A weekend of sound experiments: In 2023, musicians, tinkerers, and sound researchers gathered at the Rotunde Bochum for concerts, workshops, and discussions on ambient and drone music. A festival for open ears—and a place for exchange, networking, and new perspectives in electronic music. We developed a visual identity for the second edition of modus festival in collaboration with Eurorack Ruhr. With the exception of the pre-existing modus wordmark, all typography is in ABC Whyte.

Visual identity for waterslide, a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) frontend that enables users to take out loans on cryptocurrencies at fair conditions in a decentralized environment and completely detached from banks. The centerpiece of the visual implementation is a complex interface with which users can interact with the Liquity protocol via their browser.

Raccogliere magazine focusses on the Venetian intertidal zone and community through the lens of a more-than-human actor and plant called salicornia. It grows in the fragile salty marshlands known by the locals as the barene. There, the salt-loving plant solidifies the soil beneath with its intricate red roots and thereby creates the conditions for itself and other plants to thrive.

Over the last decades salicornia has become an indicator for the manifold challenges present within the lagoon. Spotted by local farmers on their land, the plant indicates the rising levels of salinisation and thus the loss of agricultural land due to global warming. Recent years saw the plant growing even further up the sweet-water river Po, which is alarming to ecologists and climate scientists alike. Some say that Venice could be regarded as the forefront of global warming today, as flooding and salinisation threaten the ecosystem and livelihoods of many.

Both UNESCO’s protection of the marshlands as well as the MOSE construction have affected the fragile intertidal zone even further. While the former may unwittingly contribute to the loss of marshlands since privately managed sites are kept up better, the latter has been met with scepticism as it failed to protect Venice from flooding meaningfully, whilst having been a rather extensive financial investment in a city that struggles financially (see Alberto Barausse’s interview). The challenge of mass tourism and cruise ships have had further impacts on the local community, leading many to leave the city due to lack of housing.

The list may go on yet bearing this in mind, we wondered on how these different agendas in this fragile ecosystem might be mediated, if at all? What might be actions of regeneration that local Venetians may consider or already practice? We talked to scientists, NGOs, chefs, artists and designers about combating these challenges and their individual long-term efforts and responses in the face of global warming. The magazine features these conversations and their respective projects, all of which promotes resilience and regenerative actions. Not at last they suggest a different vision and understanding of Venice and its crucial ecosystem.

The design of the zine takes visual cues and references from the Venetian lagoon landscape and it is printed on RISOgraph (rice-based inks) with three colours on recycled offset paper. The typography combines Rainer with Lacrima’s Serif and Senza styles. Body copy is set in Lacrima and ABC Whyte. Printed in Germany with Herr & Frau Rio.

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Raccogliere magazine was designed and edited by Sigrid Schmeisser. This originally emerged out of a bigger project (Project Raccogliere) conceived with design duo Daniel Garber and Amalia Magril.

The limited magazine is sold through independent bookshops and by Sigrid Schmeisser. The core of the magazine which is to map and featuring resistance practices and regenerative projects (BluePages) continues online.

Ata Macias’ website was designed by studio Liebermann Kiepe Reddemann in cooperation with Sandra Doeller. The purpose of the website is to make Ata Macia’s activities alongside his job as a DJ public and to reposition him as a personality in the cultural scene. The website is to be understood as a online business card.

Deviating from the typical structure of a website, atamacias.com does not have a header, footer or a menu. Informative text fields, periodically alternating with documentary photographs, determine the structure of the website. One of these text fields includes an animated line of text that distinguishes design, music and typeface. As soon as these are selected, you will be redirected to the associated website.

The website only uses ABC Whyte Variable from Dinamo. It’s a sans serif variable font with axes for weight, slant, and ink traps. The weight of the font used on the website is similar to a Book, but as it is a variable font no specific style is used.

Another fundamental element of the website are randomly distributed play buttons. Elements on which they appear are inverted so that both components remain recognizable. In addition, scrolling on the website causes them to rotate on their own axis. As soon as a play button is triggered, electronic music plays in a loop and the buttons display a pause sign. Furthermore, an animation of the font starts. The inktraps change their strength via code, depending on the highs and lows of the music. Triggering the button again freezes the animation and the music stops.

The scrolling behavior of the website is also striking. You can endlessly keep on scrolling in a loop. According to Liebermann Kiepe Reddemann, this feature was installed because the page only has relatively little text and images and therefore the design concept would only be weakly highlighted with an abrupt end.

