This illustrated book by Pascal Dethurens invites us to discover the discourses that the Western world has held on happiness, and what are the visual representations that it has inspired in more than twenty centuries.

Le Bonheur dans la littérature et la peinture was published by Éditions Hazan. It has 192 pages and measures 221 mm × 280 mm.

Context Window takes a McLuhan-esque mosaic approach in the form of a visual essay on the ever-expanding role and effects of computers and digital technology on our lives. As our exposure to computers and digital technology has expanded, infiltrating nearly every aspect of human existence, their ability to change our behavior through subconscious cues and otherwise invisible environmental changes should prompt deeper consideration of who these changes ultimately benefit.

On the font choices throughout the book:

Like the books I've designed and produced, Context Window is a creative outlet to utilize a number of my favorite typefaces. Tiempos being an economic and reliable family for long-form text – and especially capable in print. And Nick Sherman's HEX Franklin has become a go-to workhorse but also fitting for its historical ties back to the writing of Marshall McLuhan.

The first printing, a limited edition of 100 copies was printed by Newspaper Club in the UK and includes additional related Risograph prints and other ephemera produced in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Standby, published in 2022 by Southern Illinois University Press, presents a unique practical philosophy of design for the stage. Breaking with the habitual separation between the domains of writing and design, I lobbied to design and typeset the book myself. The result was honored as a selection in the international AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show.

The design of Standby represents a contemporary interpretation of Renaissance book typography. One of the guiding principles of the design was not to introduce any element or manipulate the type in any fashion that would not be achievable in lead. Almost every piece of text, including extracts, headings, and chapter titles, is set in a single face and a single size. The typographic palette consists exclusively of roman, italic, small caps, and full caps. Pilcrows and midpoints are employed judiciously throughout. Captions and numerals for lists often hang in the margins, bringing some life to the space surrounding the textblock. In a deconstruction of a traditional Aldine chapter opening, chapter titles appear on the recto before the text begins. The opening text shows faintly through the paper, uniting the title and text in an implied single-page layout. The “S/B” device on the half-titles, built from the text face and a custom slash character, represents the traditional stage manager’s abbreviation for “standby.”

The text is set in Mário Feliciano’s Rongel. Rongel marries a certain kind of upright, almost staid formality with an unusual sharpness and tension in the letterforms. It has stage presence, conviction, a sense of theatricality which lends itself to this book about theatre. Rongel also feels not quite of this time, and indeed it is not — its roots lie in eighteenth-century Spain. The titling face, a classical homage with a sense of humor, made a pleasing contrast and alluded to mid-twentieth-century title page design.

A few characters in the text were borrowed from other faces as needed. For instance, the superior note numbers are set in Fontwerk’s Romaine, because I required proportionally spaced superior figures. All delimiters are set in roman, even in an italic context. All ampersands are set in italic, even in a roman context. I made a three-quarter-em dash and set it with spaces on either side. I likewise built my own ellipsis with my preferred spacing. All acronyms and roman numerals are in small caps. Subheads are capitalized sentence-style throughout. Extracts are italicized rather than set down in size.

A companion website and a suite of marketing materials employ the same typefaces and design aesthetic. More information about Standby can be found on the dedicated website. Additional images may be viewed on my portfolio website.

TT Hoves is part of youEngineering's identity.

youEngineering is a software development partner agency. The company’s services include software and application development, web design, and consulting. youEngineering’s mission is digital progress. The company believes that software development should come from the heart and the approach to development should be responsible and sustainable.

The 2024 edition of the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, entitled Inner Sanctum, ran from March 1 to June 2 at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Curated by José Da Silva, this biennial explored the complexity of the human condition and the search for intimate and spiritual places, sanctuaries that evoke moments of refuge and reflection. More than twenty artists and poets presented works that revolve around themes of memory, spirituality and collective and personal experience.

To design this project, Base Design used Louize and Louize Display designed by Matthieu Cortat and distributed by 205TF.

