What was design? is a quick starter to one of modernity’s most contested terms. In its brief but meteoric career, “design” was subject to vast controversy. Celebrated as an engine of change, denounced as a driving force of commercialization, and regularly lamented as overused, design remains a concept whose true meaning is still being sought. While answers to the question “What is design?” are constantly shifting, the time has come for a retrospective. This book looks back, presenting a century of design thinking in its most compact form: a collection of bold quotes.

What was design? pits seventy-eight historical one-sentence answers from practitioners, theorists, and philosophers against one another. The result is a web of radical short-form definitions that remain strikingly contradictory in their references. This selection is accompanied by an essay from Florian Walzel, exploring the deeper reasons behind the conceptual ambiguity of design.

Published by Slanted Publishers, edited by Florian Walzel with editorial advice from Jurek Werth. The book, measuring 12×19 cm and counting 152 pages, was designed by Paul Jürgens, using Roumald and Neue Haas Grotesk. Hardcover with round spine, thread-stitching, offset printed with spot colors. ISBN: 978-3-69202-005-1

Exhibition catalog for Transmergence #04, held at FRAC Alsace, France (translated by the contributor):

Transmergence#04 is an exhibition format developed by FRAC Alsace, which showcases the regional and cross-border art scene while questioning its definition in the face of a globalised world with increased mobility, where time takes the place of geographical distance.

For the fourth consecutive year, FRAC Alsace’s Transmergence format is part of La Regionale, a unique cross-border project bringing together 18 institutions from three countries (Switzerland, Germany and France).

For Transmergence #04, the curators have selected artistic proposals that create a dialogue between art and craftsmanship. The exhibition presents works and new productions by artists of diverse origins who now live or work in the cross-border region.

The catalog is bilingual (French/German) and is printed in four colors with a spot color. French text is printed in black while German text is printed in a Pantone silver.
Thomas Leblond and Audrey Ohlman did the graphic design with EB Ackerhof ​​​​​​ from Électro-bibliothèque. Transmergence #04 was published by Pétrole and FRAC Alsace.

Since 2024, studio vu-huu has been working on the identity of the Maison de la Musique Nanterre, a nationally recognised arts and creativity venue. For the occasion, b•v-h type designed a new addition to the Eddi family: Eddi Grotesk.

The program for the 25/26 season further explores the visual identity created using the custom Eddi Grotesk typeface and a graphic system based on simple, colourful shapes that make up instruments, dancing bodies and abstract visual scores.

The Eddi Grotesk variant draws on early, historically rooted sans-serif aesthetics, positioning it as a subtle reinterpretation of Eddi, while preserving part of its core DNA.

Orfeus Publishing has published Historien om den norske løve, a richly illustrated book by historian Knut Johannessen. Designed by Halvor Bodin, the book follows Norway’s coat of arms from its beginnings as a royal emblem in the 13th century through centuries of unions and key political moments such as 1814 and 1905, and into present-day use.

The visual material spans everything from coins, banknotes and stamps to folk art, uniforms, banners, bookbindings, sheet music and the royal standard.

The book uses typefaces from Store Norske Skriftkompani, and is primarily set in Store Norske Leif Regular at 9/13 pt., supported by Store Norske Gangster and Store Norske Skandia Condensed. The mix gives the book a confident editorial voice, with clear hierarchy across long-form text, captions, and display elements.

The book brings together the best annual projects of the Academy. Printed in six-colour offset with the addition of a metallic Pantone, and partially in Risograph (internal insert), it employs hand-crafted movable type for the titles, with manual typesetting combined with black-and-white photography, as well as artist illustrations produced through intaglio and engraving, printed in two colours.

The layout is conceived as a fluid composition: a hybrid system of techniques and visual overlays that positions the book somewhere between graphic design and the artist’s book. While flipping through the pages, readers can access additional audio content related to the various activities.

Some of the typefaces used belong to the Academy’s collection of movable type. This includes a version of Inserat-Grotesk – possibly Fondografica’s Piacenza – and Motor. The names and origins of others are uncertain or undocumented.

The E and P are from an Art Deco typeface that’s similar to Triennale.

The 2023–24 edition of the RUFA Annual Report, conceived as a collective performance, goes beyond documenting the year’s activities to become a shared design act focused on intention, process, and collaboration.

