As Hungary’s TISZA Party rises to national prominence ahead of the 2026 election on April 12, a considered typographic choice has become central to its visual identity. TISZA (short for Tisztelet és Szabadság, “Respect and Freedom”) positions itself as a clear alternative to long-dominant Fidesz rule, promoting anti-corruption, economic renewal, and strengthened ties with the EU and NATO – all themes that call for messaging that feels legible, modern, and trustworthy.

TISZA’s visual team selected Luma Sans as the core typeface for campaign communication, applying its geometric precision and humanized shapes across podium signage, social templates, posters, and long-form text. The choice reflects three core needs: Clarity and Readability, Modern Authority, and Multilingual Support.

In TISZA’s typographic system, medium weights anchor headlines and calls to action, lending confidence to key messages. Lighter weights support policy summaries and longer prose without losing rhythm or readability. The result is a disciplined yet flexible visual voice that performs equally well in high-pressure public environments and digital spaces.

By rooting its identity in a modern, human-centred sans-serif, TISZA reinforces its political narrative: an alternative grounded in clarity, openness, and pragmatism.

Cover for the August 1930 issue of the Süddeutsche Monatshefte, which at the time was not published monthly, but quarterly. The bold high-contrast sans at the top and bottom is Jakob Erbar’s Koloss. The focus of the issue,  “Ungarn” (“Hungary”), is presented in lively lettering, rendered as if it was following a TypeCooker recipe for “construction: roman / weight: bold /contrast amount: a lot / stroke endings: serifs / width: condensed / contrast type: expansion”. Below, contents are listed in italic and roman styles of Normande.

From Paul Hoser’s entry in nsdoku.lexikon, published January 16, 2025, by NS-Dokumentationszentrum München (translated):

The Süddeutsche Monatshefte was founded in Munich in 1904. The editor was Paul Nikolaus Cossmann, who moved more and more in a nationalist direction, and during the First World War he succeeded in forcing the democratic shareholders out of the publishing house and replacing them with extreme nationalists. After the collapse, he also had Weimar democracy disparaged. Above all, he fought against the Treaty of Versailles and the “war guilt lie”, i.e. the Versailles Treaty's stipulation that Germany alone was to blame for the outbreak of war. […] Despite its nationalist tendencies, the magazine was critical of the National Socialists. It hoped for the restoration of the Wittelsbach monarchy: Significantly, the January 1933 issue was entitled “König Rupprecht”. The magazine was discontinued in 1936. Cossmann died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942.

The Holy Crown of Hungary is one of the oldest remaining intact crowns in Europe. It is a symbol of Hungarian statehood and has been the subject of scientific research for centuries. Dozens of Hungarian and foreign experts have studied its structure, its parallels in art history, as well as the story of the object itself. The crown has become a prominent part of the career of textile artist Éva Nagy. It was she who created the velvet cushion that the crown was placed on in the Domed Hall of the Parliament building. Her initial interest steadily grew into a total of 21 years of research. In the resulting 260-page book Örökség (“Heritage”) she seeks an answer to the question of what the Holy Crown of Hungary communicates to us today.

The principal motivation for her reflections has been the discovery of the secret symbolism of the coronation insignia. In her view, the Holy Crown is a work of art that symbolically represents the universe in miniature, synthesizing culture, science, art, and divine law. Its main value, apart from its historical function and sacrality, lies in the possibility of knowing and being one with the world and Christ. It is not just an object, it is a symbol of the spirituality of our ancestors.

In the course of her research, she discovered that the apostles and wise men featured in the enamel paintings are communicating with their hands in a secret sign language, and the inscriptions alongside them are made up of abbreviations and fragments of words. As such they are ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations. They also form an acronym that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In this way, she has moved from the study of the seemingly decorative elements of the crown to that of a symbolic system of fragments of words in foreign languages. She has uncovered an old-new language based on a ‘letter stair’, which became a decisive element in the design of the page layout and typography, set in Neue Haas Grotesk (headlines use Arachne). The book is divided into two parts, the subsections within those parts are articulated into golden pages for the reader. Although Éva’s research was at first a pastime, she now sees her hypotheses as more thought-provoking. For her book, she has created artistic drawings, graphics, and paintings to help us learn more about the Holy Crown of Hungary and discover our heritage.