The responsiveness of the website works by scaling the content from large to small. The narrower the window is drawn, the smaller the individual elements become. Thereby the text type and structure don’t change. This also applies to the mobile application.

Mexican Seoul is a Korean-Mexican feel-good street food brand launched during lockdown.

Duzi Studio created the visual identity of Mexican Seoul using Monopol by Nguyen Gobber combined with ABC Gravity and ABC Whyte by Dinamo, plus Rollerscript by G-Type. The font used for Korean text is yet unidentified. Duzi describes their identity project as follows:

To capture their rebellious character, we’re serving an identity that’s as bold as the bites. Dig into a feast of hot pink, culture collision and nostalgic sticker packs, topped with a dash of Asian spice and a sprinkling of Mexican flair.

Coasters

“Seouls of Mischief” additionally uses BRZO.

This set of two publications explores the age-old question: does fate or free will govern the universe? One book explores Fate, while the other explores Free Will. Connected via a hinge on the back covers, readers can read one book at a time by flipping them along the long edge, or unfold them to be read together.

The Fate book (You Were Always Going To Read This) is set in ABC Marist, a serif typeface, while the Free Will book (You Could Choose To Read This) is set in ABC Whyte, a sans serif. Whenever a term or concept pertaining to the opposite book is mentioned, the relevant typeface interposes. This creates not only a clear visual distinction between the two sides of the debate, but also gives a sense of how often they actually intertwine.

Type is also used to give the reader a point of reference in the books, which are each split into three sections. Each section dives into the relevant topic in increasing levels of complexity, allowing readers to jump around to wherever they feel comfortable; this alludes to the somewhat non-linear nature of the debate throughout history. The type starts out quite large in the introduction (section 1) to give a more elementary feel, while the type in the most complicated level (section 3) is smaller and split into columns.

This double publication was created as a student project at the University of Washington, supervised by Jayme Yen.

RBB Economics, a leading economic consultancy specialising in competition law, required a new brand identity that captured their expertise and energy. We developed a unique visual identity centred on their team, featuring dynamic photographic imagery, distinctive colours, and elegant fonts. This identity was applied to their website and all collateral materials, setting RBB apart from competitors.

The Alec Gill Gessle Road photo archive. 1971–87 is a self-published photobook, “celebrating the photographic study of one road in Hull and its community at the heart of the UK's historic fishing culture”.

We designed the publication with a dynamic visual flow in reference to Alec Gill’s spontaneous approach to documenting the community. Browsing through the book mirrors the way Alec discovered moments to capture as he wandered through the streets. The book is divided into three main sections with different paper stocks and six spot colors. Swiss binding with a soft cover ensures a comfortable reading experience and full visibility of the images, which were printed duotone to add more depth. The use of typography adds a contemporary feel in contrast to the 50-year-old rescued negatives.

Bound with exposed blue thread mirroring the colour of the opening spreads and annotations throughout the main photo section. This blue is in reference to one of Alec’s archival notebooks.

Concept and text: Iranzu Baker
Photography: Alec Gill
Design: Fran Méndez
Copy editing: Ginger Rose Clark
Archival photography: Karim Skalli and Fran Méndez
Typefaces: ABC Whyte and ABC Whyte Inktrap by Dinamo, gc16 by Bold Decisions
Printing: SYL L’art Gràfic
Paper: G.F. Smith

Full brand identity, art direction, packaging design and website for the initial launch of Herbar by Élise Rigollet. The logotype is a custom design.

Herbar is a new skincare brand focusing on the superpowers of adaptogenic mushrooms, herbs and plants. Herbar was launched by Catarina Oliveira and Rui Liu in 2022.

Web developer: APN Works
Logotype assist: Manuel Marsoudet
Photographer: Nuno Vieira, Cristiana Morais
CGI artist: Laura Le Gal
Nails: Caliente Nails

Historian jännät naiset – tarinoita, joita et tiennyt olevan (“Extraordinary women of history – stories you didn’t know existed”) is a performance piece presented by Spindrift, an all female award winning Nordic theatre company. It’s based on Maria Pettersson’s book of the same title.

