He has worked in just about every medium imaginable as he is as comfortable screen printing a poster as he is programming a website. He prides himself on the ability to seamlessly transition between mediums with good reason. After all this Brooklyn based designer did the unimaginable. He explained Facebook’s mission, history and culture in the form of a perfectly curated and printed nutshell and he “packaged” the world’s most addictive social media corporate persona. “I think at Facebook I am mostly perceived as the ‘poster / analog guy’, a reputation I sometimes have to work to overcome, and sometimes use to my advantage”, Barry told to The Atlantic two years ago. “I often feel like I have one foot in world of traditional graphic design and print, and another in the world of technology and the internet” he added. Since then lots have changed and he is ready to explore anything. “If you have an amazing project that needs a designer please don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello” says Barryon his website. Well, we had some amazing questions so there you go Ben. Typorn says hello ;)

How did you get started in design? What is your background?
As a kid, I loved to draw and make things. By middle school I had become interested in architecture and decided I wanted to be an architect when I grew up. In high school we got dial-up internet at home and my uncle gave me an old computer that had Photoshop 5.0 on it. I quickly started building websites, doing online Photoshop tutorials, and participating in online message boards around graphics. I decided instead of an architect I wanted to be a web designer. Fortunately, when I went to college in 2001 web design wasn’t something you could major in, so I ended up in the Communication Design program at the University of North Texas. It was there that I really learned what it meant to be a communication designer.

What was it like working for the world’s primary social tool?
It was very exciting, and often times very surreal. I’ve been fascinated by technology and the internet for as long as I can remember. I signed up for Facebook as soon as it launched at my university in November 2004. However, despite my interest in tech, my education and first job out of school were very much rooted in traditional graphic design. One night after work in 2008, I logged in to Facebook and saw a targeted advertisement in my newsfeed saying “Facebook is hiring designers” because I had put in my profile that I was a designer. I’d been using for Facebook for years at this point, but I didn’t really know anything about them as a company. I clicked that advertisement and started reading. The more I read the more interested I became. That night I sent them a link to my portfolio website on a whim. A month or so later I was moving across the United States to start my new job. At the end of my first day working at Facebook Mark Zuckerberg stopped by my desk and personally welcomed me to the company. 

A few weeks later a couple engineers and I built and launched some features for the 2008 election. I have a vivid memory of being in a bar with my new friends and co-workers watching the election returns coming in. I had my brand new—and my first—iPhone open and refreshing the counter for the “I Voted” button we had built for Facebook newsfeed. Every second it refreshed and the number increased by 5000 to 6000. By the end of the day over 5 million people had interacted with something I had designed to broadcast to all their friends that they had voted.

Over the rest of the five and half years there were a lot more moments like this. We often joked that the company was growing and changing so quickly that every six months it felt like we were working somewhere new. It was true.

You’re one of the co-creators of the Facebook Analog Research Lab. What is it all about?
The Facebook Analog Research Laboratory is a printing studio and workshop. Its primary mission is to produce work that reinforces the values of Facebook. It started very organically, as just a place where Everett Katigbak and I could make things to put up around the company. Over time I came to think about the Lab as a place that helped give shape or make tangible the companies culture. I often talked about using art and design to celebrate the things that we thought were good about the companies culture, and question the things we thought were bad.

How did you came up with the idea of Facebook’s Little Red Book?
One result of Facebook’s success was that the organization had to scale quickly to keep up, so we were hiring a lot of new people. Many came from other large technology companies, and often brought with them ideas and processes that were counter to Facebook’s hacker culture. I came to realize that many people did not understand why Facebook operated the way it did because they weren’t around when certain discussions, debates, or decisions had happened. They lacked context. A lot of that information existed in hard to find wiki pages, Facebook groups, or simply in the heads of certain long-time employees. I saw the need to curate as much of that information as possible into an easy to consume package.

