Split Complimentary Tales, written by Adam Potterton is a fiction book with three short stories. All three share the city of Johannesburg as backdrop: A man tries to collect a borrowed book, a women goes for a drink while waiting for a shuttle to Mars, and the author tries to unpacks their feelings towards Johannesburg. The book was designed, printed, folded and handbound as a student project for my Bachelors of Art (Graphic Design) final year, at Greenside Design Center College of Design.

The visual concept is a combination of bauhaus typography, cartography and linework. I decided to use a vintage (1897) map of the booming “city of gold” (Johannesburg) as a base. This also matches the Bauhaus principle of reusing existing imagery indirectly. This map was broken down in to aesthetic lineworks, which roughly resembles Johannesburg. At the start of each short story, a certain part of the map is highlighted as an ‘easter egg’ associated with each short story.

Like often the case with Bauhaus inspired designs, mine features high contrast and bold headers, clearly separating itself from the rest of the text. The imagery (cartography and lines) are used practically, to create interest and to balance out the copy on certain pages. Bauhaus designs typically rely on justified text, therefor I employed this tactic and included spot coloured paragraph markers to assist with legibility. The design was printed on warm toned signatures with a natural (or soft) texture. The entire map of Johannesburg was printed on tracing paper as a special interactive finish. To conclude, I performed a coptic stitch to bind the print.

The entire typography is set in a few weights of Founders Grotesk by Kris Sowersby.
See more images on Nicolas' portfolio page..

VG Bild-Kunst is an association that was founded for the purpose of jointly managing copyrights of creatives in the fields of art, image and film, true to the principle: ‘Together we are stronger’.

Design studio Buntesamt developed a brochure with open thread stitching, which visually picks up on the subject of ‘copy’. Divided into two main parts, “Fakt” explains the services of VG Bild-Kunst, while “Talk” provides an insight into daily work in the form of interviews. In keeping with the name of the collecting society, the rubrics begin with V: Association, remuneration, distribution, exploitation, representation. With portraits by Heiko Preller
A Gold Award winner of the German Design Award 2021, and a distinction in the ADC Award 2021.

Copy (Regular + Italic) are used throughout.

Our recently founded Vienna based design bureau Hazod Schlagintweit is focused on projects in the fields of art, culture and industry. We create visual identities, books and magazines – which led us to work on self-initiated book projects. After doing a redesign for Austrias biggest food magazine in 2016 we came up with the idea of a magazine that also dealt with this topic but in a more authentic and edgy way.

In the publication named Salz (“Salt”), various graphic designers and artists are dealing with the topic of salt. As a result different interpretations were formed and embedded in stories about places, nature, people and the far-reaching topic of culinary art. Salt is not just a declaration of love for the raw material that gives the food the necessary flavor, but can also be seen as a metaphor for the flavor of life itself.

The two-part publication has two different screen printed covers. The aesthetics of the book are very much influenced by the risography printing technique, which has led to a reduced, bright color scheme.

Schick Toikka’s Chap is applied throughout the whole book and is strongly integrated in the design as its shapes reminded us of salt crystals.

Awarded by Die Schönsten Bücher Österreichs (“The most beautiful books of Austria”) in its 2018 competition in the “special edtions and non-commercial” category.