Walter Tiemann Prize website
Homepage detail, medium viewport width
The Walter Tiemann Prize was first presented in 1992 and has since been awarded every other year to honor innovative book design. It is organized by the Society for the Promotion of Printmaking and Book Art. The prize is announced internationally and is aimed at those who consider the book a contemporary work of art.
The visual identity uses two typefaces. Tiemann-Antiqua a.k.a. Tiemann Old Face, created by the namesake in 1923 for Gebr. Klingspor, is paired with Fakt. This contemporary sans serif was designed by Thomas Thiemich, a graduate of the Leipzig Academy of Fine Arts, the school where Walter Tiemann once was professor and director. The Fakt fonts were kindly sponsored by OurType.
Fakt comes with plenty of alternates that can totally alter its look and feel. They are organized in stylistic sets and can be activated all at once (SS01), or one by one. The Walter Tiemann Prize uses a special version that includes all the simplified alternates as default glyphs.
Top: Fakt with default glyphs. Bottom: Fakt with alternates (“Fakto”)
The current homepage with the fragmentary rendering of the call for entries on top of a portrait of Walter Tiemann is based on a poster design by Anna Lena von Helldorff. In the online version, the missing words can be made visible by selecting the text.
The society aims to acquire all prize-winning books for its library, which is available for exhibitions as well as for individual study.
Body text is set in regular wide Fakt, with alternates.
For narrow viewports, Fakt is substituted by Fakt SemiCondensed. Nick Sherman currently is looking for more examples of such “sites that change fonts (the family or style, not size or spacing) according to media queries”.