Art direction, graphic design: Kira Koroknai
Photography: Kevin Harald Campean

What lessons could be learnt from the heritage of architectural modernism, this often-disputed era, confronted by changing expectations of sustainability, social norms and habits, and as for Central and Eastern Europe specifically, a different political system? Othernity, the Hungarian exhibition of the 2021 International Architecture Biennale in Venice provides thought-provoking answers to this question, by emerging practices from the region.

The former Eastern Bloc of Europe possesses a unique, region-specific modernist architectural heritage, that can be discovered in most parts of our current building stock. This heritage should serve as ground zero to develop a responsible and novel behaviour for future architectural practice. And yet, compelled by a misunderstood duty for a more sustainable living and also fuelled by aesthetical revulsion and political antipathy, we keep demolishing or re-edifying these structures, destroying all architectural values. Would there be an ‘other’ way?

Othernity invited 12 young professionals: architectural offices, collectives and individuals from Eastern-Central-Europe to rethink 12 iconic modern buildings of Budapest.
The practices invited by the curatorial team are based in different cities and countries of the region, which all share this specific architectural heritage. By working in one chosen city, Budapest, they are both close enough and far enough to think rationally about the values of these buildings.

The exhibition was curated by Dániel Kovács, with Attila Róbert Csóka, Szabolcs Molnár, Dávid Smiló. The exhibition publication was printed on Munken Lynx paper and comes in two language versions; English (700 copies) and Hungarian (300 copies).

The main text is set in Space Grotesk and the captions use Space Mono. The title lettering is a custom design.

The cover for Alfred Brendel’s recording of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies combines a vivacious illustration of a folk dance with equally wild display typography. Weiss is paired with all-caps Crayonette and Saphir. The numbers of the included rhapsodies are set in yet another flamboyant face, Fontanesi. In sum, there’s too much going on. I feel the illustration could shine more with a less eclectic typography. While the cover art is by Frederic Marvin (1932–2013), the overall design is uncredited. It may have been provided by Vanguard’s art director, Jules Halfant.

[More info on Discogs]

The back cover is set in Times New Roman, with the title in Bulmer.

Teremtés Ferenczy Noémi művészete / Creation – The Art of Noémi Ferenczy is a book about Noémi Ferenczy (1890–1957), Kossuth Prize laureate and rejuvenator of 20th-century tapestry, an artist whose style inaugurated an epoch.

The bilingual publication goes with an exhibition held at the Ferenczy Museum in Szentendre in 2020. It was edited by curator Emőke Bodonyi and published by Ferenczy Museum Center in an edition of 500 numbered and signed copies. The design and photography is by Agnes Herr, with most text set in Fibra. Titles use Mories and featured quotes are presented in Bw Vivanta. Offset printed by Pauker Ltd. on Pergrapchica High White Rough 150 g. The cover combines Savanna canvas with blue hot foil staping and Geltex for the book spine. ISBN 978-615-5860-15-7.

More images on Behance

The curator’s selection of works by Hungarian artists created specifically for presentation at Fresh Fair 2019 in Tel Aviv is inspired by a current trend and phenomenon with a spectacular impact on visual culture, and observes how fashion and visual art cross paths. In recent years, mostly thanks to Instagram and other online platforms, general awareness about trends in lifestyle and clothing increased immensely which has a direct impact on general aesthetics and an indirect influence on how visual art reflects on everyday life.

Client: Edge Communications
Curator: Fruzsina Kigyós
Design: Hajnalka Illés, Andrea Csuport
Photo: Norbert Farkas
See more details on Behance.

