From PEP’s case study:

SushiCo approached us with a request for a new visual identity as part of its brand revitalization initiative. The brand is undergoing a comprehensive renewal process, incorporating new architectural concepts and menu designs that convey a premium image capable of accommodating the new brand strategy. Additionally, SushiCo is expanding internationally and exploring new restaurant concepts.

Branding for Kimbara premium waygu, Japanese-style beef from Kimberly, Australia. The design is minimalist, mostly black and white, and relies on typography and calligraphy to make it distinctive. Two display typefaces are combined: Ergon for the main wordmark and Chap for titles and headlines.

From the words of Block, the branding studio behind the project:

The brand is built from contrast. Japanese bloodlines, raised in the wilds of the Kimberley. Refined craft, grounded in rugged country. Kimbara’s identity draws directly from this terrain – a mineral-rich palette inspired by the region’s iconic black rock formations. At its heart is the Wagyu itself, introduced through a bespoke logomark based on the Japanese character for ‘GYU’ (cow).

To bring this to life, master Japanese calligrapher Maki Shimano was commissioned. Her brushstrokes – elegant, angular and expressive – gave the mark both cultural resonance and visual power. Paired with a bold, modern wordmark, the final identity is a collision of heritage and place. It speaks fluent Wagyu, but with an unmistakable Australian accent.

The website was built by Start and additionally uses TT Commons for small text.

Building on the success of its acclaimed predecessor, Yearbook of Lettering #2 brings the global lettering scene to life like never before. From elegant calligraphy and expressive hand lettering to bold graffiti, street art, and dynamic 3D-lettering, this volume celebrates the creativity, diversity, and energy shaping contemporary lettering today.

The book is divided into Ambassadors with in-depth interviews from leading figures, Artists showcasing 90 creators from 31 countries, Findings featuring 216 standout Instagram works, and an Index with detailed artist information.

Yearbook of Lettering #2 is both an inspirational showcase and a practical guide for designers, agencies, and lettering enthusiasts worldwide. Explore the stories, techniques, and personalities that make contemporary lettering such a dynamic and ever-evolving field.

Published by Slanted Publishers, the book was managed by editor Linus Haug and designed by Lars Harmsen (Creative Director) and Linus Haug (Art Director), with Juliane Lipp and Samira Niedermayer. The cover artwork was created by “Xesta” Hugo Moura. Printed in full-color offset and bound as a stiff brochure with thread stitching, the book measures 16×24 cm and spanning 272 pages. It carries the ISBN 978-3-948440-92-3 and will be released in November 2025.

Although there is no need to present another showing of Helvetica, this one is too bad-ass not to share. Has there ever been a more bad-ass poster about calligraphers and letterers? (That was not an invitation for you to send us posters about calligraphers and letters that you think are more bad ass.) This one by Georg Schmid is a total stunner and one of our all-time favorites. Also, it’s a good excuse to look up the work of Lore Bujatti, Friedl Goldschmid, Hertha von Larisch, Epi Schlüsselberger, Georg Schmid, Gretl Wollner, and Leo Wollner. Get to it.

The cover of IDEA no. 411 embodies the theme of the special feature on Arabic calligraphy and typography. White text is set in the 29LT Ada Flat font from 29LT, and the emerald blue typographic elements were designed by Tarek Atrissi. Additionally used fonts include Univers and Plantin. The Mincho used for Japanese text is yet unidentified.

In 2024, publishing house Podpisnie Izdaniya issued Ирландские чудные сказания (“Irish Fairy Tales”) by James Stephens and Ирландские сказки и легенды (“Irish Fairy and Folk Tales”) by William Butler Yeats. The covers of both publications, designed by Vladimir Vertinsky in collaboration with artist Maria Sutyagina, feature Yuni Slab by Philipp Neumeyer.

Behind the Light is a 1992 album by Japanese musician Osamu Kitajima.

Post-Antiqua is used with squeezed proportions and faux small caps for Kitajima’s name, and with stacked letters for the title. The name of publisher Higher Octave Music is added in two weights of ITC Korinna.

Takafumi Maeda of Cracker Design, Inc. is credited with the original art direction and Dee Westlund for that of the US release. Murry Whiteman at L&W Design worked on the US design. The washi was painted by Ikko Fukunaga and the portrait is by Fred Ohringer.

[More info on Discogs]

From record label Squama:

Pianist Masako Ohta and trumpet player Matthias Lindermayr are back on Squama with ‘Nozomi’, the follow-up to their 2022 debut ‘MMMMH’. The Japanese title, which translates to ‘hope’, felt fitting, as the album was conceived during a time of personal loss for Ohta, during and after which music proved itself as a beacon of hope.

