MacOS version

TypoTasten is a keycaps set for Windows and MacOS making the extended keyboard layout “E1” from the German keyboard standard DIN 2137 (2023) available to users of mechanical keyboard in Germany and Austria.

Rounded typefaces were often used on computer keyboards during the 1970s and 1980s because of the double-shot moulding production process, which cannot provide sharp corners for the key legends. The TypoTasten keycaps are produced with a dye-sublimation process instead, so any typeface would have worked. Hoss Round was chosen because it can be associated with that time when mechanical keyboards were heavily used, while also being interesting enough to give these keycaps their own unique look. In addition, the range of weights was useful to clearly separate the different layers on the keys. Not all glyphs are directly taken from the fonts. Some glyphs had to be added and some were modified to increase the legibility when being used in such a small size.

The project was launched on Kickstarter in November 2024.

Windows version

Windows version combined with Cherry system keys

MacOS version

Postcard which is shipped with the keycaps

Postcard which is shipped with the keycaps

Where Grape Leaves Grow is a book by Anna Daliza that explores the history of Maronite Catholics in Lebanon over two thousand years. It intertwines Anna's family story and her experience growing up as a second-generation immigrant in the white suburbs of Southwestern Ontario.

The design of the book, by Michelle Kuan and Emi Takahashi, reflects the poetic dialogue through an expressive and evolving textual layout. The book incorporates custom-made glyphs that symbolize the growth cycles of a grapevine. Its materiality and extended two-panel cover are inspired by the traditional wrapping of warak enab, Lebanese stuffed grape leaves. These elements come together to create an intimate and one-of-a-kind artist’s book.

This typography carefully mixes Kalice by Margot Lévêque with Vivaldi by Friedrich Peter. The captions are set in 29LT Baseet, and the font used for the few Arabic words is 29LT Zarid Text, both from 29LT.

The mix of Kalice and Vivaldi is also used for the book launch party.

The Horizon Helvetica ruler revolutionizes traditional rulers by addressing the limitations associated with digital area measurements and everyday portability. It offers dedicated Pixel and Pica sections, cleverly designed in a credit card size format, to overcome these challenges effectively. Crafted from stainless steel, this compact tool not only delivers practical functionality but also offers a delightful tactile experience that captures the attention of users.

With its comprehensive range of smart features, including a Pixel-Pica ruler, inch-cm ruler, protractor, compass, quick circles, isometric grid, and more, the Horizon Helvetica ruler proves to be an indispensable companion for sketching and design tasks.

The choice of the name Helvetica holds deep significance. Helvetica is a widely renowned sans-serif typeface originating from Switzerland in 1957. Derived from the Latin word for “Swiss,” Helvetica pays homage to its country of origin and has left an indelible mark on global design culture. Its use in creating iconic logos and brands, such as Nestle, BMW, Lufthansa, and Microsoft, showcases its enduring impact.

By merging the versatility of a “Swiss army knife” sketch tool with the iconic Helvetica typeface, the Horizon Helvetica ruler embodies both practicality and design excellence. This unique combination is made possible through collaboration with Monotype, the rightful holder of the Helvetica typeface. We extend our gratitude to the dedicated Monotype employees who have supported and contributed to the realization of this project, allowing us to integrate Helvetica into the Horizon Ruler. The logo uses Neue Helvetica.

We are thrilled to present our new Kickstarter project, and your support in this endeavor is greatly appreciated as we continue to celebrate the legacy of Helvetica and its profound influence on the world of design.

Horizon Helvetica is the brainchild of Ufuk Koc, designed under the banner of Horizon Design Solutions. Ufuk Koc’s creative vision and expertise in design solutions have culminated in the development of this innovative and versatile tool.

Many know of the legendary Bauhaus building Walter Gropius designed and the furnishings made by his students in collaboration for this purpose. But few know that when it came to choosing stools for the classrooms and workshops, Gropius deliberately chose the sturdy so called Rowac-Schemel stools from a small family-owned metal factory by the same name in the nearby town of Chemnitz, Germany. It’s exactly this stool that we’re bringing back to the market a century later, via Kickstarter.

