Casa do Conto (or House of Tales in English) is more than your average hotel. It is a place where you go and do not want to leave your room. I won’t write a full review of the hotel, as this is not the place for it, but if you are planning a trip to Oporto — as you should — stay there!

The R2 ceilings give it an extra layer of whimsicality. On the studio’s website you can read about the process of getting the letters into the concrete:

“the phrases were set into concrete panels using Styrofoam letters placed in a formwork. The use of concrete set limitations such as type size to ensure legibility, as well as depth of the letters which was conditioned by the steel bracing of the concrete slabs. The design and execution of the project took nearly three months.”

Every room has a story from different author related to the city and its architecture. Which makes you want to explore the building, and come back to stay in different rooms.

You can see some pictures of the process at R2 Facebook page. Architects: Pedra Líquida.

[This entry was originally published by Tânia Raposo on 23 March 2013. It was expanded with additional images provided by 205TF on 30 January 2018.]

Lounge ceiling

Reception ceiling

Suite Residence AT

Suite Residence AD

Suite Residence AD ceiling

Suite Residence NG

Suite Residence NG ceiling

Suite Avenue JF

Suite Avenue PB

Suite Avenue PB ceiling

Suite Avenue FL

Visual identity for Goldmarie, a store for new and second hand art and clothing in St. Gallen, Switzerland, pairing Luxus Brut and caps from a light weight of Neutraface Slab.

W is turning 40 this year, which prompted me to take a closer look at the magazine. I’m glad I did. Perhaps it is part of their anniversary celebration, or the fact that it’s the “Big Fashion Issue”, but September was particularly typographically rich — filled with interesting type choices that reach beyond the usual grasp of “mainstream” fashion glossies. Of course, it’s probably owed to the direction of Anton Ioukhnovets, who was always playing with type in his designs for GQ.

“Who” section opener using various optical sizes of Benton Modern and Graphik. See below for more info about the type.

Table of contents.

Three optical sizes of Benton Modern Italic compared: Display, Titling and Banner. The thin strokes (hairlines) get thinner, spacing gets tighter, and shapes get narrower as the intended size increases. Click to enlarge.

With ultra thin hairlines designed for extra large settings, Benton Modern Banner is put to good use for this anniversary feature.

Benton Modern Display in use for a deck (between text and headline sizes).

A pair of department pages. Click to enlarge.

 

Besides Benton Modern, the only staple typeface used throughout the issue is Graphik, a fairly rigid Grotesk that has the necessary, unadorned plainness to contrast with Benton Modern’s spike-heeled glamour. Together, the two expansive font families offer enough variety, weights, and widths to facilitate text-heavy pages like those of W’s departments, where multiple short articles need to be distinct, readable, and attractive.

Benton Modern and Graphik Narrow set a series of blurbs in the “Most Wanted” section.

Each of the features in the September issue showcases its own typeface that suits its subject perfectly. Let’s start with the cover story…

FF Pitu for a feature on Penelope Cruz. The two pages on the right are cropped. Click to enlarge.

Penelope Cruz wears FF Pitu, a strikingly sharp and assertive number that not only fits her well, but also happens to be a nice pairing with the thick-thins of Benton Modern. It’s a showy accessory, the well-placed hat or scarf that caps a thoughtfully assembled outfit. The W designers set it unabashedly huge for the opening page, letting it break in a way that emphasizes the rhyming title.

W gets medieval with LTC Goudy Text. Click to enlarge.

For a delightfully dreary fashion shoot set in the Dark Ages, an English Blackletter like LTC Goudy Text is an obvious choice. But some of the shapes of this particular Textura even have the same wilting posture as the models, who stand slack, as if held up by marionette strings. The whole look is inspired, I suppose, by the nodding heads and lifeless bodies of medieval folk art.

P22 Bifur. Click to enlarge.

Fast forward to modern times where the hard edges of retro-futuristic ensembles are introduced by P22 Bifur. The design originates in the ’20s, a digital interpretation of A.M. Cassandre’s first typeface, but for today’s audiences it is a flashback to the mechanical geometry of the techno 1980s.

A feature opener using Neutraface Slab and an uncredited illustration.

One more feature that is worth a mention opens with Neutraface Slab and a typographic illustration (spelling out “Large”) that immediately reminded me of Stefan Kjartansson’s absurd and amusing Cumulus and Foam. Whoever drew this strange and lovely lettering for W (likely Ioukhnovets himself), with its hairline slab serif letters ballooning into abstract amoebas, could have been inspired by C&F. The fashion is strikingly reminiscent of the typeface, too. So much so, that I felt compelled to add my own comparison (below).

The fashion styling of Edward Enninful paired with a typographic interpretation in Cumulus & Foam.

Contents is an online magazine for readers who create, edit, publish, analyze, and care for the contents of the internet. We publish in open, themed issues that run for about eight weeks. When we’re publishing an issue, a new article appears most Wednesdays.

We are biased toward open access, reader-friendly design and policy, quality over quantity, and the creation of usable beautiful things.