How long did it take to finish the project?
It took about a month from concept to completion, but most of the work happened in an intense week or two sprint. I curated, edited, and art directed the project. Tim Belonax designed the book, and J Smith was the copywriter.

What was the process? Please guide us through the steps.
I pitched the idea to Tim, and got him on board. Tim and I then created a very crude first draft that I printed out and showed around to a few folks to get us budget for the project. Once we had funding we brought in J Smith to help us with copywriting and moved forward full steam. When we had a more polished draft we took it to Mark for his input. Finally, when we were happy with the content and design and had Mark’s blessing we had the first run printed.

You’ve been called Facebook’s Minister of Propaganda. Did you ever feel like one?
I’m not really sure what it feels like to be a Minister of Propaganda, so it’s hard to say. Internally at Facebook I tried to use art and design to reinforce Facebook’s values. I did this by trying to package and make tangible abstract ideas. Sometimes that meant a poster, an event, an installation etc. Sometimes it was simply creating the conditions where other people felt comfortable expressing themselves. As organizations grow they institutionalize certain behavior. Recognizing this, I wanted to institutionalize the idea of rebellion so that people always felt they were empowered and had permission to speak up and question or change what we were doing—on an individual and company level.

What is the role of typography in the digital medium/context?
I don’t really see typography’s role being any different in a digital medium or context than it would be in an analog medium or context. To me it’s always about the particular objectives of whatever you’re working on. Sometimes typography needs to be clear and direct, and sometimes it needs to be more expressive and evocative. Digital or analog may impact technical constraints, but to me doesn’t really change the role typography plays.

Who is your favorite typographer and why?
I have a real hard time answering “favorite” questions, because I have a lot of things I like. Folks that come to mind right now as I’m writing this would be Doyald Young, Jim Parkinson, and Joe Finocchiaro. Why? Probably because they’ve all done really incredible typographic driven identity work, which is something I admire.

If you were a font which one would you be and why?
Hah. I never know how to answer questions like this. I chose Alright Sans by Jackson Cavanaugh for my studio’s identity, I’ll go with that. It’s quiet, dependable, extensive, with just the right amount of quirk and personality.

What are you working on now?
Too many things. Right now I’m working on a couple projects for various clients. A lot of the work I’ve been doing this year has been identity projects. I’m also working on a couple personal book projects, and trying to continue to update my website.

What is the best way to end this conversation?
http://giphy.com/search/mic-drop/

Graphic design legend Saul Bass, the man behind iconic film title sequences and movie posters and some of the most well-known corporate logos of the 20^th century needs no introduction. Nor does Stanley Kubrick, an auteur so painfully perfectionist, “he had a hand in every aspect of his films, from development to exhibition (going as far as selecting a list of theaters he’d want his films to play in)”. Inevitable, their collaboration remains an important case study.

Saul Bass had created storyboards for Kubrick’s Spartacus but what is interesting is their on-going written dialogue regarding the process of that bright yellow original poster for The Shining that was just as unsettling as the film itself. “This poster design wasn’t a ‘design and done’ deal however,” writes Derek Kimball in his post on the evolution of the image. “Many of Bass’ concepts were rejected by Kubrick before settling on the final design.” “I’ve read online that Kubrick made Bass go through at least 300 versions of the poster until finally ending on the extremely alien looking version we now know” commented Bobby Solomon who is responsible for bringing this creative dialogue into the blogosphere as he took the following photos while visiting a traveling art exhibit for Stanley Kubrick.

“Kubrick made Bass go through at least 300 versions of the poster until finally ending on the extremely alien looking version we now know” 

The rejected poster designs feature the handwritten notes by the director ( “title looks bad small,” “too much emphasis on maze,” “looks like science fiction film”) and there is also a cover letter from Bass explaining what he sent, as well as Kubrick’s response. “I am excited about all of them,” Bass writes with his signature (a caricature of his face on the body of a bass fish) being one of the funniest highlights in this insightful creation process that proves that good design is not an easy task to accomplish.