Inspired by Vilém Flusser’s idea that “everything depends on intention (design)”, the report was created through a 48-hour creative marathon involving 50 selected students alongside designers, visual artists, photographers, copywriters, and faculty members. Working together in an open laboratory, the teams produced content, images, data, and narratives that shaped the final publication.

The volume unfolds through ten keywords defining the Academy’s identity, a photographic selection of undergraduate and postgraduate theses, and an overview of the year’s activities, including events, workshops, talks, and international projects. Data Humanism–inspired infographics, based on interviews and questionnaires with students and faculty, complete the narrative.

A die-cut dust jacket revealing the names of the participants and a concluding photographic report underscore the collective nature of the project. The annual report thus stands as both a document and a method, reflecting the Academy’s growth through shared experience, research, and collaboration.

Four-colour printing plus white and fluorescent yellow Pantone on Favini paper.
Typographic composition in Milligram by Zetafonts.

Design by Guido Lombardo, Davide Luccini and Francesco Paolo Incantalupo at Intorno Design, with illustrations by Francesco Fidani. For a full list of credits, see the RUFA website.

The fifth poster in this ever-extending series, which began with The Annex of Universal Languages, was initiated by Akiem Helmling, the curator of Alphabetum in The Hague. This poster was created in collaboration with Tim Brookes from Endangered Alphabets, who researched and wrote the 20 dream-stories presented in this publication.

From September 6, 2025 to January 25, 2026, Alphabetum hosted an exhibition of the same name, where the illustrations, writing systems, and their creation myths were presented. The translucent flags created a dreamscape that invited the audience to browse through and become immersed in the work.

In creating this poster, I prioritized Noto Sans and Serif versions of the writing systems where available, secondly looked to existing Unicode proposals, and as a last resort, quickly digitized blurry images. Eleven of the 20 alphabets and syllabaries have already been added to the Noto type family, while others had Unicode proposals clean enough to use. In the case of Bété, I reached out to ANRT alumnus Adam Yeo, who provided me with his digital interpretation of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré’s handwritten script.

The poster has been offset printed – locally in the Netherlands – with Pantone Gold and Black and was mechanically folded by a bookbinder in Haarlem.

Like the other parts of the series, this edition also uses my typeface Logical which, thanks to its inclusion of icons that can be transformed from words, initiated this whole adventure. Handing a specimen of Logical to Richard Niessen in 2018 caused him to invite me to participate in his Palace of Typographic Masonry by adding a new room. Logical has been released by Bold Monday and combines the warmth and legibility of humanist typefaces with the technical look of typefaces like DIN and Isonorm. Its markdown-inspired syntax to transform words into icons via OpenType features makes them easily accessible even in software without a glyphs palette. The underline feature, which ensures that descenders are not cut off, also gets heavy use in the referenced links below each panel.

The view when entering Alphabetum in The Hague. The publicly accessible library invites visitors to read books, have a coffee, or discuss language with others. Its brutalist yet warm architecture makes every visit to Alphabetum an enriching experience.

The poster side of the panel illustrates 20 out of 22 visions displayed in the exhibition.

Each of the 20 panels describes an origin story of the writing system presented below. The small number in the top right indicates the number of active users.

Another view of the exhibition in Alphabetum with the beautiful Foscarini Allegro Assai suspension lamp.

Behind the flags, each writing system is featured on two black A3 panels. On the left, the text and information provided by Tim Brookes; on the right, an example or the full set of glyphs.

Plain Text is a printed publication for exploratory type design, edited and designed by Lucas Descroix and Benjamin Dumond, and published by type foundry Plain Form. The second issue launched in July 2025.

From Plain Form:

From fiction to theory, from mystical analyses to visual works, Plain Text aims at exploring typographic imaginaries, moving beyond a strictly historical and technical framework, with a taste for the unknown and the dormant potential of writing.

This second issue includes contributions by Hervé Aracil, Tim Brookes (Endangered Alphabets), Aliona Ciobanu, Lucas Descroix, Benjamin Dumond, Mardi Forestier, Inscript festival, Elenor Kopka, Marcus Leis Allion, Pierre Pané-Farré (with HAW Hamburg students), Simon Renaud and Alec Vivier-Reynaud.

