SÜPER NORMAL is a magazine that focuses on typography but also on all design areas that typography touches. In doing so, it is a publication that includes experimental designs as well as text, asking questions, investigating, and visualizing these within each issue’s specific theme. It is a space that contemplates what normal is, searches for movement and excitement within normality, and questions ordinariness and rules.

The theme of the first issue is “Is it readable?” (“Okunuyor mu?” in Turkish). Inspired by the question, the first issue establishes a visual language that challenges norms and rules.

Idea, design and direction by Emre Parlak, using ABC Diatype Plus Variable.

The participants in issue 01 were Ali Emre Doğramacı, Christopher Çolak, Deniz Cem Önduygu, Emre Parlak, Erman Yılmaz, Esen Karol, E S Kibele Yarman, İbrahim Kaçtıoğlu, Onur Yazıcıgil, Okay Karadayılar, Ruslan Abasov, Sabri Akın, Seda Yüksel, and Umut Altıntaş.

The magazine was printed by Ofset Yapımevi on Fuoriso Magno Volume paper (115 g/m²). Close-up photographs by Deniz Cem Önduygu. Many thanks to Dinamo for the font support, Ofset Yapımevi for printing support, and all the participants who made the magazine possible.

Spread with a design by Sabri Akın

Text on the left in ABC Diatype Semi-Mono. The visual on the right is by Ruslan Abasov.

Spread with the contribution by Okay Karadayılar

Sagace Medium used by me, Alexandre Créquer, for my school thesis L!S!BILITÉ, dealing with typographic legibility in graphic and type design. Sagace is paired with Newsreader from Production Type for body text and custom lettering for the title. Printed at Copyright 35, Rennes.

Didactics is about making knowledge understandable. Successful learning and information transfer requires visually appealing, clearly structured and well-defined layouts for printed and digital teaching and learning media. Typography, in particular, plays a crucial role here, as knowledge transfer is not possible without text or type. Ultimately, it is typography that makes content visible and effective.

This is illustrated in the book Lesbar – Typografie in der Wissensvermittlung, edited by Ulrike Borinski and Rudolf Paulus Gorbach and published by Triest Verlag. The comprehensive project involves 24 experts from different fields, including Antonia Cornelius and Albert-Jan Pool. The book sheds light on the key aspects of didactic typography, type, and readability. It explores the mechanisms of typography in various contexts and explains the characteristics required for effective typography. The typeface used for the entire work is Franziska, which was chosen by Rudolf Paulus Gorbach for its smooth legibility and didactic precision in knowledge transfer.

Unusual but interesting: Text in light font style to encode indented, quoted content.

During her UCLA course, media arts design student Amy Fang made a publication called TypeUnseen, focusing on the textual element, creative typography, and the trend of brutalism in graphic design.

How do contemporary graphic designers utilize illegibility within the art of typography? Type Unseen is a reader on designed illegibility and visual nonsense; it analyzes the influence our youth culture has had on experimental typography, all the while exploring the multitude of philosophies that drive us to construct and deconstruct meaning.

Type Unseen was conceptualized in early 2020 as a means to uncover trends followed by young typographic designers, championing abstract experimentation and ornamentation over meaning. The book is a compendium of ten case studies, catalogued within four different sections: showcasing typography as image and pure form; as a means of producing identity; as a catalyst for protest; and as a way of being. However, in the context of a year shaped by a global health crisis and racial reckoning, Type Unseen asks another question for young designers—what messages will ultimately materialize and shape the aesthetics of our generation?

The book typography uses Suisse Int’l as text typeface, with Charon, Deformi, Euphoria, and Al Fresco for display. In addition, Amy Fang includes a spread with a quote by Michael Bierut in which “he contemplates his jump from typographic fidelity while working for [Massimo] Vignelli, to typographic promiscuity.” She has set his words in 25 typefaces, “some of the craziest I’ve collected over the past year.”

The front and back cover feature stretched caps from Charon and Al Fresco.

Charon is mixed with Euphoria.

The condensed all-caps Charon is being paired with Deformi.