It’s not often a font gets celebrity status, but the Doves typeface has certainly achieved world-wide notoriety due the shenanigans surrounding its loss and recent rediscovery” wrote the iconic graphic designer Graham McCallum some months ago. “In an almost Gothic tale involving a rights feud between the Hammersmith based printers T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and his partner Emery Walker, the original matrices were nocturnally cast into the Thames between 1916 and 1917 by Cobden-Sanderson” he added. After last November, when, with the help of divers from Port of London Authority, designer Robert Green managed to recover 150 original metal letterpress blocks updating a digital facsimile of the typeface he had first issued in 2013 so that Doves Type could live on, lots have happened. The world of typography used this available to use digital facsimile of the Doves Type as inspiration for their own versions, paying tribute to the feud, and one such version is Thames Capsule.

“Green’s Doves Type restoration is apparently based on the Doves Letterpress appearance once printed: rounded terminations and rounded junctions, among other details” says co-founder of studio Faure & Verona, Raphaël Verona. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, he and his partner in crime Gaël Faure, in an effort to “enhance the Art & Craft qualities of the original letterpress, to develop each letter specificities instead of standardise its shapes”. By adding “wood-cut like details that match with the intentions we alleged to Emery Walker” the duo honor the font's early 20th-century character. “Our idea was to give this typeface a contemporary flavor, not a romantic one because we were convinced that its humanistic-based shapes could be merged together with contemporary details” says Raphaël on their updated version of Doves Type (pictured below by photographer Sam Armstrong for The Sunday Times). “I hope that the platform we created for the typeface illustrates enough our intentions to create an atmosphere around the font: to link together its history and its contemporary design aspects. More than a simple typeface, we wanted to sell its history.”

Image by  Sam Armstrong for The Sunday Times

A tale that started back in 1990, when T.J. Cobden-Sanderson asked Emery Walker to join his private press, based in Hammersmith. The Press was considered to be a significant contributor to the Arts and Crafts movement, with the founders associated with the likes of William Morris. But things took a turn in 1909, with the two founders in dispute and the partnership on the brink of dissolution.

“We created an atmosphere around the font: to link together its history and its contemporary design aspects. We wanted to sell its history”

The Doves Type matrices were destroyed by Cobden-Sanderson in March 1913, when he threw them into the Thames from Hammersmith Bridge. He then began to destroy the types, which took him until January 1917, after 170 trips to the river. Fast-forward to 2015, these curves still have a lot to say. For more background about Doves Type check out this BBC News report where Tom Beal met Robert Green and talked to him about the origins of his obsession to bring back from oblivion a lost type from its watery resting place.

It was back in 1905 when Gustave Dutailly, parliamentary representative of the Haute-Marne, bequeathed an astonishing collection of more than 5000 posters to the town of Chaumont. The development and completion of this extraordinary collection are at the origin of the first Poster Festival founded by Cyril de Rouvre (Mayor of Chaumont from 1989 to 1995) and Thierry Simon in 1990. Since then Chaumont has been striving to be the capital of graphic design with the town’s International Poster and Graphic Design Festival which has become a must-attend event for the graphic-design community. Designers from all over the world are invited to enter the yearly International Poster Competition that has been organized every year since and is an unmissable attraction for graphic-design professionals and enthusiasts, hosting about 25,000 visitors during its four-week duration.

“Posters will become an obsolete medium if their contemporary embedding is not constantly renewed, if their relation to the world and the topical forms are not reasserted” one reads on the festival’s official page. “Just like posters themselves, poster competitions will become an outmoded model if they merely serve the auto-celebration of a happy few and the insistent needs of observers of printed matter. 

... Poster making and graphic design are sometimes like combat sports where economic and cultural precariousness allow all sorts of blows. Poster competitions are not matches, but rather and more than ever necessary to value a profession, a pedagogy, the mechanics in the commission process, the relations between designers, clients, printers... The medium of these competitions is the poster, not only because it represents the graphic object that can be shown the most evidently but also because it is the most public object.