We began this project by researching the brand’s nearly 60-year history, which began in 1888. Along the way, we came across various documents, including advertisements, brochures, and stationery. Along with various typography over the years, we noticed that Rowac had used an early sans serif font called Erbar-Grotesk. Coincidentally, this is the same font that is still used today for some street signs in East Berlin. The typeface has a minimalist character, while still retaining an approachable humanistic quality that other later sans serifs lost. We felt that this was the perfect match for Rowac, a brand known for its detailed yet simple industrial furniture.

But after finding out that the current offerings for Erbar Grotesk are extremely limited, we were thrilled to discover CJ Type's Dunbar, a modern reinterpretation of the classic. The different x-heights of the High, Low, and Text versions allowed us to tailor Dunbar to our specific needs.

In the enchanted land of letters is an upcoming book about Bronisław Zelek (1935–2018), Polish poster designer, type designer and painter.

Zelek was a brilliant artist, loved typography and operated it masterfully in his designs. He confessed that “the letter has haunted me all my life” – type is present in most of his works. Typography fascinates me as well, it “attacks” me literally everywhere, including when looking at Zelek’s letterforms. The project hence was born out of our shared passion – the love for letters.

Bronisław Zelek is mainly known as a representative of the Polish School of Posters. He designed more than a hundred of them! In the 1970s, he started designing typefaces, the most popular being New Zelek, which has been used in many projects in Poland and around the world for almost 50 years, for example in Microsoft’s 1980 logo. The last field where Zelek realized himself was painting, creating abstract pictures with his own original approach.

What will you find in the book?
– the story of Bronislaw Zelek
– extensive photo material
– Zelek’s previously unpublished poem “Scent of the taiga”
– historical background
– an essay by Zelek’s girlfriend, Hertha Grimm

For the book, I used three typefaces:
– New Zelek Pro by Threedotstype, which is a digitization of the original New Zelek from 1973
– Sztos by Mateusz Machalski, which is a digital and individually interpreted version of Baccarat from 1922
– Alegreya by Juan Pablo del Peral

The book will have 256 pages and bilingual text in Polish and English. It’s currently available for preorder. If you want to support the project and secure a copy, head over to Kickstarter.com. But don’t wait for too long: the crowdfunding campaign will end on March 31, 2023.

Mecanorma brochures with all five type styles designed by Zelek and produced by the French manufacturer of dry transfer lettering: New Zelek, Zelek Boldline, Zelek Bold, Zelek Shadline, and Zelek Black

Creative direction by Image Format for An Other Tarot. The entire tarot deck is set in Romie (by Margot Lévêque). From the website of the set’s initiator and publisher, tarot reader Mathilde Moriniere:

Inclusive and contemporary, An Other Tarot updates the classic tarot deck: the twenty-two major arcana of the traditional version are reinterpreted freely, around new symbolism echoing the modern world, through an unusual format and a radical graphic style.

The cards are printed in France on a large format of 10×15cm, using a hot foil stamping technique on traditional print machines. The thick sheets of paper, whose fibers are dyed blue at the time of their manufacture, are embossed with a metal tool specially made for each side, and heated in order to fix in the paper a metallic silver foil.

The project was crowdfunded on Kickstarter.

Radical Passion is a story about the train produced on a global scale for the longest time and its radical enthusiasts. The EN57 model has been operating for 60 years and provokes emotions among various, sometimes antagonistic groups. The publication presents the fanatical attitudes of railway enthusiasts as model makers, passionate photographers, tattoo and graffiti artists. More than 500 hundred pages of the book explore archives that have not been shown before and unveil overlooked social and visual phenomena.

A new typeface named Tor grotesk was developed for this book by Threedotstype. This font is a revival of lettering used on the train EN57 and signage dating back before World War Two. Tor Grotesk is paired with Di grotesk.

The book was authored by Dawid Błaszczyk, Tomek Czechowicz, Maciej Janus, and Marian Misiak. It was jointly published by Torypress and Threedotstype in two language editions; Radical Passion (English) and Kult Jednostki (Polish). It comes as paperback with an open spine and dust jacket, 210×280 mm, 528 pages.

