The editorial series Sinapsi (“synapses”) collects texts published in the journal Nodes since its foundation, as well as unpublished content. It delivers different writing forms: essays, interviews, scientific articles and of wide circulation. The intention is to make accessible to readers, on the one hand, contents that are no longer available and, on the other hand, topics and writing never published before.

Volume 6 is titled La ricerca sulla sinestesia. Un contributo tra neuroscienze e design. This text retraces the main stages that have marked the research on synesthesia and detects two barely addressed issues: the history of synesthaesia and its future prospects. First, the role and historical importance of Italian scholars (physiologists, aestheticians, historians, linguists) in identifying the synaesthetic phenomenon will be outlined, given how they are too often left out from the scientific production. Second, some applicative prospects drawing from the neuroscientific knowledge on synesthesia in the field of design for content accessibility and the design for health and well-being will be further explored.

Size: 12.5×18 cm / 24 pages, Italian / Risograph print on recycled Favini paper

What are the characteristics of a supernormal stimulus? Are works of art that we recognise as masterpieces of history to be considered superstimuli? Can works of art today promote behaviours such as empathy, a sense of aesthetics, and community, thus functioning as a critical tool that generates change?

Superstimolo. Come il cervello partecipa all’opera d’arte (“Superstimulus: How the Brain Contributes to a Work of Art”) opens up an initial interdisciplinary debate on the subject, reflecting on the importance of art and the effects it can generate on individuals, cultures, and societies and contains texts by Numero Cromatico (Dionigi Mattia Gagliardi, Giulia Torromino, Manuel Focareta, Sara Cuono, Federica Marenghi, Salvatore Gaetano Chiarella), Emanuele Arielli, Dina Riccò, Renata Gambino and Grazia Pulvirenti, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, David Freedberg.

The book is part of the INTRA editorial series by Numero Cromatico. Size: 13×19 cm, 152 pages, Risograph printed on recycled Favini paper. This publication was realised thanks to the contribution of the General Directorate for Education, Research and Cultural Institutes. The publication is part of the research project Art as supernatural stimulus. The work of art as superstimulus in the era of digitalisation of intersubjective experiences supported by the Italian Council program, Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity, Ministry of Culture (2021).

Mind Field was a YouTube Originals show hosted by Michael Stevens, the creator and host of the YouTube channel Vsauce. It ran for three seasons from 2017 to 2019.

Peignot features heavily in the show's branding and on-screen typography. In addition to the main logo, the typeface can also be spotted in lower thirds, title cards, and figures throughout the show's run.

Frame captured from Season 3, Episode 6, “How to Talk to Aliens”

Title card from Season 3, Episode 1, “The Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis”

Title card from the special episode “What Is the Scariest Thing?”

Frame captured from the special episode “I Watch 3 Episodes of Mind Field With Our Experts & Researchers”

Frame captured from Season 1, Episode 7, “In Your Face”

Frame captured from Season 3, Episode 8, “Mind Reading”

The Feminine Monarchie, or the History of Bees, a 1609 book by Charles Butler, is not only the first book on the science of beekeeping but also brought to public awareness that the bee colony is ruled by a queen rather than a king.

Made as a student project at RISD, this series of ten plates creates a taxonomy that compares the parts of the beehive to societal structures and an anthropology to how communities of bees and people behave. Each plate shows an illustration as a visual representation of the idea, as well as a quote from the book that discusses that specific plates themes.

Size (per plate): 6″×8″

Conquering the extremes: LIQUIFER Systems Group, a design and research firm based in Vienna and Bremen, has been addressing the issue of human life on planet Earth and elsewhere in the universe for two decades. Their work demonstrates how considerate technology-based design solutions and careful use of available resources can enable us to live in space.

LIQUIFER. Living Beyond Earth – Architecture for Extreme Environments is the first book to present the practice’s groundbreaking work. It features 177 color and 62 b/w illustrations and was published by Park Books. It’s the first published book to use the typeface Micronova. The serif typeface is Lexik, likewise by Binnenland.

