The University of Ljubljana’s Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT) organized a festival in the first week of October. Students of acting, theater and radio directing, film and television directing, editing, photography, dramaturgy and stage arts present themselves with numerous theater productions, fiction and documentary films, television dramas, performances, radio plays, works created in courses in dance composition, theater singing, and presentations of publications.

The festival is an opportunity for newly enrolled students, the broader university academic community, and the interested public – those who want to see what is bubbling and forming in future co-creators of Slovenian theater, film, television and radio arts – while also offering reflection on today’s world, society and humanity.

The festival’s visual identity was created by designer Črt Mate. The signature typeface, Wesna by Type Salon, draws inspiration from Slovenian posters of the interwar period, with a distinctive italic style that captures attention. The body text is set in Zeitung, designed by Underware.

Dotless Type features a selection of experimental fonts in progress. By investing in these fonts, you are supporting independent young designers, offering them opportunities to release typefaces and motivating them to complete them.

The project came to life due to the type designer’s realization that they had a significant number of unfinished fonts in their archives. Through mentoring various workshops and teaching students at the academy, Alja gained insight into a remarkable collection of typefaces that had never been released and were nearly forgotten.

The website and indentity were designed by Luka Prelog with the mentorship of Alja Herlah. Since the parent company of Dotless Type is Type Salon, the natural choice for the primary typeface was their funky and playful Wesna.

This schedule planner for the Srednja šola za oblikovanje in fotografijo (SŠOF, High School of Design and Photography) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is the result of Loti Turk’s graduation project, which was created under the mentorship of prof. Sava Kosmač, published for the 75th anniversary of SŠOF in August 2021.

SŠOF is located in Križanke, a building that was strongly impacted by architect Jože Plečnik’s mastermind. Descriptions beside the sketches are using “Plečnik’s punctuation marks” (dots for spaces, etc., as on the facade of Križanke building). To make it look as similar as possible, the spacing is increased.

Geoffrey James: Social Spaces – Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana is an exhibition that was shown at the Architekturzentrum Wien in celebration of Plečnik’s year, 2022:

The famous Canadian photographer Geoffrey James explores the legacy of Jože Plečnik and his transformation of Ljubljana as a Gesamtkunstwerk. James reveals the social and sensual aspects of Plečnik's work, which are rarely shown in architectural photographs. Taken with a hand-held camera at different times of day and seasons, the photographs explore the complexity of Plečnik's urban spaces and capture their intimacy and social processes.

It was curated by Tina Gregorič, Professor at the Institute of Architecture and Design, Vienna TU Wien. Vidic Grohar Arhitekti co-curated the show and provided the exhibition design. The design and illustration is by Loti Turk.

Photos by Marko Kovič and Jure Grohar.

Wesna in use on the cover of Nathaniel Falkin’s Revolutionary Berlin Tours, an anti-capitalist walking guide to the German capital, published by Pluto Press.

Graphics for International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month used by Apple in the App Store, Podcasts, TV+, Books, and Music. Feature stories and highlights honour powerful female voices in various Apple applications.

The typeface used for headlines is Spektra, designed by Alja Herlah and Krista Likar, published by Type Salon. Design by illustrator and artist Meredith Schomburg together with Jelly.

Art Between Practice and Theory: Theoretical Reflections on Artistic Reality on the Threshold of the Third Millennium, was edited by Jožef Muhovič and published by the University of Ljubljana, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Slovenia.

For the design, I used two typefaces by my own foundry, Type Salon: Plecnik Display on the cover, Plecnik for headlines (using small caps), and Univerza Sans for body copy.

Description of the publication by the University of Ljubljana:

Eleven theoretical contributions to research in the fields of art history, image theory, aesthetics, art theory, theory and history of design, theory and history of conservation-restoration, scenographic and visual arts, carefully divided into three sections: Aesthetics, Fine Art Studies, and Theatre Studies.

The initiator of the entire project is the Department of Theory of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, which invited colleagues from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television as well as the participating lecturers from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design to join the project.