All-lowercase Cooper Black, all-caps Akzidenz-Grotesk, grandiose braces, and a photo (by Sid Avery) of Allan Sherman on a marble pedestal, for My Son, the Folk Singer. From Wikipedia:

On the album sleeve, the title appears directly below the words “Allan Sherman’s mother presents.”

The album, recorded before a live audience, is filled with reference to Jewish culture and in-jokes. His second album followed suit. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year (other than classical) at the 5th Annual Grammy Awards.

[More info on Discogs]

Title pages of the two volumes. Titles are set in FF Super Grotesk with its alternate a and g.

Texte und Zeichnungen einer künstlerisch forschenden Exploration metaphysischer Themen in Zeiten von maschinellem Lernen (“Texts and drawings of an artistic exploratory exploration of metaphysical themes in times of machine learning”) is my final thesis at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin.

Inspired by “Wenn die Sterne verlöschen”, the German version of Isaac Asimov's science fiction short story “The Last Question”, I have been experimenting with topics such as immortality, infinity, post- and transhumanism, artificial intelligence, the human body, cosmology and spirituality.

My two-part book is a foreign text collection, paired with my own notes, thoughts and drawings. With content that I have discovered, searched for, found, collected and sorted; stories, theories, essays, visions etc. from science, sci-fi, philosophy and art.

The work has nothing to do with theory or science, rather it is about an orientation towards the poetic, towards an artistic strategy and production. A personal confrontation with the present, with a view to the past and the future. The texts and the drawings are intended to attempt to open up new spaces of thought in their concatenation and to provide access to my thought structure, my universe.

In order to make it clear which contents are mine and which are foreign material, I have decided to use a color coding. So all “personal” contents, i.e. my notes, thoughts, awards and drawings are designed in the color blue — inspired by the infinite.

In my book every text is individually designed. Here, too, I have “quoted” and made the quotation the design principle. This way, the reader will always know when a new text begins or which text boxes belong together. In the best case the reading is linear, but there is also the possibility to read the texts crosswise.

The publication features 71 different fonts in total. Eight of them are shown in the included images, see the captions. The fonts that were used but aren’t depicted here are Akkurat, Aquinas, Arnhem, AT Apoc, AT Oroban, Azzurro, Beatrice Display, Big Caslon, Blazenburg, Brown, Century Schoolbook, Century Schoolbook Monospaced, Chap, Circular, Cirka, Courier Prime, Dia, Digestive, Druk Wide, Elastik D, Favorit, Five Years Later, Futura, Galapagos, Gotham, Gräbenbach, Grafier, GT Amerika, GT Pressura, GT Sectra, GT Walsheim, GT Super, Happy Times At The IKOB, Helvetica, IBM Plex Mono, ITC Franklin Gothic, Lausanne, Lexicon, Lucida Grande, Lyon, Lyyra, Meriva, Mineral, NB Architekt Neue, NB Grotesk, Neue Machina, Nitti Grotesk, Noe, Pensum, Rando, Sang Bleu King, Saol, Scto Grotesk, Serifbabe, Suisse Int’l, Suisse Int’l Mono, Suisse Works, Terminal Grotesk, Times New Roman, Tiny, Value Serif, Whyte, and ZXX.

In the second part of the book there are 112 drawings, where I have illustrated 112 terms from the texts. The respective terms are colored in the texts. The respective figure number is usually close to the term and can be looked up parallel in the drawings book. They are abstract illustrations of some of the most interesting keywords from the texts. Thus the drawings have helped me to better understand the contents of my selected texts. However, they are not a scientific representation but a personal interpretation. In addition, I had the drawings analyzed by an artificial intelligence.

I have used very durable materials in my entire design and the book format is also based on the infinite number sequence of Fibonacci, namely in a ratio of 1:1.618. The paper has a high durability as it is wood-free, there is thread stitching — the most durable way to bind a book.