The photo, which was taken by the designer and photographer Julian Grönberg, resembles the pose on the book cover. The colors of the lettering are more modern, as is the lettering in modified Cavatine. With its decorative letters, it creates a feminine, empowering image for the entire visual identity including the poster and the flyer. Big Caslon is used for the subtitle. ABC Whyte, a clear and modern sans typeface, was chosen to set the information and texts inside the flyer.

After a show at the Etelä-Karjala Museum in Lappeenranta on February 11, the performance will be shown at Avoimet Ovet Theatre, Helsinki (February 24 and March 22) and at Lapin maakuntamuseo, Rovaniemi (March 25 and 26).

For the first time ever, the UC Investments Annual Report can be brought to life using augmented reality.

To coincide with the launch of a combined printed and digital report, we wanted to bring some interactivity into the printed piece. We worked with illustrator John Burgess to create typographic illustrations and animations based on the principle messages throughout the report.

Last year was extremely chaotic across the markets as the returns reflect, however we wanted to highlight the way that the university invests under the strong leadership of Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher – where others see chaos, he truly sees opportunity.

The report is mailed in a chaotic typographic black foil stamped envelope. On opening the report, the cover contrasts the envelope using the university color yellow, with a typographic illustration representing the first letter of the word ‘Opportunity’. Clever phrases such as ‘GAS $’ and ‘CRYPTO’ that caused chaos within the market are hidden within the illustration.

The reader is then directed to download the augmented reality app onto their phone and are advised throughout the report when to bring the illustration to life.

It was a financially challenging year for everyone and we represented this with a technically challenging but exciting and uplifting printed piece. Many thanks to Vadim Zaychik and Plotnet Prints for partnering with us in making this augmented print piece a reality.

See our case study for animated impressions.

Dola is a digital wallet and 1-click checkout that “makes buying and selling your favorite products online a breeze. Dola imagines a world where people have the power to choose how they do commerce free from the constraints of big tech”. Studio Freight designed Dola’s visual identity to feel like a dream come true.

The typographic system aims to grab attention with large expressive mastheads mixing Swear and Whyte, resulting in a whimsical yet logical pairing that is sure to delight.

ANIMARIO is an international festival of contemporary animation organized and hosted by Matadero Madrid, Centre for Contemporary Creation. This year’s edition is focused on Chinese animation. The graphic identity including the animated posters was designed by Mario Cano with BallPill by Benoît Bodhuin and STHeiti for the Chinese text (just like for the previous edition). ABC Whyte is the text typeface used alongside BallPill in the program booklet.

The other fonts – Cineteca’s custom Matadero Stencil and Madrid’s Gill Sans, are not part of Cano’s design.

This publication - created in the book module at the Luzern School of Art and Design - refers to the unequal representation of artists in Swiss museums. Based on the archive of artist Elisabeth Eberle, I designed a prototype on this topic.

I used my publication as a platform to make female artists from the university visible: Elisabeth Eberle, Giuliana Gjorgjevski, Emma Bertuchoz, Bertilla Spinas, Brikena Buqai and Laura Jana Lutterbach.

ABC Whyte and Apoc are paired throughout.

Greek communication agency Imperius helps brands to find their audience in places where users are in charge of content, instead of corporations. For example, Imperius launched a social media page for the cleaning service Klinex and commented on their behalf on posts in a group where young people shared their breakup stories. And when the agency worked for a food delivery service, they created a series of branded memes and posted those not only on social media, but on the goods pages of the app as well.

So, it wasn’t a surprise that when it came to designing their own website, Imperius preferred to avoid the moves typical for their area and opted for pairing ABC Whyte by Dinamo with Canela.

Read the entire article on our website.

Encontros de Arquitectura (“Architecture Meetings”) is a cycle of conferences, promoted by the University of Coimbra, focused on the relationship between studying and professional practice. The resulting book gathers the participants of the 2019 edition. Displaying them with big type and images, bringing the content to the foreground, inviting to reading and reflection.

ABC Whyte Inktrap is used for headlines, paired with ABC Whyte and A2 Antwerp for texts.

Casa da Lagarta II / Base Arquitectura

Pavilhão do Lago / DEPA Architects

Pavilhão do Lago / DEPA Architects

Doze Casa / murmuro

Tote Bag

Situated at the corner of Hurontario Street and Fairview Road East in Mississauga’s city centre, a contemporary community will take shape. Developed by Edenshaw with a design by Core Architects and Cecconi Simone, Alba will rise 32 storeys above the bustling downtown intersection – its fluid, curvilinear form offering sweeping views of its surroundings. With a reputation for sustainable and innovative building practices, Edenshaw is one of Canada’s most trusted and progressive boutique residential developers, and Alba is their newest addition to Mississauga’s residential landscape.

