Under Approval is a creative digital studio specialising in brand and advertising content. The website is reduced to a short self-introduction, a list of capabilities and a contact form, giving the studio a direct and highly compressed online presence.

The copy centres on lines such as “We make stuff move” and on services including precision 3D modelling, look development, digital simulation, character development, brand films and motion systems. Its sparse structure makes the website feel closer to a calling card than a conventional agency portfolio.

Typefaces in use are Store Norske Ja and Store Norske Ja Mono from Skriftkompani.

The Jones Girls were a vocal group made up of sisters Shirley, Valorie, and Brenda. Known for their masterful harmonies, they spend years performing as background vocalists before getting a chance at their own album in 1979.

For the cover of their sophomore album, Papirtis Taj Mahal, a faux Devanagari, was chosen by designers Ed Lee and Phyllis H.B. The reasons for this choice doesn’t seem to go beyond the Jones sisters’ vaguely sari-like garb. I initially thought that it was perhaps due to the song “Nights Over Egypt” – the faux Devanagari being mistaken for faux Arabic – but that song isn’t on this album but the next one.

The typeface’s overline is extended to form a frame, a technique that reminds me of how I've seen Face Photosetting’s Oxford used. (For example, this record by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or this record by cabaret act Gotham.)

[More info on Discogs]

From the website of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux (translated):

Regularly, the Fine Arts Museum of Bordeaux invites contemporary artists to reflect on its collections. In 2024, the museum plans to host artist Valérie Belin as part of an exhibition Valérie Belin. Les visions silencieuses organized in partnership with the Nathalie Obadia Gallery, Paris/Brussels. This project builds upon the museum’s previous exhibitions dedicated to female artists, from contemporary artist Suzanne Lafont in 2018 as part of the Garonne artistic commission, to Rosa Bonheur in 2022.

Bringing together around a hundred pieces covering the artist's entire production, from the late 1990s to the most recent series including an unpublished one, the exhibition unfolds across the two sites of the Fine Arts Museum, highlighting the singular dimension of her work.

Curated by Valérie Belin, artist, and Sophie Barthélémy, director of the MusBA, assisted by Maheut Bolard. Exhibition graphic design and scenography by Guillaume Ruiz, exclusively using Forma DJR in Display and Text styles. Lights by Serge Damon.

Poster for an Art Deco exhibition shown at the Finch College Museum of Art in fall 1970. Finch College was a liberal arts college in Manhattan. It closed in 1976.

The poster measuring 24″×36″ was designed by Milton Glaser of Push Pin Studios. He used a typeface that may have been designed specifically for this occasion. At least that’s what its name suggest: it’s presented in PLINC’s 1971 catalog as Push Pin Art Deko. The showing doesn’t include individual credits, but it mentions Milton Glaser’s name in the sample text, suggesting that it was him who designed the typeface as well.

The wide open caps feature several traits that are characteristic for the Art Deco style: a geometric build with pointed apexes, an S with three horizontals (compare to the lettering in Cassandre’s Nord Express poster from 1927), and an A with a triangle as bar (see Pierre Zenobel’s A New Blue Train to the Cote d’Azur poster from 1928, as well as to period typefaces like Novel Gothic or Vulcain). PLINC’s one-line sample has other glyphs for A and E than the poster, suggesting that Push Pin Art Deko came with alternates.

Milton Glaser Inc. mentions that the poster “employed two split fountains on the press in order to create the effect of a full color announcement [in just two print runs]. Of course, this requires a sympathetic pressman and willingness to spend a lot of time adjusting the results.”

Hat tip to the Herb Lubalin Study Center.

Push Pin Art Deko as shown in Photo-Lettering’s One Line Manual of Styles, 1971

Detail with the filled-in and overlapping letterforms of Push Pin Art Deko

When the exhibition moved to Cranbrook Academy in January 1971, Glaser had the poster reprinted, now on pale yellow paper, which further increases its overall colorfulness, as he explains in his 1973 monograph.

A copy of the Cranbrook College version is currently on sale from renewfinds.

This poster was designed to be attached to an editorial project (Marshall aveva ragione, thesis supervisor: Prof. Gabriela Galati) as a part of the Visual Design and Integrated Marketing Communication program at NABA — Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan.