The Center of Gravity (CoG) is a newly formed DNRF Center of Excellence at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. The Center focuses on the understanding of gravity: what lies within black holes, how do they move or behave dynamically, how they are affected by matter and quantum effects, and what information can we gain via gravitational waves. The CoG is perhaps the largest and most active Center in the field in Europe.

The main requirement for the website was to showcase the CoG’s work for the public at large, and to make it exciting to learn about gravity, as well as to be a fundamental resource for members of the physics community. The need to convey very complex information in as clear and concise manner as possible, dictated the need to find a set of fonts capable of conveying those qualities. The choice fell on two sets of fonts that are visually appealing, versatile and, crucially, extremely legible in a variety of digital environments: The main titles use Lato Bold (designed by Łukasz Dziedzic), while Fira Sans (by Carrois Apostrophe) carries the rest of the typographic work in the secondary titles (Fira Sans Bold) and copy text (Fira Sans Regular).

Designed by studiokwi, the Moms@Science project, based at the Freiburg University of Education, focuses on innovative scientists with children. It helps to make the stories, challenges, work, and achievements of successful and innovative mothers in science visible and accessible to a broad (specialist) audience.

A colorful and playful project design forms the basis for everything the project will develop in the coming years. 👀

The font in use is ALT Picaro by Ellen Jonsson at Alt Type.

From the About page:

The Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition has been a launchpad for Ireland’s brightest young minds for half a century. It’s where one year’s frontier research becomes next year’s student project. It’s where you discover an island-wide community that shares your passion and curiosity.

The website for the Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition ’26 is using Melange Grotesk Regular in combination with Tiny 5×3 160 and Söhne for its website typography.

Focal in use by NODE Berlin Oslo for Co-Creating Futures by Kristin Werner and Antje Nestler and published by CollActive Materials and Matters of Activity.

Description from the design studio:

Co-Creating Futures — How can public engagement foster creative exchange between science and society? Matters of Activity Science Communicator Antje Nestler and former CollActive Materials Coordinator Kristin Werner explore science communication through collaborative speculation. From foundational concepts to practical workshop tools and worksheets, this guide for public engagement practitioners and curious researchers offers tested methods for bringing together academic research, design, and society in co-creating pathways into a sustainable future.

You can download a pdf of the whole guide from HU Berlin.

The monospaced font is IBM Plex Mono.

The faceted serif is Avara.

Para from Ultra Kuhl is used in the branding of Urania Berlin, a cultural and scientific institution in the heart of the city. The identity, designed by Stan Hema, highlights clarity and openness while giving the venue a distinct visual voice. Para’s strong, geometric forms are applied across signage, print materials, and digital channels, ensuring high legibility and a recognizable presence in both cultural and educational contexts. The accompanying sans is Colophon’s Basis Grotesque.

When Co.Scienza Festival, the annual science communication event in Trento, sought a stronger and more recognizable identity, they turned to Rebus. Our challenge was to design a system that could endure over time while staying fresh and adaptable to the changing themes of each edition. We created a framework anchored by two distinctive stripes – a signature element ensuring continuity – combined with vibrant, overlapping boxes that give structure and energy to the layouts. Each year, the identity is renewed through a different color palette and an original illustration, this edition featuring the work of Anna Micheloni. The result is a visual language that is both consistent and dynamic, reflecting the evolving nature of science itself.

Key art for the 1.0 release of Abiotic Factor

Abiotic Factor is an open world survival single-player and cooperative video game developed by Deep Field Games and published by Playstack. It was released into early access on May 2, 2024 and was fully released on July 22, 2025. Players assume the role of a GATE employee, stranded deep within its underground research facility. After a catastrophic containment breach, players must use their brains and brawn to escape the facility by any means necessary all while avoiding military and paranormal forces.

