Foootnotes issue D front cover

Footnotes is a type design periodical published biennially by La Police. The fourth issue opens with an article on Telefont and the last Dutch telephone book along with all the methodology behind it by Martin Majoor. Sourced from the author’s archive (edition February 1996), an original sample was inserted manually by the editor into each copy.

The second essay dives into Ikarus, a digital tool that describes letterforms, studied in-depth at the University of Reading and beyond by Ferdinand P. Ulrich.

Then, from the One-off series – contextual type projects from graphic designers – Joost Grootens tells us about the genesis of the myriad of symbols that makes Ceremony, one book design at a time.

In the fourth and last text, Pierre-Pané Farré explores the material qualities of 19th century stereotyped poster type.

To conclude, the usual last page entitled "Proofs" showcases in-progress typefaces from the contributors: Film, Exécutif Moderne, HB Items, Waggis, and BALI.

As with every issue, each article is typeset with the related typeface(s), some in-progress and unreleased, including Reform-Grotesk FSL, Breite fette Information, LL Unica77, Demos Next, and LP Jung. The rich iconography also tries to pleasantly surprise the reader with unpublished material.

Worth noting, this issue marks the beginning of articles from out-of-print issues being published online under "Stories" on La Police.

Footnotes issue D: article 15

Footnotes issue D: article 15. Sourced from Martin Majoor’s archive, an original sample was inserted manually by the editor into each copy.

Footnotes issue D: article 16

Footnotes issue D: article 17

Footnotes issue D: article 18

Footnotes issue D: Proofs. On the left a real offset printing testing space to the authors and previously unseen designs to the readers. On the right, the index to navigate the dense content.

“Parole… parole” (“Words… words”), 2009, drawing and computer graphics, 50×70cm. This poster was selected in the international competition “Good 50×70” on the theme of the nuclear emergency.

Zrobię serce / I’ll Make a Heart is a book by Polish artist Aleksandra Kubiak. Conceived by Kubiak together with Wojciech Kozłowski, it was edited by Anna Łazar and published by BWA Zielona Góra, in partnership with Zachęta – National Gallery of Art and the Institute of Visual Arts, UZ.

The texts were written by Paweł Dybel, Marta Gendera, Wojciech Kozłowski, Aleksandra Kubiak, Anna Łazar, Marta Miś, Karol Sienkiewicz, Marek Wasilewski. Marcin Wawrzynczak provided the translation.For the book design, Marcin Wysocki combined all three branches of the Relaate series: Relaate Serif, Relaate Slab, and Relaate Grotesque. The text typeface is Gerard Unger’s Oranda. The publication was nominated in PTWK’s Most Beautiful Polish Books 2022 competition.

A dream project to design Prince’s memoirs lead to early discussions about what would be the right typographic voice for Prince. Depending on the era, he had an amazing gift to transform and reinvent himself.

Pialat, by Commercial Type, was a typeface we had admired for a long time after first seeing it in the pages of the New York Times’ T Magazine. We decided it was perfect for this. The proportions of the letterforms, and the subtle flares channeled the 70s in our opinion, when Prince was first launching his career and influenced by Funk. The decadence of the thick-and-thin contrast spoke to Prince’s fascination with all things sensuous that he would then tap into over his entire career. Unfortunately Prince died before this book was published but we would hope he would have approved of this choice. For the body text we selected Gerard Unger’s Amerigo. The angular sharpness of the face, even at a small scale, to us channeled Prince from the 90s and some of the typography from the albums of that era. It’s such a robust and readable typeface despite its edgy characteristics and we always wanted an excuse to use it in a project.

No encalço dos bufões, published by Javali, presents the research of Joaquim Elias Costa, a professor from Minas Gerais, dancer and theater director, about the universe of the bufão. Also known as harlequin, court joker, madman or clown, his figure is widely used in the arts, and in theater it was investigated by great masters such as the French author Jacques Lecoq.

The editorial project should reflect the idea of ​​disruption of order, thus exploring the psychological and historical portrait of the bufão. In addition to the mirror title, the publication has two identical covers that generate different reading possibilities and a certain disorder. The application of hot stamping on the letters f and the inverted numbering of the pages present a game of duality and inversion, concepts directly related to the archetype of buffoons.

Short logo of the City of Cologne set in DTL Argo Medium.

Around the turn of the millennium, the City of Cologne (German: Stadt Köln) decided to change its corporate design. The municipality introduced a whole graphical system around the logo with the double-headed eagle of the coat of arms and the twin spires of the Cologne Cathedral.

The new corporate design prescribes Gerard Unger’s DTL Argo as the primary typeface. It is used for the logo, all publications, letterheads and more. For more details, see the corporate design manual from 2019.