For more info, see the Slanted website.

Cover of the English-language edition

Cover of the Polish-language edition

Poster/invitation for the show with the authors of the book.

Released in August 2021, the bold and beautifully produced book Instant Nudes, designed by Clara Hoppe for Slanted Publishers, is a curated selection of intimate instant photos sent over the years to the tear-off calendar PHOTODARIUM Private project.

Also presented is the work of eleven photographers who use instant images to capture erotic moments. A dreamy and intimate photo book that dares to capture eroticism beyond pornographic clichés – by photographers and individuals from all over the world alike – in 192 pages. Curated by Boris Kahl and Herr Merzi, the book features the work of Alan Marcheselli, Christoph David, Frank de Luyck, Herr Merzi, Jens Voshage, Luc Masson Todeschini, Philippe Galanopoulos, RRRDiaz, Solimano Pezzella, Stefano Questorio and Timo Schäfers.

Instant Nudes is typeset in Parachute Typefoundry’s awarded PF Marlet Swash and PF Marlet Text typefaces that opt for “simple and elegant aesthetics.”

As announced by the Photodarium Private team, the 2023 edition will be its last, partly due to the “enormous increase in production costs and a steadily decreasing demand.”

The book started as Hoppe’s Bachelor thesis at FH Dortmund and was one selected from nearly 100 submissions to be part of the Slanted × Kickstarter mentoring & publishing program.

The logo for the game Call to Adventure is based on the typeface Maestrale by Catharsis Fonts, with heavy modification. “Call to” is set in a yet unidentified serif typeface. Other information, and the game cards, use Eulipia (Delve Fonts).

Total Armageddon – A Slanted Reader on Design features a collection of brand new essays, as well as selections from the first 32 issues of Slanted. Edited by Ian Lynam, this book includes contributions from Steven Heller, Piotr Rypson, Gerry Leonidas, Yoon Soo Lee, Kiyonori Muroga, and more writing about design and culture.

The publication was successfully funded on Kickstarter when it launched in January 2019, and was published in March 2019. The book celebrates 15 years of independent publishing and uses Beatrice Display for headlines and Edit Serif for body copy.

The Light Observer – currently running as a Kickstarter project – explores the theme of light in a biannual publication.

Issue n. 01 (January 2020) will feature an exciting group of artists, architects, photographers and more on their relationship with light: Nathalie Du Pasquier, Rosa Barba, Guillaume Simoneau, Jessica Eaton, Mesura...

Designed to highlight the photography editing, the magazine proposes a sleek and minimal design. Neue Haas Unica gives a modern and timeless feel while Yoann Minet’s Traulha Regulara brings contrast and reinforces the magazine’s identity. The art direction has been supervised by Hugo Berger and Swiss designer Ronnie Fueglister.

“Hey Robot is a party game where two teams compete to get their smart speaker to say a specific word. It's a bit like Codenames or Taboo, if the friend you were playing with had an encyclopedia and was also very, very drunk.”

Frank Lantz’s colorful design uses Eames Century Modern, not designed by Charles and Ray Eames, but inspired by their work. The Hey Robot packaging appears to be inspired by the Eameses as well — specifically their use of patterns — and also the work of House Industries who published the type family and a bunch of great Eames merch that went with it.

The Hey Robot Kickstarter runs until Friday, November 22, 2019.

In this speech balloon, Eames unfortunately has been used with straight quotes.

Jia! (“Eat!”) is a book about the food, culture, and people of Swatow, Teochew, and the Teoswa diaspora.

Teoswa is the local pronunciation of Chaoshan (潮汕), the region in China's eastern Guangdong Province comprising the cities of Teochew (Chaozhou), Swatow (Shantou), and Gigyong (Jieyang). It's the ancestral homeland of about 25 million gaginang — that's Teoswa for “our people.” It's estimated that half of all Teoswa live outside of China. — Jia Cookbook website

An essay by the author about (and with photographs of) Teoswa cuisine can be found here.