Argo, the journal of the Slovene Museums, is the most important publication of Slovene museum experts dealing with art history and the museology of ancient and medieval periods. The National Museum of Slovenia, which established the journal in 1962, today co-publishes it with the Association of Slovene Museums and the Slovene Museum Society.

Papers are in Slovenian with abstracts in English. The journal is published twice yearly and distributed within international museum networks. Back issues are available and can be purchased at the museum store of the National Museum of Slovenia or ordered by email.

Argo 2020 63/2 is using Spektra, designed by Type Salon as headline typeface. It is paired with a yet unidentified serif [edit: probably Arnhem, see comments]. The designer of the magazine is Ajdin Bašić.

In 2022, Réseau MAP (Réseau des Musiques Actuelles à Paris) asked me to create a whole graphic system for their event called JIRAFE des Musiques Actuelles – Journées de l’Innovation, de la Répétition, de l’Accompagnement, de la Formation et de l’Environnement (“Contemporary music – days of innovation, rehearsal, support, training, and environment”).

This free three-day event aims to present a wide range of structures, services, and devices for professionals in the field of live music, with numerous round tables, workshops and speed meetings.

The typography pairs two typefaces that not only share the first letter and the release year (2020), but also come with backslanted styles: Spektra and Supergravity. The JIRAFE logo is custom drawn, with some of them loosely based on letterpress typefaces.

For more info, visit the JIRAFE website. See also the post about the 2021 identity system.

Spektra is the headline typeface for the website of Upsala Circus. Spektra, which brings together the specifics of many various scripts, is an ideal tool for social projects,  such as a circus with no animals, but with an inclusive team instead. It introduces to the arena children with special needs, mentally atypical children, as well as neurotypical kids at the same time.

The typeface used for body text is GT Walsheim, designed by Noël Leu and released by Grilli Type as a Latin-only typeface family in 2009. Cyrillics were added in 2014, designed by Noël Leu with Mirco Schiavone.

Zgodilo se je čisto blizu nas (“It happened very close to us”) is an exhibition of the 30th anniversary of the arrival of migrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Slovenia, exhibited at Match Gallery, Ljubljana. The exhibition and parallel events were coordinated by Divja misel. The show and the visual communication were designed by Alja Herlah and Sara Badovinac (studio Pra Pra), using typeface Wesna (Type Salon) and Inter (Rasmus Andersson). We can notice the modification of Wesna: its more expressive S was altered to be more neutral.

“Gradually, I realise I am a refugee. A person without documents and without a face, with no present and no future. A person with a heavy stride and a broken body, a flower of evil, alien and scattered as its pollen. I no longer have a name, I am no longer tall nor short, no longer a son or a brother. I am an oblivion-soaked dog in a long, morningless night, a tiny scar on the face of the world.” – Velibor Čolić, Manual of Exile (Goga, 2020)

Curator Tina Popovič on the exhibition:

On the 30th anniversary of the beginning of war and the arrival of BiH migrants to Slovenia, we are addressing our shared, yet poorly known experience with the help of personal memories of migrants as well as the people who helped welcome them. The exhibition, which assembles personal memories of 45 individuals with selected media reports and other docu-mentation, is divided into two parts.

Stories about the leaving of homes, arrivals to Slovenia and the unusual life in exile, which from expected weeks inconceivably expanded to years, are presented at the Match Gallery. Some of the exiles grew up here, others grew old, some made Slovenia their home, others just passed it on their way.

Collected memories encourage us to reflect on our actions and our attitude towards those people who all over the world are being forced to leave their homes.

Cards Against Humanity released the Climate Catastrophe Pack:

It’s 2021, and humanity is broken. The world cannot get its shit together to do anything about climate change. That’s why we're releasing the all-new Climate Catastrophe Pack, which comes with 30 cards about how fucked we all are. 100% of the profits will go to @rainforestcoalition to help stop deforestation. The pack also comes with thousands of tree seeds you can plant yourself.