Seal of the City of Cologne.

Various logo variants, including grayscale and b/w versions as well as the English-language logo.

Cover of the corporate design manual (2019).

Exemplary business card with layout instructions.

Exemplary image ad featuring various styles of DTL Argo.

Cover of a booklet listing all secondary schools.

Exemplary roll-up display with layout instructions.

English version of the logo on a display in a convention center.

Cover of Construire réversible.

Canal is an architecture studio created in 1982 by Daniel and Patrick Rubin. It soon expanded to become an atelier of 15 persons. Their atypical practice focuses on the reconversion of industrial and patrimonial buildings, an aspect that makes them work mainly for municipalities and other state entities. A part of their work is also devoted to scenography and ephemeral projects such as the creation of urban events. Throughout the years, the studio developed projects as much as a reflexivity towards them, which led to the creation of a publishing house: their catalog presents different works and their creative process and analysis of the subject, or more general themes regarding architecture.

In April 2017, Canal published Construire réversible. The design of this book was created by Thanh-Phong Lê from Travaux-Pratiques. Their latest book published in June 2020 re-uses the established design parameters. Transformation of built situations is an interdisciplinary exploration of how shifting from a rehabilitation perspective of buildings (often as expensive as building new ones) to a reconstruction of them, that would be more economical while saving some aspects of the previous construction. The goal is to think ecologically and economically of a way to build less and save space for buildings that are worth it.

We find here the rationality and clarity that we usually associate to architecture, but with an audacious use of colors, a bright red and a dark blue. It gives at the same time personality to the publications but also visibility to the multiple facets of the books (interviews, project presentation, research papers…), or to different aspects of illustrations depicting the projects. The two-column design structures the pages, and the flexible layout offers a diversity that makes each spread page unique and comprehensible at once. This impression of clarity is reinforced by the use of Stratos from Production Type, a typeface that associates subtly geometric lowercase with compressed antique-like caps. This variation in width makes paragraphs and sentences legible, while being perfectly appropriate to set titles when used in caps. Besides, the particularity of Stratos is the shared widths across all weights of the family: this attention given to space echoes the architects’ initial questioning of its economy. For longer texts, Stratos is paired with Gerard Unger’s Neue Swift.

Cover of Transformation des situations construites.

Back cover of Transformation des situations construites.

Focusing on Lucian Freud’s prints, the exhibition Corpos e Rostos (lit. “Bodies and Faces”, English title: Portraits and Figures) at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) includes etchings from two of his great periods: the late 1940s and, after a long pause, from the early 1980s onwards with a succession of works considered equivalent to his best-known paintings.

The exhibition also contains twenty-eight photographs of the artist, his studio, and his models by David Dawson, Lucian Freud’s assistant of over twenty years.

The book design by teoMenna estúdio uses Gerard Unger’s Swift family for the bilingual typography.

Genius of The Fern Loved Gulley is Amy Hale’s biography of Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988). It was published by Strange Attractor Press in August 2020:

After decades of neglect, the British Surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun’s unique vision and hermetic life have generated enormous interest amongst historians and practitioners of art and magic. In this, the first in-depth biographical study of Colquhoun and her work, Amy Hale examines the magical and cultural confluences that shaped her imaginative life and artistic vision.

The typeface family used for the book’s typography is Gerard Unger’s Alverata (TypeTogether, 2014). Alverata comprises three subfamilies; Regular, Informal, and Irregular, each of which comes in six weights. The latter is inspired by Romanesque inscriptions from around the 12th century – a topic that Unger explored in his doctoral thesis at the Leiden University. It is this variety that was chosen for the cover. Alverata Irregular is distinguished by curved capitals including unfamiliar forms like an asymmetrical T, a symmetrical Q, or a round uncial E. Designer Tihana Šare utilized some of the alternate glyphs to reinforce the arcane qualities of the typeface. Alverata Irregular is a great fit for Colquhoun and her work.

The body copy is set in plain Alverata. It’s less attention-grabbing, yet perfectly harmonizes with the titling face.

While the difference between Alverata (line 1) and Alverata Informal (2) is largely limited to the forms for a e g, Alverata Irregular (3) is a very different beast. Line 4 shows Alverata Irregular with some of its alternate forms.

Marcello Jacopo Biffi teamed with Marsèll to produce the exhibition A is A is A to present a selection of his alphabet designs (Alphabet 1–8) at Marsèll Paradise in Milan. For this occasion, he designed a booklet (A4) that unfolded to a double-sided poster (A1) featuring all the letters on show and containing texts and technical drawings printed on loose sheets of paper. He also published a limited edition catalog collecting in an envelope (C4) the booklet and a replica set of the sheets of paper used to build the exhibition. The texts are all set in Praxis Com Semibold designed by the late Gerard Unger.