... Each poster participating in the international competition expresses the designer’s conviction and commitment to their profession and art. The competition is a place for expression and sharing, that we hope to be open and reflecting the present. The reply is your responsibility”. We present you with some of the highlighted projects in this year’s event.

1 Colophon - David Bennewith 2 Bart de Baets

1 David Voss 2 Simon Roth & Lisa Pommerenke

1 Michael Kryenbühl 2 Ralph Schraivogel

1 Tomáš Celizna, Adam Machá?ek, Radim Peško 2 João Doria

1 Ostengruppe - Anna Naumova 2 Anna Teuber et Marie Grønkær

1 Karl Nawrot - 1er prix 2 Prill Vieceli Cremers - Tania Prill, Alberto Vieceli, Sebastian Cremers

1 Nejc Prah 2 Ilya Perevedentsev

1 Bart de Baets 2 Anette Lenz

1 C2F Cybu Richli & Fabienne Burri 2 Christof Nüssli

1 Pierre Pané-Farré 2 AMI - Adeline Senn, Martin Maeder, Ismaël Abdallah

Born in Banja Luka, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Sandro Dujmenovic moved to Croatia at a very young age before residing in Zagreb where he spends his days working on the eve growing graphic design scene there. Currently the Art director in Brlog, the digital agency of Bruketa & Zinic–one of the 17 best independent agencies in the world according to Campaign Magazine-, Dujmenovic has previously worked for Bunch as a designer with Marko Mlinaric for founder/creative director Denis Kovac. “Both great experiences in different spectrums of design practice” he told us before introducing to Typorn a project we absolutely fell in love with. Reál is a Sandro Dujmenovic’s ongoing personal type design project, started from the core idea of how would a typeface, specially designed for Yves Saint Laurent, would look like. Here he shares his views and secrets on typography, fashion and why Croatia’s typographic scene is having a blast.

“The idea of it got even stronger when the new Saint Laurent identity was presented -its swiss influenced logotype that looked a bit shy and generic and not so different from similar brands. Research for Real was very eclectic, covering from Roman inscription typefaces, Art deco style, Cassandre’s work, Zapf and his Optima to ironic Luxury designed by Christian Schwartz”. 

“Ever since 2011, the typeface has come to three different styles, Femme — contrasted sans serif, Homme — low contrast sans serif and Serif typeface. Later on, there was a special cut added to Homme variant, a Geometrique with geometric endings, rough edges with humanist touch really toned down. Every variant has specially designed ligature set and alternate glyphs. New weights and variants still are work in progress. Reál doesn’t have a home yet but its goal is to become a brand typeface one day, if not for YSL, maybe for someone else. The best part of it is that I am not considering it finished therefore it can be adapted to new circumstances, brands and situations.”

“Typography carries the identity of all those big fashion houses yet, most of them do not differentiate their visual communication” 

“To paraphrase Erik Spiekermann, if you have a color and a typeface, you have a visual identity. In my work, I lean heavily onto typography as a starting tool to create anything, from branding projects to digital communication. Typography sets the tone early, and from there you can start creating so many directions and styles: from using modernist and geometrical approach, to combination of illustration and expressive or organic typography. Lately I’ve been experimenting with print materials, papers, foils, embossing to add a new layer of quality and attention to detail. Luckily I had the clients that can keep that pace financially”.

“High fashion, is a big history reference machine, covering all sorts of field, from music, art and architecture to design/graphic arts and typography. Typography carries the identity of all those big fashion houses, from Louis Vuitton, where the monogram became a status symbol, to Chanel and Prada just to name a few. Unfortunately a lot of these high fashion houses approach to visual communication is not very different from one another. Maison Margiela probably recognized that and created its own design language, using numbers to differentiate his collections”. 