Taking the element of improvisation to the visual level, Tokyo-based photographer Daisuke Tomizawa shot two atmospheric images for each song of the new album – portraits of everyday life that capture the feeling of the music. The photographs are featured in a 24-page Risograph-printed booklet that accompanies the second collaborative release by Ohta and Lindermayr.

Nozomi was designed by Maximilian Schachtner using Melange Grotesk in Medium and Bold, with M 2c Bold for Japanese text. Calligraphy and stamp by Ko Huihuang.

Source: www.flickr.com Naiad & Walter Einsel: Art from the Heart, 2008. License: All Rights Reserved.

Naiad and Walter Einsel were a couple of illustrators. They met in 1952, got married in 1953, and shared a business – first in New York and from the mid-1960s in Westport, Connecticut – often working collaboratively on commissions.

For nearly half a century, Naiad (1927–2016) and Walter (1926–1998) created elaborate Valentines for one another. A selection of these illustrations, collages, poems and sculptures were collected in the book Art from the Heart, published in 2008 by Xlibris.

Shown here is a Valentine card that Naiad made for Walter in 1993:

Valentine Love Seeds
Sow the seeds of love and reap a Magical Harvest of sweet passon fruit. — Naiad
February 19th Nineteen Ninety-three
For Walter Only

Most of the text is rendered in her signature script calligraphy. The rest is probably hand-lettering (or rubber stamps?), but two styles are based on typefaces: “Valentine” and “Walter” are in Concave Condensed, a design that originated in metal ca. 1882 at MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan in Philadelphia. “Love Seeds” features caps from De Vinne, first cast by St. Louis’s Central Type Foundry about a decade later.

To learn more about Naiad and Walter and see more of their work, see the dedicated website and the accompanying Instagram account curated and maintained by their granddaughter, Lisa Bastoni.

Aadil Abedi is an artist and creative director who brings a contemporary twist to calligraphy. He recently re-launched his e-commerce website to show updated works and partnerships with brands like Disney, Apple, and Rastah.

The website’s visual design combines Aadil’s lush calligraphy with elegant typefaces like Fragment Glare, Switzer, and Jackelyn Script. The designer selected Fragment Glare because the typeface's tittle resembles rhombic dots used in calligraphy. The website also uses animation to show the typefaces and calligraphy in motion.

Website design and webflow development by Amera Ibrahim, with copywriting by Madeleine O. Teh.

Folder and specimen for the introduction of Wilke Antiqua for phototypesetting, published by Linotype around 1988. The brochure is set in the three weights of Wilke, in roman and italic styles, and also showing the originally available oldstyle numerals and small caps. Conceived by Martin Wilke, it contains various calligraphic works by the lettering artist and typeface designer who died in 1993. Typographical design, layout and production work by Ralf Rudorf of Sedley Place Design, Berlin branch, Germany.

Ito is a Michelin Guide-recommended omakase-style Japanese restaurant, led by Michelin Star chef Masa Ito and Kevin Kim. With a flagship restaurant in Tribeca NYC, Ito’s 16-seat counter provides an experience that blends precise execution and technique with a modern approach to the omakase experience. They opened a second location in Las Vegas in 2024.

Slope Agency worked closely with the Ito team to craft a distinctive brand identity system that seamlessly fuses tradition with modernity. Leading the brand identity is a flexible logo that effortlessly shifts between English and Kanji, capturing the essence of the brand's dual cultural roots. Complementing this, Slope chose an elegant and muted color palette to evoke sophistication and timelessness. Each element contributes to a cohesive brand that not only reflects Ito's rich heritage but also their sense of forward-thinking.

In creating Ito’s website Slope adopted a minimalist approach, focusing on the brand’s clean and modern aesthetic. Embracing simplicity, they employed a dark background to artfully showcase the captivating food photography and create a visually striking, immersive online experience aligned with Ito's sophisticated brand identity.

The brand typefaces are Dada Grotesk and Roboto. The Kanji logo is custom calligraphy.

See the full case study on Slope Agency's website.

Per Spelmanns Comeback is the parallel release to Postreptilia by Norwegian artist and poet Ivar Orvedal. His spoken poetry — excerpts from the Postreptilia book — are paired with a varied soundscape ranging from controlled minimalism to eclectic jazz improvisation.

Referring this wide scope of expressions, the album cover was designed by Modest [Rune Døli] using The Pyte Foundry’s Overdose and Errata, as well as gestural calligraphy done by Ellmer Stefan.