IPERCUBO is a contemporary art gallery in Milan that stems from the urgency of imagining alternative dimensions. The hypercube is a geometric figure analogous to the cube but immersed in a space of four or more dimensions: whilst it can be mathematically conceptualized and described, it cannot actually be imagined by the human mind since it can only think in a three-dimensional reality. The concept of hyperobject, developed by the contemporary philosopher Timothy Morton, is loosely related to the hypercube.

The typographic choice follows the identity of IPERCUBO, with the use of Archivo by Omnibus-Type foundry, a typeface designed to be used simultaneously on print and digital platforms.

You can find the complete project on Behance.

Usomano recycled paper, 140 gr, 40×68cm
Printed by Tipografia Reali, Milan, Italy

The new Tumulte portfolio website is dressed in new colors and textures. We use two beautiful typographic characters: Forno (Adrien Midzic, Pizzatype) is used for copy, headlines use Moche (designed by Vivien Gorse, available from Pépite). The studio logo is set in Futura Condensed. Web development by Martin Laxenaire.

From Everyday Practice:

Everyday Practice designed the catalogue for opening exhibition of the Jeonnam Museum of Art, Beneath the Mountain, Along the Water. This is an exhibition designed to explore the interrelationship between modern and future art and how it is interpreted as a work. The exhibition consists of three exhibitions: “Huh Baek-lyun and Heo Geo: The Master’s Way,” “Modernity and Transition, Intersection,” and “Laurent Grasso: A History that Beckham the Future,” each representing the past, modern, and future.

We applied graphic identity through the three exhibitions to the design of the catalog. In addition, the three books were intended to build visual unity by utilizing typography that expresses tradition, modernity, and the future in multiple layers.

Design by Kwon Joonho and Chunghun Lee, using Kern Upline (Pizza Typefaces) for the English text. The Hangul typeface used for Korean text is Sandoll 고딕Neo1유니코드 (Sandoll Gothic Neo1 Unicode), a version of Sandoll GothicNeo.

For the 2019–2020 program of the Musée de l’imprimerie et de la communication graphique (“Museum of Printing and Graphic Communication”) in Lyon, Bureau 205 made early use of the typeface Molitor, designed by Matthieu Cortat and to be published by 205TF in the fall of 2019. The typeface F Grotesk, designed by Radim Peško and used here for body text, is part of the museum’s visual identity since 2013.

De la construction au récit: être de son temps et de son lieu pour l’architecte du XXe siècle was an exhibition about 20th century architecture shown at CAUE Haute-Savoie in Annecy, France.

For the graphic design and scenography, Bureau 205 has worked with the typefaces Plaax, Maax Rounded, and Maax Mono, designed by Damien Gautier and available from 205TF. The project was realized in collaboration with Sara de.Gouy (designer, architect, and artist).

Un musée, un logotype (“A museum, a logotype”) is a book that questions the place of the visual identity of a cultural institution. Based on the work done by the designers of Bureau 205 since 2013 for the design of the “mobile” logo of the Musée de l’imprimerie et de la communication (“Museum of Printing and Graphic Communication”) in Lyon.

Like its logotype, this identity is not fixed but continues to be built overevents and exhibitions: an open and iterative process that projects the Printing Museum in the field of graphic communication. (...) Designers are wondering about the role of a graphic chart and its planned obsolescence if the identity is not reflected to be able to evolve with the needs it is supposed to adapt. A reflection necessary at a time when adaptability and reorganization are, in fact, imposed. — Bureau 205

See more work by Bureau 205 for the Musée de l’imprimerie et de la communication.

Landing page for investing newsletter Capital Minded: www.capitalminded.com

God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen is a compilation of Christmas songs featuring The Dexter Gordon Quartet, McCoy Tyner, The Arthur Blythe Quartet, The Heath Brothers, Paquito D'Rivera, and The Wynton Marsalis Quintet.

Art direction by Carin Goldberg. Cover illustration by Robert Weaver. The names placed between the portraits are supported by an overline, for better cohesion. For a second, this makes Glaser Stencil resemble an Indic script like Devanagari. The J in “Jazzmen” was enlarged so that it looks like stylized saxophone.

[More info on Discogs]

Art by Barry E. Jackson

From Pizzeria Fedele, Palma de Mallorca