Around the two books there is a transparent rubber and they are vacuum packed together. It was also a conscious decision to design the book as a raw book block without cover. It should draw attention to the incompleteness and incompleteness. To draw attention to the fragile personal.

All in all, my project is an investigative activity, which when and then confirms or redefines my views on the relationship between man and the universe and man and machine. In addition, overarching associations also arise. My attitude is fundamentally characterized by curiosity and a thirst for knowledge, which is not lacking in an appropriate skepticism towards the thematic complexity, but which always ventures out into new branches.

The index is set in the monospaced Nitti.

Pages 358/359 feature text in Times, ABC Favorit Mono, Suisse Int’l Condensed and Nitti.

This blue double-page spread is set in FF Super Grotesk again.

The typefaces used on pages 320/321 are Rosart and Ogg Display, with more FF Super Grotesk and Nitti.

Nitti is used for the index of drawings.

Page with a drawing and text in Product Sans and FF Super Grotesk

“Cursing Bookmarks” is a self-initiated project designed by Maryna Zevako, part of the communication design class of Professor Lucienne Roberts at the State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart.

Set in HAL Four Grotesk, published by HAL Typefaces, the bookmarks were lasercut from 300 g/m Ultramarin Fotokarton.

The book in the image is ENDCOMMERCIAL: Reading the city by SBA/Scheppe Böhm Associates, Hatje Cantz 2002.

According to Wikipedia, Richard Matheson’s horror novel I Am Legend –

was influential in the modern development of zombie and vampire literature and in popularizing the concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease. The novel was a success and was adapted into the films The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007). It was also an inspiration for George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968).

First published in 1954, this is the cover of Bantam’s paperback edition from a decade later. It has surprisingly upbeat typography in multicolored all-caps Egyptienne Bold Condensed, clashing with the cautionary wording. The darker illustration is by Sandy Kossin.

[More info on ISFDB]

Description of the book by Farmacy Kitchen:

Farmacy’s new book is an insurgent manifesto for a radically different way of eating and farming. It traces a path from the health of the soil to the health of human beings, with food as the connecting agent between our mental, physical and planetary wellbeing. A collaboration between researchers, artists and writers, the Farmacy Manifesto on the Future of Food is a handsomely produced pocket-sized tour de force through the interconnected topics of soil ecology, industrial agriculture, the medicinal qualities of food, the gut-brain axis and regeneration, charting a bold path towards the renewal of our civilization. The book is authored by Aurora Solá and art directed by Carol Montpart. It features botanical image sequences by Batia Suter.

“What is honoured in a country is cultivated there.” —Plato, The Republic, Book VIII

Nils Uddenberg’s biography of the anthropologist Gustaf Retzius dives into his controversial racial science, while also highlighting his progressive sides. The cover is designed by Rasmus Pettersson and typeset in Sindre Bremnes’ cousin typefaces Faunus and Satyr.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

I am a slow learner. This has its drawbacks, the most obvious one being that I am, well, a slow learner. But there are some upsides as well. For starters, I tend to remember the things I’ve learned quite well. The second upside, and the one more pertinent to the interest of the reader, is that I’m able to empathise with others who share my affliction. That is to say I understand where they’re standing, and what might benefit them.

In my youth I took a keen interest in what is known as Bhakti marga, or the path of devotion. It is a branch of Hinduism in which Krishna is seen as the origin of all and the main deity. But despite my attraction to the path of Bhakti I found myself struggling with the vocabulary.

Here was a tradition millennia old, born in a location distant from where I had taken birth in a cultural milieu far removed from anything familiar to me. On top of this the terminology was at times quite esoteric and steeped in layers of meaning. Add to this that almost all the words commonly used were in either Sanskrit or Bengali, and you can understand my plight.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

I have spoken thus far mostly about my shortcomings, but allow me to shift gears and speak about my superpowers. Or actually a superpower, singular, as I only have one. But it’s such a good one that it makes up for being the only one. You see, my superpower is that for one reason or another I have always had the good fortune of being surrounded by people much more accomplished and talented than myself. To make things even more fortunate for me these people have been willing to work on whatever hare-brained project I cooked up. So too this time.