“My all times favorite fashion logo is YSL of course, from monogram to logotype, perfect subtleness of contrast, and pure aesthetic value. Also Missoni’s logotype stands quite different than the competition itself but I really appreciated Margiela’s groundbreaking work, its dynamic identity and logic is something to look up to”. 

“In Croatia emphasis on typography is bigger and bigger, especially since Nikola Djurek came to Zagreb’s School of Design, and Split’s UMAS Department of visual communication. I had the luck and some talent to attend and finish both schools. Nikola’s classes produced a lot of new designers that take very fond approach to typography, being that layout or font production. Some of the typographers to check out are Hrvoje Zivcic, Marko Hrastovec”. 

The Keystone Type Foundry at 734 Sansom street is run by the Mather Manufacturing Company, and produces many fine faces of type”. This is how an anonymous article in The Inland Printer back in September, 1890, describes an all-American type foundry based in Philadelphia. The former N. W. Ayer & Co. advertising agency, Keystone Type Foundry was established in 1888, had in 1884 purchased the printer’s supply house, Mather Manufacturing Company was absorbed by American Type Founders. Once upon a time, this business trust was representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States being the dominant American manufacturer of metal type from its creation in 1892 until at least the 1940s; it continued to be influential into the 1960s.

Thanks to the Tumblr of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a collection of type specimen pages, published in 1910 by the Keystone Type Foundry, reveals the somewhat interesting, weird, strange, almost “poetic vision of daily life in 1910” in the company’s demonstration headlines. “The Keystone Type Foundry, like other vendors of type, published specimen books to illustrate its wares and distributed them to printers who were choosing equipment. The company had outposts in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco (as well as Philadelphia), but clients who lived outside of major metropolitan areas could order supplies by mail” comments Slate’s Rebecca Onion on this trip back to the age of innocence. 

When most museums put on poster exhibits, they tend to walk viewers through the histories of different artistic styles, ranging from Art Nouveau to Bauhaus. So when the Smithsonian’s newly renovated and re-energized Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York took stock of its hefty collection of 4,000 rarely seen posters, it wanted to create a display that would explore the works as more than just ink on paper” writes The Atlantic’s Steven Heller on the exhibition that will have any poster obsessed individual beg for more. Featuring more than 125 works from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition “How Posters Work” shows how dozens of different designers—from prominent pioneers like Herbert Matter, Paul Rand, Philippe Apeloig and M/M (Paris), to lesser-known makers—have mobilized principles of composition, perception and storytelling to convey ideas and construct experiences.

“A true visual feast, ‘How Posters Work’ features 14 principles of how designers look at the world” said Caroline Baumann, director of the museum. “This exhibition reveals the design techniques behind some of the most iconic and beloved posters in the museum’s collection, from the hard-edged designs of Ladislav Sutnar to the ever popular psychedelic posters of the 1960s, which epitomize sensory overload” she added. From selling a product or promoting an event to arguing a point at a moment in history the history of poster is rich and versatile. Curated by senior curator of contemporary design Ellen Lupton, the show is organized into 14 subsections, concepts “that aren’t exactly universal, but they encapsulate a broad range of methods for approaching a design problem”, including “overwhelm the eye”, “overlap” and “use text as image”. The latter, for example, is about how typography is often used  in poster design, to enhance or obscure a message through the size, style and arrangement of letters.

“Nearly every poster in our exhibition uses typography” Lupton told us in an email. “Sometimes type is used to telescope a message to achieve maximum emotional impact, as in the poster “Someone Talked”, published by the US Office of War Information during World War II. This poster uses powerful language and minimal type to bring home the message that a sailor is about to drown because the enemy overheard idle chatter about troop movements. On the opposite end of the spectrum are posters by Ralph Schraivogel and Michiel Schuurman, which use type to embroil the eye in a complex and disorienting experience”.

“Nearly every poster in our exhibition uses typography. Sometimes type is used to telescope a message to achieve maximum emotional impact. On the opposite end of the spectrum are posters which use type to embroil the eye in a complex and disorienting experience”.