The texts of this black-and-white, bilingual publication are all set in the unreleased duo Basically Serif for the English and Basically Sans for the French. Additional information is set in Baskemo, also Serif and Sans, an automatically monospaced-and-skelefont’ed companion to Basically.

A number of display typefaces designed by Lucas Descroix and/or Benjamin Dumond are used throughout, for the title of each contribution as well as various emphasis moments. These include: Michaux, Grandmaster, Disc, Jester (in several styles), Ready Active and Clouded and an early version of the upcoming Ferro. Some unreleased display typefaces, either old or future, are also used but not shown here in the pictures.

The fiction work by Mardi Forestier is set in Exposure by Federico Parra Barrios. Imagined together with the author, the layout is an attempt at using an experimental typeface to underline and augment narration, its variations manifesting the idea of breath.

• English and French
• 80 pages, 210×297mm
• offset print on Munken Print White
• 1000 copies, July 2025
• ISBN 978-2-9597254-1-8

This second issue of Plain Text was kindly supported by Commercial Type, CSTM Fonts, Dinamo, Future Fonts, XYZ Type, and 205TF.

Title is set in Disc Heavy, while subheads use Michaux Light.

Left page shows works from Aliona Ciobanu (image in the center is a collaboration with designer Stefaniia Bodnia). Right page shows the work of Alec Vivier-Reynaud (featuring mushroom-printed ABC Camera).

Title is set in a early version of Ferro Fraktur IV. Images show works from Bettina Comte, Rüdiger Schlömer and Jonathan Mak.

Title set in Jester Fool (squeezed, tracked and slightly blurred).

Title set in Ready Active Regular (condensed and thinned).

Title set in Grandmaster Thin. The right page shows both designs and inspirations from Simon Renaud.

Left page shows designs and inspirations from Simon Renaud. Right page’s title is set in generously stretched Exposure.

A piece of fiction by Mardi Forestier, making use of Federico Parra Barrios’s typeface Exposure to manifest breath.

Title on the right page is set in heavily warped Jester Judgment (in black) and Jester Sun (in white).

Left page features Ohno’s Swear. Right page features Bureau Brut’s Totentanz.

Title set in Michaux Bold, for a conversation with French professor Hervé Aracil.

Left page shows student projects from HAW Hamburg, done under the direction of Pierre Pané-Farré (here the collective typeface Octagon Variable and A Type of Image by Fabian Stenzel). Right page’s title is set in Ready Clouded Bold.

In a Baroque church in the canton of Jura, the artistic duo Boudry/Lorenz has created a rollercoaster that also serves as a sound piece voiced by Colin Self.

The visual communication gives a feeling of psychedelia in reference to the sculpture. The geometry of the kaleidoscope could be a nod to the structure of the luna park ride, or the echo of Self’s lament in the space.

Making full use of the variable capacities of Purple Haze, the design uses several weights and instances overlaid on top of each other, and printed in a restricted set of spot colours, creating additional tones as a result of the transparency of the inks. The supporting typeface is an early version of Display Grotesk, designed by Chi-Long Trieu and set to be released with Dinamo.

When things go down, hopefully they go up straight after.

On view from 26 August to 23 November 2025, the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, “Séance: Technology of the Spirit”, opens to the public at Seoul Museum of Art and other venues across the city. Inspired by occult, mystical, and spiritual traditions, key to the proposal is that these alternative “technologies” contest the accelerationist and rationalistic logics of capitalist modernity, and might therefore help us to resist – and reconfigure – the political and intellectual structures that shape our experience.

In response to the curatorial theme, graphic design studio nonplace developed a visual system founded on a series of radiant halos symbolizing spiritual energy. Their arrangement into modular structures expresses the organization of immaterial forces into the patterns and forms of art and techne, providing a flexible, transformable, and infinitely extendable visual system. (Text rephrased from nonplace)

For the identity of the biennale, nonplace chose Noto Serif Korean (see Source Han Serif), accompanied by Moulin Light from Commercial Type.

“Route To Christmas” is a folded poster (55×80 cm) designed by Lars Schrodberger für effektiv Druck+Veredelung. The print, packaging and paper finishing company in Fürth also produced the product to market their craft and services. The poster acts as a calendar leading up to Christmas eve with 24 entertaining facts about the holidays. On the reverse side it also functions as gift wrapping paper, printed in two spot colors on Soporset Premium Offset 80 g/m² paper and finished with gold hot foil stamping. The outer folder is produced with Gmund Used 8 300 g/m² and stamped with white foil. It is typeset in HAL Timezone by HAL Typefaces and KTF Forma by Kyiv Type Foundry.