The Climate Catastrophe Pack, a combination of the favorite board game and a fight against climate changes, is visually presented by the typeface Spektra, designed by Type Salon, with information set in Neue Helvetica.

Aden, Arabija is a Slovenian edition of Paul Nizan’s Aden Arabie (1931) with a foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre. It was translated from the French by Marko Crnković, designed by Domen Fras and published by Totaliteta.

The cover design includes Spektra, a variable typeface designed by Type Salon (Alja Herlah & Krista Likar), using upright and italic style. Signifier by Klim Type Foundry is used on the cover with its italic style. Its roman is used as the body face.

Spektra and Signifier work well together as a combination of dark, yet soft letter shapes with robust, brutalist forms.

Diana Kasay, CEO at Readymag, has launched a YouTube channel titled Декрет о where she looks at women’s career possibilities (and impossibilities!) from different angles.

Designer Tanya Egoshina comments on the Decret on project:

I tried Spektra, because I’ve been wanting to do something with a variable font for ages. Eventually, I chose exactly this typeface — it became a good story of various slants and angles as different perspectives.

It was super nice working with the typeface. You get a little bit tired of angling each letter separately, but it is great that you can sculpt each word in a new way — come up with different options.

At first I gathered texts in Illustrator, but then I had to move to Figma so that it would be convenient for our SMM team to make edits. But right now Figma is not very variable-fonts friendly, so each time you have to go through the stage of pain, processing the letter using a plug-in.

Read the entire article on the type.today website.

Kranj Foto Fest is a new photo festival in Kranj, Slovenia, addressing the challenging topic of isolation/freedom. From the festival website:

Exploring critical issues of our era, the Kranj Foto Fest attempts to bring together a range of different perspectives from emerging and established photographers and visual artists from all over the world.

The city of photography pioneers: it was exactly here, in this alpine scenery, that in 1842, Janez Puhar – a priest, poet, scientist and the first Slovenian photographer – created a unique process of photography on glass. The hyalotype (or puharotype in his honor) generated a positive image with a short exposure of only 15 seconds, allowing Janez Puhar to make portraits and reproductions. Because of this invention, Kranj conquered a spot on the world map of the very beginnings of photography buildup.

Having this remarkable historical context as a backdrop, the Kranj Foto Fest has been created to celebrate photography and its significance. The program, curated by a team of experts, includes exhibitions, talks, workshops, masterclasses, projections and portfolio reviews taking place in the scenic old town in the summer.

The typography uses Wesna, designed by Alja Herlah and Krista Likar (Type Salon), for the visual identity. A circle-shaped uppercase O was designed for this project; the logo also uses Wesna’s alternative form for J.

Učinki odtujitve, Performans in samoupravljanje v Jugoslaviji, 1945–1991 (“Effects of disposal, Performance and self-management in Yugoslavia, 1945–1991”) was published by Zavod Maska, with a book cover designed by Ajdin Bašić. From the publisher’s website (auto-translated):

Yugoslavia in the 1970s was an extremely dynamic and rich field of conceptual art and performance. At the same time, it followed an independent form of political economy of self-government. Jakovljević’s work explores the strong link between the democratization of the arts and industrial democracy, which made it very difficult to classify Yugoslav culture at the time.

The typography uses Wesna, designed by Krista Likar and Alja Herlah, and released by Type Salon in 2020. The publisher’s logo is set in Base 9 Sans.

In June 2021, the Tipo Brda society together with Type Salon organized a workshop with Dutch calligrapher and lettering artist Guido de Boer.

This three-day experimental calligraphy workshop will introduce you to new ways and ideas on how to start or upgrade your calligraphy skills. The first part of the workshop will be dedicated to the traditional form of calligraphy writing, later we will explore and learn about new approaches and tools for experimenting and expressive writing.

The event took place at the City Museum of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The graphics made to promote the event use Spektra and Wesna, both designed by Krista Likar and Alja Herlah of Type Salon. Spektra is used mixing two contrasting weights/widths. Wesna can be seen in several weights, with lowercase. These extensions are yet unreleased.