The cover combines Cortado and Acier Solid, with corresponding transliterations in Ro Shino and Source Han Sans. The interior body text is set in Tisa, Tisa Sans, and PingFang. According to author/designer Diana Zheng, the use of Cortado for headlines throughout the book was partly inspired by Chinese-American cookbook design of the 1950s–60s.

Interior spread

Interior spread

Section opener spread

Interior spread

Images from the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for issue 09 of Pica magazine, using a number of Pyte Foundry typefaces to present the pledges. The logo of Pica magazine seems to use Alto by Thomas Thiemich.

Risk brings us back to the very sources of creation. To create is necessarily to put ourselves in danger, to take a chance. Creatives fail, and the really good ones fail often, writes Neville Brody. Indeed, taking a step towards the unknown allows you to see new perspectives, to leave your comfort zone and to explore new avenues. In the margin, there is a world of possibilities often forgotten, reduced to self-censorship. But to dare is also to risk losing. The risk is ambiguous, since it is always hypothetical, its product results partly from chance. The line is sometimes very fine between failure and success. –– Pica Mag

This Book Should Be Read in Silence was designed by Jesse Johanning in 2016.
From Kickstarter:

The book is primarily comprised of photos by Manuela Garcia and Brandon Hall. Manuela’s naturalistic photography is inspired by her conception of time in the recognition of the lifespan of botany. Brandon focuses on the improvisational aspect of looking at our surroundings. Manuela is a Colombian-American photographer who is including photos from the Andes, the Everglades and New York. Brandon, a Midwestern born artist, currently gathering material from the Appalachian Trail, is in a pursuit of capturing an honest depiction.

The choice in using two photographers comes from our recognition of two people speaking similar languages through the use of photography and passion. The friendship has entailed of working along each other and recognizing the merit in their differences and the beauty in the truths the intersections represent.

The writing in the book is a compilation of poetry and philosophical essays on silence. This includes the texture, shape, context, and implications of sound and lack thereof.

Our venture takes form in a 60 page 5″ × 7″ photo-book with Swiss binding. The pages are printed on vellum, a translucent paper that adds a specific texture and experience for the reader. The pièce de résistance will be a cover that’s sensitive to one’s touch, meaning each time one picks up the book the actual color of the book changes. Through this meticulous construction, they have made a space for silence to live and breath.

The images show work in progress, with mock-ups partly featuring dummy text. To be published by Heptagram Editions.

Suisse Works is part of the Suisse typeface, available from Swiss Typefaces.

MOLD is “a platform about designing the future of food”, that recently completed a successful crowdfunding campaign to launch a printed magazine. The publication is being designed by Eric Hu and Matt Tsang, making promintent use of The Pyte Foundry’s Gyrator as well as Forgotten Shapes’ digitization of Gerstner Programm.

Eric Hu was interviewed about the project by Emily Gosling for AIGA’s Eye On Design blog, and explained some of the thinking behind the type-centric design:

“It’s about eating bugs and eating dirt—the subject matter is strange and we wanted to create a design that was equally as strange. We also wanted to avoid the tropes of the word ‘future.’ A few years ago it was the highly geometric sans serif, all clean slick lines; but when you think ‘future’ now, a lot of designers try to make it all very dark, or use a bunch of evil corporate logos. We wanted to hold a mirror up to the fetishization of food with its emphasis on happiness and tweeness.”

The Eye On Design article only references Gerstner-Programm as “a slick Swiss sans serif”, and it fails to name or link to The Pyte Foundry as the creator of Gyrator, but it continues with more info on the type choices:

Hu explains that he found the type through a process of “looking for the source of twee, whether that’s Americana or Victorian England. If we go past the 20th century, we can go way beyond nostalgia. It’s taking twee to its most logical conclusion—what do you do when you run out of reference points?”

The Kickstarter campaign for the magazine has ended, but you can still order or subscribe from MOLD’s online store.

The Minimalist Deck: Helvetica is a modern deck of bicycle playing cards, designed in Helvetica.

The deck can be found on Kickstarter.

“Music and illustration collide in a quirky and unique new book.” — A Kickstarter project found via Campaign Monitor.