My struggle with coming to terms with the terminology gave me an idea. It was perhaps neither an original nor an astounding idea, but nonetheless a very good one: why not create a small dictionary for persons like myself who need the occasional help in navigating the strange territory I found myself in?

The next step was to find someone to write the dictionary. And who would have been better suited for the job than my friend Dr Måns Broo, a university lecturer and Sanskrit scholar? I presented him with my idea, and without blinking an eye he told me he was onboard. In our discussions we quickly concluded that most dictionaries, as useful as they are, are also very, very boring. We wanted to make our small dictionary stand out from the crowd. To make it so pleasing in both form and content that even people with the mildest interest might pick it up.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

It is here that the third member or our team steps in. My partner Kaisa is known for her wonderful small unassuming illustrations and cartoons, and is able to catch the humorous essence in whatever topic she happens to be working on. It was decided that the contents of the book would follow a simple structure – the recto side would contain words and their explanation, whereas the verso side would host an illustration in which one of the words was depicted.

As for the form of the book we wanted to make it as cute and easily approachable as possible. For us this meant a small book with quirky rather than solemn typography to go along with it. And the printing color should not be black, but something softer. We opted for a dark brown tone that nicely complemented the bright yellow cloth-bound covers.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

After trying out many classics, such as Caslon, Garamond, and many, many others, the typeface I landed on for this particular book was Lexon by František Štorm. It had just the personality and color I was looking for. That the bold cut suddenly turns into a sans serif just made it better in my estimation.

In this regard I do have minor indiscretion to confess to, asking for forgiveness now many years later. When transliterating terms from Sanskrit to the Latin alphabet a basic character set just doesn’t cut it. I needed an array of diacritic marks. Turning to an acquaintance, I had him produce the needed additions.

My only defence is that I acted with no ill will and perhaps that the crime has already expired. I really hope it has, because my admiration for Štorm’s typefaces knows no bounds, and I would hate having him be angry with me. (It was only much later I learned that Štorm has at least some affinity or at least an interest in Hindu cosmology, as he makes reference to the our current epoch known as Kali-yuga in an interview conducted by Irina Smirnova published in Typotheque’s book 158 Answers, published in 2011.)

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

The typeface I complemented Lexon with was Zebrawood by Carl Crossgrove, Carol Twombly, and Kim Buker Chansler. It had just the right kind of boldness and audacity that I was looking for for the chapter beginnings.

The third typeface (or actually a dingbat) is present only in one character throughout the book, but then it is present several times on each text page. It is of course the pilcrow found in ITC Zapf Dingbats. The reason for going to another typeface altogether for a pilcrow was that Zapf Dingbats had a funky attitude that I didn’t quite find in Lexon’s own character equivalent.

We published the Little Book of Bhakti-Yoga back in 2006 and it was a great surprise to us how warm a welcome our small book got. We had countless people confess to us that they were really not that interested in the subject matter, but that the book just spoke to them in such a way that they had to purchase it. Thus this is one of our many books that soon sold out. Some years ago I found a box that we had missed, but even those are gone by now.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

I have for years been pestering my friend Dr Broo that we should do a free-standing sequel for the book containing 108 questions and answers about bhakti, but so far I have been unsuccessful in my attempts. I know he’s busy with so many other books, but I am hoping that this post just might compel him to think otherwise!

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Why call a magazine “No Go Zone”? In 2015, American TV Channel Fox News decided to call the suburbs of Paris “no go zones” which they deemed too dangerous to visit. This magazine aims to appropriate this designation and give the alternative point of view – written by people who actually live in these “no go zones” – of a new neighbourhood for each issue. It gathers photographic, artistic, journalistic, and poetic cotributions.