Marsèll presents A is A is A
A project by Marcello Jacopo Biffi
08.10.2020–22.10.2020
Marsèll Paradise, via Privata Rezia 2, Milan

Exhibition designed by From outer Space, curated by BRACE BRACE, and produced by Marsèll. With Gabriele Donini (Giga), Michele Galluzzo (Fantasia Type), Nicola Pietromarchi & Filippo Castellano, and Olympìque.

See also the post about the exhibition design.

Not the End of Print is an experimental art research by Isabel Seiffert. The zero edition was a small production of 20 books for her graduation in 2011 at Merz Akademie in Stuttgart. It was supervised by the head of department Prof. Joost Bottema and got released as a official first edition in 2014 by the publishing house of Merz Akademie. It researches print as a desirable, tactile and physical medium.

The typography uses Incised 901 (Bitstream’s version of Antique Olive) and Gerard Unger’s Swift. The exclusive little book with golden debossed cover and gilded pages is printed by Freiburger Grafische Betriebe on 115gr matt BD Profibulk and 120gr white Munken Polar.

Find more images on It’s Nice That.

Anectode #1: The related poster, silkscreened onto an emergency blanket, is welcoming guests at letterspace.amsterdam, among who was David Carson, autor of The END of Print, who proudly posed and took pictures in front of it.

Anecdote #2: When at Merz Academy, meeting Isabel Seiffert during the pathway weeks and complementing her for the book, I mentioned my admiration for Antique Olive and Roger Excoffon. She returns “this is Incised 901 — much better”. Embarrassed that I seemingly missed out on a hip new revival of Antique Olive, I'd do my research back at the hotel ... yes, sometimes a Bitstream version can indeed be preferable.

Writer and book designer Joseph Ucello designed the cover of this book by Radomir Ristic about witchcraft by mixing Garda Nova 2 by Mário Feliciano (using ligatures and alternates) and Alverata by Gerard Unger. The combination of both typefaces in red on top of a photo composition gives a mystic look to the two editions of the book.

Source: twitter.com Uniformbooks/Colin Sackett. License: All Rights Reserved.

Overview of the 24 titles that were published by February 2019.

Uniformbooks, located in Axminster, Devon, is an independent imprint for the visual and literary arts, cultural geography and history, music and bibliographic studies. Colin Sackett, the founder, used Gerard Unger’s Oranda in several books before choosing it for the house style of Uniformbooks. It is used in a uniform manner for body text as well as the book and magazine covers.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Brilliant Absence: Pursuing the Kingfisher in the work of Hans Waanders by Ross Hair is the 25th title by Uniformbooks, published March 2019.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Letterpress. New & material poems by Simon Cutts. First published 2013.

License: All Rights Reserved.

On Listening, edited by Angus Carlyle & Cathy Lane. First published 2013, reprint 2015.

License: All Rights Reserved.

“The printed quarterly Uniformagazine ran to ten issues, from 2014 to 2017, gathering contributions by the writers and artists that we work with, sometimes thematically, as well as slighter or singular content.”

Source: www.colinsackett.co.uk License: All Rights Reserved.

Uniformagazine No. 2, Winter–Spring 2015 featuring the Heidelberg GTO at Axminster Press on which the magazine was printed. The GTO (“Großer Tiegel Offset”) is a single-colour machine that was produced from 1972 to 2014.

Douwe Egberts – selling coffee since 1753 – is the leading coffee brand in the Netherlands. In 2014, Design Bridge were tasked with bringing back lost brand equity. The challenge of the brief was to be authentic, yet not become a “nostalgic window into the past”.

The redesign came with a new wordmark, based on Gerard Unger's recently released Alverata. This mark combines some unusual choices for a mainstream brand: an early use of a retail typeface used as the brand's staple, and combining capitals, small caps and unicase letter shapes within a logo that should evoke nothing but tradition and familiarity.

Before and after.

Schrijversportretten (“author’s portraits”) is a catalogue of the permanent “madhouse” exhibition at the Literature Museum in Den Haag, The Netherlands. Both catalogue and exhibition show an – alphabetically ordered – pandemonium of painted portraits of writers in all possible styles and sizes.

From the back cover:

Unlike the United Kingdom, The Netherlands lack a National Portrait Gallery. But the Letterkundig Museum [as it was called in 2010] has initiated one. Alphabetically ordered by their author name, over 400 Dutch writers hang side by side, known and unknown. (...) The alphabetic order results in surprising combinations, as the usual art-historic viewpoint is completely ignored.

The catalogue is small in page size (18×14 cm) but makes a solid appearance due to its 448 pages and the in-your-face cover, designed by Karen Polder who picked Gerard Unger's Swift for all text from cover to essay and page navigation.