Cercle is a themed magazine, with its 11th issue published in May 2023 dedicated to mythology. For the occasion, Ariel Martín Pérez designed a custom typeface named Luperca. The typeface, now published by Tunera Type Foundry, is inspired by Roman capitals, with contemporary calligraphic influences in some of the letters and various ligatures, alternate glyphs and nested characters. The five optical sizes of the typeface means that it could be used in several kinds of titles, quotes and subtitles.

Luperca can be downloaded for free on Tunera.

The standard typefaces used for the magazine are Wigrum by Production Type and ITC Spirit by Jovica Veljović.

La stella dentro (“The star within”) is the official catalog of the 69th edition of the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice, the Biennale Musica 2025. This edition, under the artistic direction of Caterina Barbieri, is marked by an openness towards contemporary electronic and electroacoustic music, and understanding music as a possibility for expanding one’s perception.

Thus, the catalog, designed by Tomo Tomo, conceals a colourful, psychedelic star within its austere, sidereal cover, and the object itself changes and expands in the hands of those who leaf through it, expressing the dynamics of sensory expansion. Except for a sixteenth of ‘stellar’ images, the book is printed entirely in a silver spot color with a few elements in black and a large amount of white space. Cold, electronic, rarefied.

The typography, on the other hand, interprets the link with the refined tradition of classical music, with a font inspired by the work of Jean Jannon, Robert Granjon and Philippe Grandjean and other – it’s Store Norske Gangster, designed by Arve Båtevik. Used very often in italics and in very small sizes, it creates an interference with the electronic and intergalactic aesthetics of the catalogue and the ‘Biennale’.

Digital typefaces have largely become invisible online-only products, buried in an endless stream of new releases. Even once you’ve found the right one, purchasing a license is just a dry, functional click.

Born from the idea of making type discoverable through unusual channels and creating a fresh, tangible encounter with Viennese typography, the Digital Font Box presents three selected phospho typefaces as local, physical objects: Giramisu, Luxus Brut and Neonoir.

In collaboration with Stadtschrift – Vienna’s association dedicated to preserving urban lettering – these typefaces appear in a small-edition series: each box contains a unique download code together with a postcard showing the respective façade, neatly packaged as a collectible object, with the boxes themselves typeset in Dazzed. The 3.5″ floppy disk is a playful nod to how fonts were sold before the rise of the internet. The font boxes are intended to be discovered in museum shops and concept stores in Vienna.

Description of the project by HumDrumPress:

Utterances: Composing a Care-Informed Research Practice in the Cracks is a humble offering towards an alternative artistic-research practice that is guided by an ethics of care.

Utterances proposes the ‘check in’ as an invitation, as well as a structure, dialogue, and reality that begins with the lived experience of the body, combined with the visceral experiences of sharing intimate spaces together. This approach opens space for collecting impressions, allowing for tensions and gaps, speaking and being silent, presence and non-presence, note taking and taking note, all as an ongoing process of caring coalition building.

The book features an eclectic palette of typefaces, spanning Authentic Sans 60 (Christina Janus, Desmond Wong), DINdong (Clara Sambot), Euripides (Tanvi Sharma), and Victor Mono (Rune Bjørnerås) to Velvetyne's collection showcasing Abordage Regular (Eugénie Bidaut), Compagnon Regular (Juliette Duhé, Léa Pradine) and Italic (Valentin Papon), and Director (Justine Herbel, May Jolivet).

Utterances was written by The Promiscuous Care Study Group and co-published by HumDrumPress and Meteoro Editions. The cover measures 140×195 mm with inner pages measuring 110×155 mm. It has 60 pages and was printed by Offsetdruckerei Karl Grammlich GmbH.

Slanted magazine #46, “Cairo”, is a visual journey into the vibrant heart of Egypt’s creative scene. The dynamic design culture of Cairo – and beyond – reveals just how diverse, innovative, and powerful creative voices in Egypt are today.