Spread with the quote by Michael Bierut, set in 25 different typefaces. From top to bottom, these are:

Gang, Kraft, Charon, 12:51, Lapicide, Parabole, Clifton, Pilowlava, Euphoria, Salicorne, BD Retrocentric, Alt Display, Basylisk, CNVS, Glyphworld Meadow, Digestive, Icarus, Apfel Grotezk, Love, Misto, Grand Slang, Le Murmure, Halyard Micro, Sprat, Ornamentum.

The book Der erste Eindruck zählt! (“The first impression counts!”) by Sabrina Öttl is a practical guide for those who want to learn the art of typography in all its details.

Translated from the website of publisher Hermann Schmidt:

Sabrina Öttl introduces you to the effects of typography and how to use it in a competent and practical manner. It conveys know-how on legibility and readability, guides you through the jungle of typefaces, sensitizes you to fine differences and gives you selection criteria at hand.

Der erste Eindruck zählt! Das Handwerk der Typografie verstehen und anwenden
Pages: 160
Size: 17.2×24.5 cm

In 1996 the Autonomous Parisian Transportation Administration (RATP) adopted the custom typeface Parisine. The development of the typeface family was part of the general effort – with Yo Kaminagai as a head of design – to unify the sign system of the Parisian metro, bus and regional express network which until then made use of different typefaces. An initial choice to rely on Neue Helvetica created disarray due to the font’s variations and difficulties to include longer station names (e.g. “Iéna Champs-Élysées – Clemenceau”, as opposed to “Iéna”).

Consequently, French type designer Jean François Porchez was commissioned to create a typeface that would be more “economical” in width. As described by Porchez in his Gazette, Parisine was:

designed from Helvetica Bold, condensed at 90%. Parisine is intentionally more open to counteract the reduction of the areas of the counters due to condensing. Its forms are softer and more round, horizontal parts are slightly heavier, optically, to compensate for the verticality accentuated by the slight narrowness of Parisine.

In August 2020 the Paris In collective raised awareness that the emblematic typography is threatened by the introduction of a different system used by Île-de-France Mobilités, the entity controlling the different transport companies of the Paris region. Their explicatory video warns of the beginning of what may be an increasing “contamination” of the standards.

[Editor’s note: Parisine was introduced in RATP’s communications in a decentralized way, and the family grew with needs and applications; see comments.]

Overview of the M4 metro line. Station names are set on an angle.

Diagram of the metro, RER, bus, and tramway lines.

Trilingual tourist map (2017) with info in French, English, and Spanish, designed by Be Dandy using Parisine’s narrow and compressed widths.

Strasbourg Saint-Denis station, July 2019.

July 16, 2018. One day after France won the Russia 2018 World Cup final football match, six metro stations were temporarily renamed. the Saint-Paul station was changed into Saint-Paul Pogba, and the Champs-Élysees station honoured the coach of the French football team, Didier Deschamps.

Sign post outside Pompadour station, 2019.

April 2020. Entry of the Plaisance Hôpital Saint-Joseph station, showing both Parisine and the famous art nouveau Paris metro signs.

RATP website, using Parisine and the same color scheme as used for the RATP signage.

Saint-Paul station fridge magnet, from the RATP merchandise shop.

As a pilot scheme, the Cinelândia station in the center of Rio de Janeiro was equipped with a new wayfinding system using Wayfinding Sans Pro from FDI Type.

Its production took almost ten years, more than hundred people worked on the concept and realization, besides the people at the printing office. The publication has to last for at least forty years. Eight tons of red ink and roughly 3,000 tons of light-weight paper (40 grams) were needed to produce the 3.6 million copies (1,300 pages each) of Gotteslob, the new prayer and song book of the Catholic church in Germany and Austria.

Responsible for the design of Gotteslob was Matthias Bumiller from the design agency Finken & Bumiller in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2006 he started with the design of this magnum opus, which resulted in a positively received test version in the next year. Legibility had the highest priority and factors like low light in churches in combination with the inevitable relatively small point sizes were taken into account. After testing several typefaces, Frank E. Blokland’s DTL Documenta was selected.