Engaged by Edenshaw and inspired by the undulating curvature of the architecture, Vanderbrand developed a contemporary brand identity and comprehensive launch campaign that would establish Alba not only as a desirable address within Mississauga, but as a distinct place in the world.

Set in loosely spaced uppercase, the logo features ABC Whyte Inktrap’s striking ink traps, resulting in a distinct visual motif. Conceived with reference to the flexibility of the building’s undulating envelope, the logo can be pulled apart and rearranged to create new and abstracted iterations. Whyte, with smooth and sharp transitions, contrasting with the inktrap style, is used for body copy. Both Whyte and Whyte Inktrap are available from Dinamo. Headers and captions are set in Ekstra by Good Type Foundry.

From 6 May 2021 to 13 March 2022, the Belvedere, one of the most famous and biggest museums in Vienna, hosts an exhibition dedicated to one of the works of the Austrian sculptor Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975): the Kirche Zur Heiligsten Dreifaltigkeit, or Church of the Most Holy Trinity, in Vienna’s Mauer district, made in collaboration with the architect Fritz Gerhard Mayr and completed in 1976 after the sculptor’s death. Wotruba is one of the leading figures of classical sculpture of the twentieth century in Austria: his work, a sculptural abstraction inhabited with a lively figuration, is recognizable with its arrangements of sculpted cubicles and cylinders, which creates complex structures that seem to be stopped in motion.

The catalog of the exhibition presents a record of the realization of the church and its controversial reception; it also puts this specific project in perspective with Wotruba’s body of work. The 128-pages book was designed by Manuel Radde and published by Koenig Books. The cover is made with a brown textured cloth, reminding us of the church’s walls of concrete. In its design, Manuel Radde kept the idea of modular blocks that we see in the peculiar architecture of the church: text blocks have a variable width and are sometimes intertwined with image blocks, giving an organicity to the layout of the interior.

The publication is set in ABC Whyte from Dinamo and Media Sans from Production Type. Due to its horizontal endings, Whyte is a stable sans: this reinforces the compactness of the texts and the architectural feeling of the whole without making it abrupt, thanks to the smoothness of its design. On the other hand, Media Sans brings density and impacts the white of the page with its blackness: there again, the harshness of the typeface is tempered by its contrasted, Antique Olive-like, upstrokes and downstrokes. This attention-grabbing typeface was necessary to emulate the shock that this construction caused, bringing the legacy of the avant-garde into the religious field.

We’ve been working with the team at Muto, to launch their new e-bike brand in the Netherlands. One that offers a much more flexible e-bike solution, aiming to encourage more people to get the most out of life.

The team needed a full 360° identity that would best represent the versatility of their product. We created a unified set of typographic styles that offered a flexible and adaptable approach, imbued with a very human quality to use at every touchpoint.

For the typography we selected ABC Whyte Inktrap for its sophisticated lightweight forms, which felt quick and dynamic, along with its squared descenders providing a subtle electronic feel. The chiseled ink traps also perfectly alluded to Muto’s easy snap-on-snap-off accessory system.

Read and see more on our portfolio website.

The recent re-brand of the prestigious Crane paper and stationery company by Collins (2020) features a custom logotype designed in collaboration with Jacob Wise, based on WT Monarch Nova. Monarch Nova was released in 2020 by WiseType as a full update to the previous WT Monarch. ABC Whyte (Dinamo) is used throughout for all typography.

Crane has been making paper for over 250 years. Stephen Crane established the Crane paper business in 1770 and purchased the Liberty Paper Mill in Dalton, Massachusetts. Paul Revere was one of Crane’s first customers when he used the paper to print the first paper money for the American colonies, thus establishing the inaugural thread of Crane’s presence in American life. By 1801, Crane was the primary producer of banknote paper for local and regional banks and, eventually, for the U.S. government.

Between 2019 and 2020, Collins agency worked closely with Crane’s teams to revitalise their brand, reboot their digital presence, developing a more relevant brand voice as well as enabling new products, artist collaborations, and customisation capabilities. Crane is exploring new ways of expressing the depth and design of timeless, premium-quality 100% cotton products. The legendary 200-year-old company moves into the 21st century, new and intact.