Branding and promotion for the 2021 edition of Ireland’s premier literary event, the International Literature Festival Dublin. As in 2020, website and branding are by Red&Gray, and photography is by Ros Kavanagh.

The Best of Us, mounted during the depths of the Covid pandemic when no indoor exhibitions were possible, displayed the commended projects from over 600 submissions to the 2020 Institute for Creative Advertising and Design Awards on digital bus shelter kiosks throughout the city of Dublin, provided by JCDecaux. A companion print supplement was published by The Business Post, and a selection of projects were projected onto the façade of the historic General Post Office by Algorithm. Design and direction by Jenny Leahy of ICAD and Rossi McAuley of Distinctive Repetition.

ABC Maxi Round makes an early appearance for the identity of the Dublin Art Book Fair 2020.

Dinamo’s Maxi, “a heavily-engineered yet warm and witty type system of spaghetti movements and angular lines”, was released in September 2020. According to the foundry, its underlying skeleton references “mid-century and post-modern Swiss designs—including Josef Müller-Brockmann’s CWS word mark (1958) and Marlyse Schmid’s and Bernard Müller’s Swatch logo (1981).” ABC Maxi comes in four subfamilies, Round and Sharp, each in proportionally spaced and monospaced versions.

Alex Synge, who also worked on the book fair’s identity in previous years, chose the Regular weight of Maxi Round. For the wordmark, he activated the “Heavy” alternate glyphs for the vowels. For accompanying bits, Maxi Round is paired with Ballinger Mono from the local Signal Type Foundry. This font family has roots in Switzerland, too: It takes cues from Candia, a typewriter face designed by Josef Müller-Brockmann for Olivetti around 1970.

The tenth edition of the Dublin Art Book Fair took place online at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. This year’s theme was Design as an Attitude. The annual gallery programme was guest curated by design critic and author Alice Rawsthorn.

Tote bags.

Gift cards.

Branding and promotion for the 2019 edition of Ireland’s premier literary event, the International Literature Festival Dublin. Photography by Ros Kavanagh.

ABC Prophet by Dinamo is the typeface used for the identity of the Dublin Art Book Fair in 2018 and 2019.

Ireland’s only art book fair is presented by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. The theme of the eighth and ninth editions was Art and Architecture, in 2018 with a focus on Uncovering Libraries and Collections. In the subsequent year, the fair was dedicated to Learning from the Bauhaus. The annual gallery programme was guest curated by architectural and cultural historian, Dr. Ellen Rowley. The design is by Alex Synge.

Yummiest Prophet rendition yet? The key visual was recreated in edible form. The cake lettering preserves most of Prophet’s distinctive features.

“Commissioned as part of Offset's ‘Celebrating The City’ campaign, we were asked to create something for South William Street which has been the studio's neighbourhood since the start.

We worked with 10 creative people to write and illustrate a series of articles of imagined futures and creative interpretations for South William street from a number of different angles. The results were presented in a 2 colour, 8 page broadsheet which was handed out on a single day from make-shift vendor booths. And of course there was a website, because all newspapers need a website of they want to stay relevant.” — The 100 Archive

Maser in action in an alley in the city centre of Dublin.

Since crisis is currently a popular word in Europe, we could take this opportunity to make a Top-10 of “typefaces of the crisis”. This post is just a start. Curious to see more examples.

First, we have to be honest who was first in the current crisis: Iceland. Chapeaux. (any typeface personifying this?) A good runner-up however is Ireland, which was in a deep financial crisis already in autumn 2010, long before Greece or Spain. Well done.

The editorial teams of European newspapers had an easy time while selecting an image or photo accompanying articles about the Irish crisis. In 2009 and 2010 the Dublin based graffiti artist Maser created dozens of extremely large sized murals in the Irish public environment. They were hard to avoid. Texts said: “In a world full of shame + regret, do something to be proud of”. Or: “Greed is the knife & the scars run deep”. Perfect metaphor for an article about money obsessed managers, fucked up bankers, and other financial abuses. In November 2010 articles about the Irish crises published in the European press, were almost all without exception accompanied by pictures of Maser's pieces. Maser became the messenger of the Irish crisis, and he told his mural stories with Bello.

Mural by Maser at the streets of Dublin. A photo of this mural was used by the German weekly Der Spiegel in November 2010.

Large scale mural by Maser at the harbor of Dublin.

Article on the Irish crisis in the Dutch newspaper NRC next, november 2010.

Article on the Irish crisis at the website of the English newspaper The Guardian, November 2010.

Article in the Dutch newspaper NRC, november 2010