To increase accessibility, visitors can explore the collection on seven digital tables throughout the museum with the Collection Browser. The largest tables allow up to six users to simultaneously explore high-resolution images of collection objects and select items from the “object river” that flows down the center of each table. Visitors can zoom in on object details and learn about its history and related objects, which are organized by design theme and motif.  Visitors can also draw a shape that will bring up a related collection object or try their hand at drawing simple three-dimensional forms.

The exhibition, which is  on view at Cooper Hewitt from May 8 through Jan. 24, 2016, is accompanied by a 224-page catalog, published by Cooper Hewitt, which serves as a rich primer in visual thinking and demonstrates how some of the world’s most creative designers have mobilized design principles to produce powerful acts of visual communication. At last posters have the high-design moment they do deserve.

​

Due to our lack of a receptionist, we don’t make our phone number public”. It is more than obvious that the Sideshow Sign Co. prefers to create than talk and their vintage typographic signs will sure steal any heart. After all resisting an amazingly crafted marquee sign is literally impossible, especially if it is one of those giant typographic sculptures that Luke Stockdale and his team bring into life. “Signage is one of the earliest forms of communication design. In the past several decades however, designers and sign-makers have often regarded themselves as separate industries, divided by class, application, and a misunderstanding of just how important their relationship is. Its our opinion that these two worlds need to be in equal collaboration in order for signage to be the best it can be - to be what it is intended to be: an effective reflection of the hard work and sophistication that goes into the businesses that it is promoting” says the team of three.

Founded by the Australian native Luke (who brought his printing techniques along with him when he relocated to the States), the company works passionately to reintroduce the partnership of high-end design and traditional fabrication to the sign industry. Having studied at RMIT in Melbourne and on some of the oldest printing presses in Australia, Stockdale is passionate about reviving the traditional art of sign-making in a market crowded with cold-lit aluminum and plastic wrapped signage and he has two allies in achieving this vision of his.

 “It is our dream that, sign-by-sign, streetscapes once again become distinctive”

Adam Gaskill, AKA “The Coonman”, a  Tennessee native with a fine arts degree in sculpture and print who has an eye for design and an old-world work ethic and Jasmin Kaset. A native of Cottontown, Tennessee, Jas is Luke’s wife and Director at Sideshow. “With the introduction of affordable automated sign equipment & materials in the early 80’s, the sign industry began distancing itself from traditional techniques in favor of efficiency. Although these technologies have dramatically increased affordability for the customer, they simultaneously closed the door on sign-making practices that -  while more time consuming - often resulted in higher quality, more stylish signs that had character & ageless beauty”.  

Working with typography and design-for-print, it’s no wonder that their extensive portfolio (from vintage scientific tables to retro eye charts) has been featured in magazines like WIRED and ESPN. Carefully prepping and printing each canvas until its final  top-of-the-line state, Sideshow Sign Co. focuses on craftsmanship and attention-to-detail rather than mass-production. “It is our dream that, sign-by-sign, streetscapes once again become distinctive and the hard work involved in building a business is reflected in its signage, and more importantly, be an element of beauty” says the team which will make sure good typography rules our habitat once again.
 

Even though digital media has gone through turbulent times in the past few years, it is print that has more often been considered the endangered species of publishing. That is not the case for Mondial. Rapha’s new bi-annual magazine Mondial that was launched on July 17 and has anyone who is into a text-heavy project raving about. Containing long form writing, photography, and in-depth reportage all connected to cycling, Mondial is Rapha’s latest venture, bringing a cycling viewpoint to wider cultural subjects and broadens the sport’s reference points. “Our ambition for Mondial is to broaden the horizons of what road cycling is and what the sport can be. We have structured the magazine to take you on a journey, from familiar and comfortable ‘foothills’ to more challenging climbs and cols where the views are even more rewarding” writes Simon Mottram, the founder and chief executive of Rapha, in the foreword to issue one of the magazine.