The annual report 2019 for the Rome University of Fine Arts (RUFA) was designed by Intorno Design (Guido Lombardo, Roberta De Cristofaro, Tommaso Salvatori) as a “journey among real projects, metareal landscapes, poetic thoughts between past and future, on the edge of the possible”. The hardcover book comes in a white offset striped paper slipcase, and is printed in five spot colors on ecological FAVINI papers, sourced from wool and cotton processing waste.

The design uses TWK Lausanne (by Nizar Kazan) throughout, changing styles, colours, weights and alignments from time to time.

Meridians and parallels of the pages indicate its structure and define its navigation.

The columns of Italian and English texts are always facing each other, dialoguing with each other.

The insert, printed in one color on sky-colored paper, collects the story of the 2019 RUFA Contest.

Throughout the publication, full-page calligraphy rewrites some poetic verses. Blue, with its powerful symbolic meaning, is the dominant color.

The Artiya Школа каліграфії (Artiya Calligraphy School) started in 2011. The project engages in developing the culture of calligraphy and type design in Ukraine, branching out into several directions: a school, a studio, a calligraphy shop and a gallery.

Every year, Artiya holds an exhibition of Ukrainian typefaces and calligraphy together with Book Arsenal in Kyiv. This event gathers calligraphers and designers who share their experience and present fresh works.

Mariupol is used throughout their website.

In my graduation project at École Supérieure des Arts Visuels de Marrakech (ESAVM), I initiated a study exploring the profound story of mapmaking and cartography, introducing Up-side Down.

The first part of the project is a bilingual Arabic and English book, featuring three major subjects. The first one explores a brief understanding of the impact of cartography on our lives and its political power; the second part accentuates the north and south’s pre-12th-century history, the Arab Golden Age, studying a number of Islamic maps and manuscripts and revealing how the Arabs used to see the north; and the last section of the book covers the attempts of representing the world on a two-dimensional surface using the map projections, transferring the spherical network of parallels and meridians of the globe into a flat surface, these attempts had various intentions and some of them have deceptively represented the world in order to draw a contrast between religions and races.

The book is a paperback double-sided halves bound together with one part rotated 180° relative to the other (also known as the dos–à–dos binding), serving the script direction of each language, and emphasizing the Up-side Down notion.

On the second part of the project comes the posters, following the third chapter of the book, featuring a set of three parodical map projections that have been grimly distorted to accentuate the subject.

The digital calligraphy that I used is in Naskh script, composed with a design software for Arabic calligraphy called eMashq.com. The font used for the Arabic body text is Nassim Arabic. For the English texts I paired Kessler and JJannon.

See more images on my Behance and Instagram accounts.

The Lettering Artists Association of Macau (LAAOM) organized a stunning exhibition with the theme “Pop & Art”. Sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR Government, LAAOM invited over seventeen Western calligraphy artists from Macao, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Vietnam, and Korea, showcasing over fifty artworks, with both “pop” and “traditional” concepts that have been applied to the artworks, using calligraphy as the medium.

Lam Ieong Kun with his team at Indego Design created an thrilling exhibition identity using a creative font pairing of Grand Slang by Nikolas Type and Nostra by Lucas Descroix amongst Aeonic by CoType for functional, informative usages, perfected by hand lettering from Oliver Lao. The Chinese typeface is yet unidentified.

The identity is displayed on a wide range of media from fully foiled windows to staircases and even buses.

The MS-DOS fighting game Sango Fighter was originally published by Panda Entertainment in Taiwan and released in 1993 for PC/AT platform. This one uses some classic Apple fonts such as Cartoon 12 (for the copyright line, see above). The upright cursive (see “Tsao Tsao’s merciless servant Tien Wei”) is Cream 12 AKA Palo Alto. The blackletter is a bit similar to London, but not a direct match.

Identity design for Karachi Review, a newly Urdu language literary magazine in book format. A project that includes everything from the creation and construction of the editorial design, the visual code, and the development from the covers to the contents.

For this specific project, I used the Arabic font Alama and the Urdu font AA Sameer Sagar Nastaleeq.

In June 2021, the Tipo Brda society together with Type Salon organized a workshop with Dutch calligrapher and lettering artist Guido de Boer.

This three-day experimental calligraphy workshop will introduce you to new ways and ideas on how to start or upgrade your calligraphy skills. The first part of the workshop will be dedicated to the traditional form of calligraphy writing, later we will explore and learn about new approaches and tools for experimenting and expressive writing.

The event took place at the City Museum of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The graphics made to promote the event use Spektra and Wesna, both designed by Krista Likar and Alja Herlah of Type Salon. Spektra is used mixing two contrasting weights/widths. Wesna can be seen in several weights, with lowercase. These extensions are yet unreleased.