley designed typefaces, including Bradley.

“A New Era in Fine Printing” ad for Mittineague Paper Company

Prospectus for Bradley: His Book, ca. 1896.