Known for its refined and classic aesthetic, lifestyle bicycle brand Rapha has extended its sophisticated style to the magazine’s design. “One of the toughest extensions for any brand to manage is the development of editorial representations of its character and aesthetic” comments magCulture’s Jeremy Leslie. “That Mondial succeeds so well shouldn’t be a surprise; the Rapha brand has barely set a foot wrong since its launch 11 years ago” she added.

“Black text on pink paper is a direct homage to the front cover of the Gazzetta Della Sport, the Italian newspaper that was responsible for the creation of the Giro d’Italia in 1909” 

“Mondial provides a chance for us to solidify the aesthetic of our brand in the minds of our customers rather than reinvent it. Inside, the typographic treatments are tweaked in-house styles, which have been refined for the specific editorial requirements of the magazine” says the brand’s art director Jack Saunders. “Black text on pink paper is a direct homage to the front cover of the Gazzetta Della Sport, the Italian newspaper that was responsible for the creation of the Giro d’Italia in 1909” he commented. Being a members’ magazine that’s sold online and shipped directly to Rapha's customers, Mondial had the chance to break away from conventional editorial guidelines. Throughout the 162 pages of mixed paper stocks typography rules. Mondial’s new bespoke typeface has direct references to the letterforms found in the Gazzetta circa ’70s.

“There are many magazines that influenced the design of Mondial. Titles of note such as Twen, and more recently, those designed by Matt Willey, are great examples of editorial design that have had varying degrees of influence over magazines in general and thus Mondial” says the art director of this slick designed, text-heavy bi-annual project that is a follow up to Rouleur magazine -after all Rapha was the original backer of the publication, which was founded in 2006 and was sold in 2012).

Following its tenth year anniversary, Rapha is raising the bar with an inaugural issue that sees the company moving in exciting new directions. “Anyone addicted to road cycling knows the sport is about much more than fitness and gear. For road riders, the sport lies at the heart of their identity and is the lens through which they view the world. The past decade has seen an explosion in cycling media, both online and in print. Rapha believes it is time for the sport to show renewed ambition” says the company. Obviously, typography is a wheel of change.

Inspired by art and design that existed long before they did, LAND is a duet that normally would be referred to as “graphic designers” but this is a term they despise. “We’re just two dudes trying to create art and design that will last and try to blur the line between the two. We’re just two kids that grew up in small towns in Texas and stumbled across design through skateboarding, BMX, art and music”say Caleb Owen Everitt and Ryan Rhodes. Heavily inspired by more spiritual subjects such as life and death and the symbolism that comes from thinking about it all, they love creating because they like to feel naive. 

Based in Austin, Texas, LAND work in an old brick warehouse shop on the east side of town near the tracks and from there they enter their “journey through experimentation”, a notion that is evident throughout their portfolio. The two met years ago while working for the same agency in their city and since sharing a lot of enthusiasm for similar things they decided to push each other with encouragement and positive distractions. Fortunate enough to work on projects that they can personally identify, LAND like to blend the lines between art and design.

“Most of the type we create is hand done or inspired by historical typography”

With an impressive list of clients (Hufnagel Cycles, Patagonia, and Deus Ex Machina to name a few) Everitt and Rhodes need no longer draw naked ladies for a buck or make zines or “obsessively draw and redraw skateboarding and BMX logos on desks and trapper keepers”. “Most of the type we create is hand done or inspired by historical typography” they told to Juxtapoz’s Brent Gentile. “From old books and signs to hobo scribbles, type that was created by a hand or a machine just feels better than a more modern, digital font. It’s more fun to create something custom, or that feels like it came from a real place before you and I were born and will be here after we’re dead.”