Abiotic Factor uses Poppins as its branding typeface. It is seen used in most promotional material for the game. Poppins Black is used specifically for the game's logo. In game, the Black weight is also used as the headline font. It is paired with TeX Gyre Adventor for long bodies of text and can be seen used diegetically on wayfinding signs. Certainly very stylish if a bit hard to read on small text. Roboto is also used on the occasional piece of text, although this use feels more functional rather than stylistic. Interestingly, this is the pre-redesign version of Roboto that Unreal Engine 5 still ships with.

Logo. The A in the bottom line is replaced with GATE’s logo, the titular organization this game revolves around.

Main menu

Graphics settings

The game’s HUD, displaying multiple things such as button prompts, hotkeys, player status, active perks (seen on the left) and current mission objectives.

Inventory menu

A player ‘inventing’ a new crafting recipe by dragging in the correct ingredient, which unlocks when a player collects a new object. One of the few instances where the old Roboto is used.

Down Under: The Curious Fall of a Child Who Knew Nothing and Became Everything is a picture book by Formafantasma designed in response to a commission and residency program by C-Mine and published by Nero Editions. Blending fiction with scientific research, the publication explores the identity and ecological significance of Belgium’s post-industrial landscape, aiming to foster a new form of ecological literacy for both young readers and adults.

The book opens with a fable written by Formafantasma that challenges conventional narratives of human superiority, offering new perspectives on coexistence with other species. This first section is accompanied by illustrations by Clement Vuillier, which reinterpret and draw upon imagery used in scientific analysis, such as petrographic and scanning electron microscope (SEM) images.

It concludes with a more analytical section featuring critical text by Teresa Castro and a series of interviews with experts from the scientific field. Complementing this are two visual essays composed of microscopic images created using petrography and SEM techniques. This second part of the book delves into the scientific and conceptual foundations of the fable. Through this dual register, Down Under encourages reflection at different stages of life, aspiring to function both as a children’s book and a transgenerational educational tool.

Shimadzu 島津 is a leading manufacturer of analytical and medical instruments. The company commissioned Hanyi Fonts to create Shimadzu Genso Sans, the industry’s first custom brand font. This elegant typeface, designed to boost brand recognition and eliminate font copyright risks, was awarded the iF Design Award 2025.

The core concept, “Beauty of Health,” reflects Shimadzu’s commitment to the well-being of humankind and the Earth, aligning with the company’s management principles. Inspired by the handwritten descriptions of X-ray radiography systems by Genzo Shimadzu Junior, the font fuses the warmth of handwriting with natural, curved lines, resulting in a minimalist aesthetic.

Genso Sans is designed for easy readability on digital devices like tablets and smartphones, taking into consideration users with disabilities. This universal design is compatible with the Latin alphabet, used in 35 languages, as well as with Hebrew. It also adheres to the GB/T2312 standard, offering three weights and encompassing Chinese, Western, Greek characters, numerals, and more.

The font is used for graphics on Shimadzu China’s official website, for brand packaging, offices, etc.

You can find Arclin everywhere. Their technologies make your homes and cars safe, your foods and fields grow, your water clean, and your pharmaceuticals heal. Sparked by recent acquisitions, Arclin sought to move their reputation from a chemical and applications company to a global brand that develops mission-critical technologies the world can’t live without.

The stenciled wordmark, which is a modified version of Stellage Constructed, visualizes the relationship between the seen and the unseen. The implied connections of the letterforms speak to the seemingly invisible science that is the backbone of all their products.

Stellage Display was chosen as the brand's primary headline font for it's sharp, cutting-edge qualities. While the competition blends together with ubiquitous sans serifs and a sea of blues and greens, we made a conscious decision to visually differentiate them while simultaneously positioning them as a leader in their industry. Affairs has a technical quality that just felt right, all while functioning surprisingly well at small sizes. Lastly, General Grotesque Mono furthers that technicality and nod to precision, rounding out Arclin's type palette.

The Jacques de La Comble Natural History Museum in Autun, founded in 1964 thanks to the Autun Society of Natural History (SHNA), houses 800,000 specimens, including 300-million-year old fossils, dinosaur footprints, and minerals like autunite. It is part of the Museums and Heritage Directorate, which also manages the Rolin Museum.