This second issue was designed with black markups as layout and very visibly edited photography, aiming to put the reader at a critical distance from the content.

The magazine is distributed locally in a small network of libraries in Seine-Seint-Denis, France, as well as in protests.

Sharp Grotesk by Sharp Type in its Black 11 style was chosen for the titles and the markups, and DIN Condensed by Paratype for the subheads. Swear by OH no Type Co. in its Text Medium style is used for the main text.
20×30 cm, 76 pages

This beautifully made Atlas de las Aves Nidificantes de Chile, 2011–2016 (Atlas of Chile's Nesting Birds, 2011–2016) was a huge effort of the Red de Observadores de Aves y Vida Silvestre de Chile (Chilean Bird & Wildlife Watchers Network) and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. From the back cover:

It is the product of the efforts of 1,815 people, who uploaded more than 675,000 records between 2011 and 2016. The results include new information for almost all the species that nest in the country, including the expansion of altitudinal ranges for almost half of the species.

The book was published in Chile in 2018, and it was designed by Felipe Cáceres using Chercán (designed by Francisco Gálvez, PampaType) in all main texts, titles, chapter sections and all.

Personal portfolio of Matt Imling – freelance web designer and developer collaborating with agencies, businesses, and individuals to create impactful online experiences.

This issue of the French activist magazine Prostitution et Société (“Prositution and society”) was designed in Paris in 2009 by Paule Palacios-Dalens, using Quimera by Alejandro Lo Celso, PampaType as its sole typeface family.

Upword is “an online reading platform for students, professionals, and lifelong learners who want to boost their learning productivity. Upword’s state-of-the-art technology automatically applies learning science to any text input to help people consume the content more efficiently.”

The website makes use of IvyPresto for headlines and Inter for text.

In February 2020, Penguin Classics introduced a new hardcover series named Penguin Vitae, sparked by the question “What classic books would you place together on a shelf to represent the course of your life?” The colored and largely typographic covers for this series were designed by Penguin’s creative director Paul Buckley.

Among the first five published titles is Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, which originally came out in 1984 (see the design of the first edition by Crossing Press).

Penguin Classics is honored to publish Sister Outsider, essential nonfiction by black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde. Featuring a foreword by Mahogany L. Browne, this groundbreaking collection of writings on race, gender, and LGBTQ issues is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggles but ultimately offering messages of hope.

For this cover design, Buckley worked with tracked-out PAG Revolucion. Drawn by Ryoichi Tsunekawa and released in 2008 in a single all-caps weight, it was later revised and extended into a full family with lowercase, named Revolution Gothic.

Bright—a platform for interactive learning sessions with creators, icons, and experts—has adopted a bold, colorful rebrand designed by Lobster Phone.

Lobster Phone’s founder and designer Kristine Arth chose Gimlet Display Condensed as the headline typeface, with Acumin stepping in for supporting text. Gimlet’s energetic design is amplified by vibrant bands of color that permeate the identity.

Bright’s custom wordmark drawn by Ruggero Magrì is a bold condensed sans serif with a biform g that echoes the construction of the B. This B/g shape is carried over to the asymmetrical brackets that surround the logo and also form an abstract B when used on their own. These brackets surround the headlines as well, adding an interesting design element to the text and breaking to follow the right rag of a multi-line lockup. These brand elements are supplemented with icons and playful emojis that incorporate the logo’s distinctive g.

Movie poster for the Slovak movie Little Kingdom of 2019 using Amster Super Negra Itálica with modified serifs, tight linespacing and letterspacing, as well as an interlinear ligature with the l extended to merge with the ascender of the letter d below.

The curly bracket used to mask the image is a modified version of Amster Negra, and the information is set in loosely spaced caps from Fedra Sans.

Malá Ríša, the original title in Slovak, uses all-caps Moret for the title and slogan.

Slovak movie poster.