Ivan Picelj Monograph

Ivan Picelj was one of the major figures in Croatian arts of the second half of 20th century and a worldwide renowned author. As a painter, graphic artist and sculptor his trademark domain of work was geometric abstraction, but he was also a prominent graphic designer, one of the pioneers of modernist design in Croatia. 

The monograph authored by two highly reputable experts — Slavica Markovic, head of the Graphic Department of Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and Snjezana Pintaric, head of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Zagreb — is showing his complete collection of graphic print works, brought together at one place for the first time. It is supposed to be the first of several future monographs to cover Picelj’s complete oeuvre.

Picelj’s trademark typeface was Helvetica and there’s even a a legend that he brought a first set of Helvetica type back in 1950s to Croatia, in one big, heavy suitcase. In respect to the author, the book is meticulously set in, well, Helvetica. We’ve allowed ourselves to play with the details as the repetition of his name in a form ‘logotype’ (set in slightly modified Helvetica type) at exactly the same position throughout the book, setting the titles as typographic compositions, cutting and folding the pages, etc. 
The book has been published in 2013 by the Graphic Department of Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (KG HAZU).