In 2023, the museum aimed to revitalize its communication by modernizing its logo. The spiral, as a universal and timeless symbol, becomes the identifiable element of the museum. Its design, a symbol of natural sciences, reflects evolution of humankind, the water cycle and the seasons, as well as science and mathematics – the golden ratio, Fibonacci sequence – and the imprint of fossils and traces of time, heritage and testimony.

Commercial Type’s Caslon Doric is used throughout.

When set in smaller sizes, the logo uses a lighter spiral

The museum reception hall

ESCMID, the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, is one of the largest medical societies in the world. As it continues to grow and gain influence worldwide it is rapidly turning into a global science brand. Scholtysik consolidated the extensive brand portfolio and changed the congress name to “ESCMID Global” which highlights its position as the world’s largest and most relevant congress in its field. At the same time, Scholtysik renewed the complete visual identity and brand communication.

Selecta by Maxitype was chosen as the brand typeface across all touchpoints. Scholtysik looked for a typeface that would generate impact in large applications at international events and at the same time could provide precise, factual communication of scientific content and medical guidelines. The typographic look and feel must do justice to the never-ending curiosity and methodical rigour of scientific research and ultimately convey the clarity and strength to fight infectious diseases worldwide.

A custom version of the type family for ESCMID includes a set of Greek characters for proper representation of biological and medical terminology.

The German Exercise Science and Training Conference (GEST) is the biennial meeting of the Exercise Science Section of the German Association for Sport Science (Deutsche Vereinigung für Sportwissenschaft, dvs). The theme for the upcoming event at Saarland University is “Fusion of Science and Sport: an international Dialogue”.

The many different styles of Puffling allowed me to use bold lettering for all kinds of names and headlines. Name too short? → Puffling Extended! Headline too long? → Puffling Ultra Condensed! I used Puffling as much as I could and added Martian Mono for some longer texts. The branding is completed by turning some of my sports and science inspired illustrations into 3D renders, that turn, float and hover on top of the typography.

Aqueous Mortar Pestle Grinding / Mortar & Pestle is a two-in-one editorial design. The left page refers to the tool itself, including its cultural significance and symbols, such as the Moon Rabbit. The right page focuses on a scientific research paper I found (Nasseb Singh, Vijai K. Rai, Anil Kumar; published by Elsevier Masson, 2017) titled Aqueous Mortar Pestle Grinding – An efficient, attractive, and viable technique for the regioselective synthesis of β-amino alcohols. I thought it would have been interesting to play with schemes and graphs to reinforce the concept of grinding.

Made in the Editorial Design course held by Armand Mevis at ISIA Urbino in 2023/2024; printed in June 2024.

The rebranding of one of Europe’s most eminent research institutes, the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Würenlingen, Switzerland, was handled by Scholtysik.

The Swiss agency developed a dynamic logo that is constantly being formed and re-formed from tiny particles. The resulting shapes are inspired by PSI’s diverse research fields, such as quantum technology, neutron scattering, protein folding or atmospheric chemistry.

The PSI design system creates a new variety of expression. A free-style imagery, a broad colour palette and a variable layout offer great creative freedom. Precise language, clean typography and high-quality photography convey scientific excellence.

Scholtysik commissioned a slightly customized version of Revolver Type’s Ritual. Dubbed Accelerate, PSI’s exclusive typeface contains the complete Latin and Greek alphabets, as well as the mathematical symbols and special characters of all European languages. Its expression is factual, clear and precise. It is contrasted with an intense, pure colour palette. It corresponds to the abstract scientific topics and the often synthetic visualisations of the research results.

Read and see more in Scholtysik’s case study.

SideFX Houdini animations: Burki Scherer AG
Web development: MD Systems GmbH
Custom type: Revolver Type Foundry
Usability testing: Die Ergonomen Usability AG

Specimen for Accelerate, PSI’s custom version of Ritual