From graphic design, typography, and visual communication to architecture and product design, Slanted #46 showcases outstanding projects that are shaping the cultural present and future of the region. Whether through progressive branding concepts, experimental approaches, or striking visual storytelling, this issue reflects the powerful creative energy flowing through Egypt. Slanted gives space to designers, illustrators, and artists from Cairo, other Egyptian cities, and abroad—highlighting their work and personal statements. In-depth essays and articles on cultural, social, and creative topics related to Cairo and Egypt round out the issue.

Slanted #46 is a compelling portrait of a design scene in motion—bold, diverse, and brimming with fresh perspectives. On our trip to Cairo, we conducted numerous interviews with people from the creative industries, which have been edited into the short film Cairo Unscripted—Exploring Cairo’s Past, Present, and Creative Future by design studio Ntsal. It is available for free from slanted.de/cairo.

To mark the release of Slanted #46, Slanted is launching a special edition with five stunning photo prints by Markus Lange, as well as a striking hoodie collaboration with Reell and Negmedine Khaled.

Heimann + Schwantes:

100 years ago, political pressure forced the Bauhaus school to relocate from Weimar to Dessau. Dessau became a place where the Bauhaus could flourish and put its vision of a better life for all into practice.

From September 2025 onwards, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation will celebrate this anniversary with a year-long festival programme entitled ‘An die Substanz’ (To the Core). The focus will be on the material, economic and technological foundations of the Bauhaus, from the extraction of raw materials to production processes, trade routes and the social and ecological consequences.

To mark the anniversary, we have developed a corporate design that restores colour and diversity of form to the Bauhaus Dessau identity. The design aims to breathe life into both the historical dimension of the Bauhaus and the discourse on contemporary design requirements.

Poster and program flyer for Forum Neues Wetter, a series of talks in Grimma, Saxony, organized by the office for spatial design laufende quadratmeter (lfm2, Christian Göthner) and artist collective Situation Room (Sven Bergelt and Kai-Hendrik Windeler).

DIN A2 (42×59,4 cm), folded to A5, printed with two HKS spot colors.

Custom title lettering combined with the headline typeface Gamuth by Max Esnée and the body typeface Friedl by Camelot Typefaces.

The magazine was issued in five cover variants. Shown here is the one with art by Oklou.

From the magazine’s website:

Ic3y Mag: The Archive Issue (2025) is our debut in print, capturing a moment where music, design, and technology converge. Conceived as a 100-page testament to the notion of archives and how the creative past feeds into the present and future, this issue highlights a roster of artists, collectives, and institutions who are reshaping the cultural landscape.

Featuring: Oklou, Boy Harsher, William Arcand, Gus Dapperton, Tileyard London, Fvckrender, Honeydrip, Pretty Girl, Kučka, Mutek, Centre Phi and Valentin Hansen.

In this first print edition, conversations span continents and disciplines—touching on identity, emotional depth, innovation, and personal growth. With a blend of interviews, visual essays, and concert photography unearthed from our years online, The Archive Issue stands as both a reflection of Ic3y’s evolution and a blueprint for what’s next.

123 pages
6.5 × 9.25 inches

Our logo is printed with silver ink.

This book, published by Slanted Publishers, celebrates the 10-year anniversary of Void – an Oslo-based experimental design studio working at the intersection of art, design, technology, and informatics. Carefully curated and edited by Michael Ulrich Hensel and the design studio, Void.Reflections showcases a selection of Void’s most compelling works, interwoven with a variety of visual and textual narratives. But rather than telling their story alone, Void chose to open the conversation – inviting external perspectives and interpretations of their work.

The result is a rich, multi-voiced reflection on the themes and questions emerging from the studio’s practice. Contributions include the poem “Desperation Animation” by Silje Linge Haaland, along with essays by Michael Hensel, Pernille Sandberg, Fredrik Høyer, Elise By Olsen, Einar Duenger Bøhn, Gaute Brochmann, and Void themselves.

Designed by the studio itself, of the book (21×28cm, 264 pages), echoes Void’s unique aesthetic sensibility – capturing the ephemeral qualities, luminous events, and visual atmospheres that define their work. In that sense, this book is not just about Void; it is Void – an extension of the studio’s creative vision.

Printed by NINO Druck and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner, the publication features thermo-sensitive varnish, hot-foil embossing, thread-stitching and changing papers.

ISBN: 978-3-948440-90-9