The Leipzig Book Fair is one of the most important literary events of Germany. Among the events organised by the Hungarian stand at the fair were the launches of new books, and a new, progressive anthology of contemporary Hungarian literature from the Y generation. As with the Hungarian stand in 2018 and 2017, the design pairs prominent use of typography with a black and white decor.

Books and their readers were the focus of the 2019 stand. The basic idea was to have a very simple, clean and strictly black-and-white visual appearance so that the colors would only appear ‘using’ the people and the book covers, which would further emphasize the reading, the Hungarian literature. Graphic and typographic elements sought to bring the feeling of the visitor to a different world while reading, even as a hypnotic state.

The simple, rhythmic, vertical lines – from the letters of Le Murmure – have become more and more intricate spatial curves underneath the base, like we are immersed in the pace of words or the meaning of sentences while reading a beautiful, long poem.

An important tool for raising awareness was the strange mapping of the two and the three dimensions. Inspired by the optical illusion that appears on the floor, we wanted to stop the visitors in motion for a moment.

Every spring, the Hungarian pavilion at the Leipzig Book Fair presents the most recent Hungarian books translated to German. Each year the designers commissioned by Collegium Hungaricum Berlin try to shape the stand in an experimental way, reflecting on the unique situation presented by a book fair. In 2018, the pavilion was designed by Hetedik Műterem, following a theme defined by the approaching centenary of the Bauhaus.

[…] We applied the characteristically Bauhaus approach of the Gesamtkunstwerk, and defined a reading space with a unique character and strong atmosphere, in the overwhelmingly standardised and commercial context of the fair. We recommended the opposite of what is characteristic of usual trade fair situations. The books were displayed on custom-made furniture in a space surrounded by 7-meter high white, transparent curtains, covered with a light carpet, in a bespoke lighting concept. Apart from obvious connections to contemporary architecture, the inner spatial atmosphere was inspired by examples directly connected to the Bauhaus, displaying the use of uncluttered, fluid spaces defined by textiles: a great example being Café Samt und Seide designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, and built in 1927 in Berlin, serving as an exhibition pavilion for the German silk industry. The uniqueness, lightness, constant movement, transparency and flexibility of the material used in this plan by Mies, who later served as director of the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933, strengthens his paradigm-shifting theory of fluid spaces, which we tried to invoke in the exhibition space in Leipzig. […]

The typeface used throughout the stand on curtains, walls, furniture and flyers, is the Mohol type family by Ádám Katyi (the official typeface of the László Moholy-Nagy Design Grant), which reflects on Bauhaus experiments with basic geometric forms in a contemporary way. The graphic design was provided by Ákos Polgárdi (Submachine). Read more about the project and see a full list of credits on the website of Hetedik Műterem Kft.

Photography: Balázs Danyi

The Hungarian Pavilion at the Leipzig Book Fair (2017) titled “Silence Inside – The labyrinth of spaces that have become visible” exploits JAF Lapture in a sophisticated and intriguing way.

For more about the project, visit the Lead82 website.

Catalog and poster (below) for an exhibition in Utrecht, NL about Hungarian Constructivist art. Printed by Steendrukkerij de Jong & Co.

Posters for Kornél Mundruczó (Proton Theatre): Dementia, or the Day of My Great Happiness / Leaving is not an option? Aktuelle künstlerische Positionen aus Ungarn

Theater festival at HAU (Hebbel am Ufer) with works from Hungary revolving around the question of emigration.

All the posters for HAU use a restricted color palette consisting of a bright cyan plus black and white. The typeface is Thomas Mettendorf’s Modus (GarageFonts, 2000). There are no pictorial elements.

Die Andere Bibliothek’s edition of Volksfeinde (Enemies of the People) by Kati Marton has a cover by Erik Spiekermann using a family from his FontFont library: the condensed 19th-century woodtype-inspired FF Hydra, and the much wider Text version intended for small sizes.