Arie Vervelde (1951–2014) was so much more than one of the most talented and international renowned illustrators. He had a very keen eye for fashion and trends, but always focused on the human side. The men and women of all colours and shapes in his art are always strong and sensual and sometimes outspoken sexy. He was always looking for new techniques and materials. Humor and a certain lightness gave his work an optimistic freshness. His vibrant illustrations were over the years published in many fashion magazines and national newspapers.

In designing this book, we worked in close collaboration with Melvin Anderson and Martijn Homan. In the 192-page book that was printed in fullcolour with fluorescent ink as an additional colour for the large font, we used HTF Didot by Jonathan Hoefler in combination with Programme from Optimo.

Text: John de Greef, Anne Marie Commandeur, Marianne van Heusden, Win Catermans, David R Shah, Nicole Uniquole, Melvin Anderson
Translation: Tom Johnston

The book was printed by robstolk and published by Lecturis.

The road for Genius.com (previously Rap Genius) has been rocky. A startup centered around annotating lyrics, they’ve been struggling with bro culture and their graphic identity for years. Kanye West even tried his hand at a redesign.

“He never actually completed it. If he had, that would have definitely been the new design of Rap Genius.”

The lackluster logo from an otherwise groundbreaking Kokoro & Moi tells of good intentions but falls short.

In moving from rapgenius.com to simply genius.com, they wisely replaced Verdana with Whitney for body copy, but the pairing with headline typeface DIN felt off. August 2015 brought the latest redesign. DIN was replaced by Programme, whose versatility shines. The humanistic forms in Whitney and Programme keep continuity. Programme’s dimensions prove it to be perfect for metadata, while careful use of bold stylistic sets hint at formulae in line with the site’s namesake.