Einstein & Friends is the title of an exhibition at Museum Boerhaave (since 2017 Rijksmuseum Boerhaave), celebrating the 100th birthday of Albert Einstein's relativity theory. The exhibition focuses on Einstein's relations with his Dutch colleagues and contemporaries through photographs, letters and other ephemera.

The poster shows a picture of Einstein and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, taken in 1920 by Paul Ehrenfest, in front of his house in Leiden.

Some well-put words by journalist Bob Whitman on the De Volkskrant newspaper website, typeset in one of Unger’s designs.

Type designer Gerard Unger (Arnhem, 1942) may not be well-known to a large audience, but he is by far the best-read Dutchman ever. For example tomorrow’s de Volkskrant newspaper will contain hundreds of thousands of carefully designed gems from Unger, in the form of the letters of the Capitolium News font.

Capitolium, which De Volkskrant has been using since 2006, is one of many successful typefaces designed by Unger in his lifetime. Newspapers and magazines like Het Parool, Trouw, VPRO Gids, Vrij Nederland and USA Today work or have worked with fonts from Unger. His typeface designs can be found in the old PTT telephone books and in the Amsterdam metro stations. Unger designed a chocolate letter alphabet, but also the lettering of ANWB signs [Dutch highway signage]: “If I take a turn somewhere, I will always check whether the spacing on the signs is correct.”

Detail

Cinéma l’Amour is a unusual place where all types of love can meet, without fear of falling into the disillusionment which we are constantly confronted. A real place in the heart of Montreal that presents pornographic movies on big screen, every day of the week, open to all. A book that traces and demystifies this unique place from all angles.

A student project made together with Virginie Jamieson as part of the course Typographisme: Illustration held by Judith Poirier at the School of Design, UQAM.

Source: janmiddendorp.com License: All Rights Reserved.

“The Dutch high profile design company n|p|k invited Gerard Unger to contribute to their proposal of a bespoke signage system for the Holy Year (2000) in Rome. An event that was estimated to attract 20 to 25 million visitors, its brief was remarkable. What made the assignment extremely interesting to Unger was the requirement that a new type design be developed as the central element of the information system. ‘A specific typeface, …a modern one for the third millennium (and not at all a philological repêchage), but in some way related to the tradition of the city.’ Thus the brief of the organizers, the Agenzia Romana per la Preparazione del Giubileo. Rome is very probably the only European city that boasts an uninterrupted two-thousand-year tradition of road signage. So designing a typeface for Rome was both a prestigious and a delicate job, perhaps, Unger wrote, ‘the typographic equivalent of taking coals to Newcastle.’

“The brief, which explicitly asked for a contemporary typeface, suited Unger well, as he is ‘not an enthusiastic supporter of twentieth-century revivalism’. He set out to make a pragmatic, versatile typeface – a ‘real Unger’ which, somehow, also had to communicate Roman-ness. In other words: a blond design with a Latin heart. For Capitolium Unger chose to take as his starting point the work of the sixteenth-century writing master Giovan Francesco Cresci – notably a lower case alphabet which Cresci drew to accompany the classic roman capital. For some time, Unger played with the idea of making the alphabet into a sanserif – lowercase with initial capitals – tapping into twentieth-century signage tradition. Yet in Rome classic capitals are still the norm, even for contemporary street signs. Eventually, Unger reconciled readability and tradition by choosing an in-between solution: a brisk seriffed roman of classical proportions, to be used in lowercase with capitals.

Source: janmiddendorp.com License: All Rights Reserved.

“After several rounds of improvements and refinements, Unger finalized Capitolium: an unorthodox signage alphabet with a companion version for use in print. Although the project did not plan for the type to be set in caps-only, the capitals would work perfectly in this way: in their sober stateliness, they recall Jan van Krimpen’s hand-drawn titles. The design team worked around the clock, managing to meet the extremely tight dead line; unfortunately the organizing committee of the 2000 Jubilee did not succeed in implementing the information system. Parts of it were used for signalling single sites, but the street signage system envisioned by Unger never materialized. For Unger, this was disappointing but by no means a disaster. It simply meant he had been paid to design an interesting typeface of a sort he might never have made without this assignment; from 2002, when the copyright went back to him, Capitolium was marketed by Unger himself.”

The quote and the images are from Dutch Type, Jan Middendorp’s illustrated compendium of type design in the Netherlands. Sold out since ca. 2007, the book will be made available again through crowdfunding in 2018.

Giveaway design for the Milonga Brillante dance school, illustrating the claim that Tango Argentino implies value also for life beyond the dance floor. The calendar provides an overview of upcoming Milongas and dance lessons.