“From old books and signs to hobo scribbles, type that was created by a hand or a machine just feels better than a more modern, digital font”

With the pen and the paper being the most used medium at their studio, LAND prefer to use their hands whenever they can. Drawing inspiration from things created in decades and centuries that are a long time gone, for the last couple of years they have been referencing “Francis Picabia, Salvador Dali’s preliminary sketches, cave painting, religious art, early American Type Founders work, outsider art, cattle brands, concrete stamps, old makers marks, masonic art and nature.” Simple, honest and unforced LAND want to keep themselves inspired and get better everyday. All in the palm of their hands. 

Located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the home to a strange assemblage of artists, craftsmen, old school Brooklyn hangers-on and young upstart urban farmers, Woodside Press is in a high-floor corner of a massive 11-story building that was built for World War I. Looking out over the East River onto Manhattan from the southern tip of the island, up past the Williamsburg Bridge, to the United Nations the view from this place is breathtaking but it’s what inside that counts. New York City’s leading facility for hot-metal typography, with Linotype and Ludlow typecasting machines and an impressive range of classic and decorative typefaces Woodside Press was founded back in 1993 by Andy Birsh in Woodside, Queens and in 1998 moved into their space in Building 3.

Linotype Slugs

Since then they have built an unparalleled collection of late 19th and 20th century printing type, including foundry type to set by hand, a huge variety of wooden type for posters and headlines and an array of Linotype and Ludlow hot-metal typefaces. This traditional letterpress printing studio will create printed items of the highest quality for individual, business, and institutional clients alike offering typesetting and type-reproduction services to the graphic-design community. “We have printing presses to suit any kind of letterpress printing project from large-volume runs of business cards to posters up to 18” x 24” in any quantity” is stated in the about page of their site. Having worked for many New York City institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Juilliard School, and the Museum of Modern Art (it is in fact, their handset metal type that became the basis for the iconic MoMA logo that adorns the front of 2004 museum building in midtown Manhattan), Woodside Press will work also with individuals to design and print customized wedding invitations, business cards, and personal stationery sets. 

New York City’s leading facility for hot-metal typography, with Linotype and Ludlow typecasting machines and an impressive range of typefaces Woodside Press is a treasure to hold

“There is, in short, no project we won’t consider taking on” they say. After all, Davin Kuntze of Woodside Press muses on the need for more letterpress in the world. “In general use we have seven presses. There is the C&P treadle press that came from the American Typefounders Company; two C&P Craftsman presses (one for printing and one for scoring and perfing); a Windmill for longer jobs; a Heidlberg KSB; and finally two Vandercooks, a Universal III for poster work, when we get it, and an SP20 that we use almost exclusively for proofing type” he says. “In addition to that we have a number of random presses in various states of repair, mostly small format platen presses that no one seems to want these days.”

“Trying to explain to a client why I have to charge them more if they want to see a different typeface when I’ve already set their entire invitation in another typeface is hard,” he noted but letterpress is a one of a kind individualised and hands-on experience. The answer to the digital fatigue of a click-and-go design production line, is given here every day, in Woodside’s 5,000 square-foot shop which is filled with equipment, much of which has been acquired over the years from print shops and factories that have gone out of business. “Part of the genesis for the company was the collapse American Type Founders, based in Elizabeth, NJ, which had been the preeminent manufacturer of typefaces and printing presses in the US. Their bankruptcy prompted a fire sale, at which Andy was able to acquire a number the presses that are still in Woodside’s shop today” says Andrew Gustafson. “Though the collection pales to what you might find in a printshop 150 years ago, with millions of well-organized pieces, Woodside had assembled an impressive catalogue that has few peers in the US” he adds on this shrine of a process that has barely changed since its invention by Johannes Gutenberg over 500 years ago and is having the renaissance it deserves.

Calder & Nakashima

Google before you Tweet

Broolkyn Museum

Joe Newton

Hand Bookbinding

Linotype Machine

Some upcoming events. First of all, we’re working on a ‘graphic intervention’ for an exhibition that will take place at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich – the opening will take place on April 16, 2015. Secondly, we designed five Provo-related posters as a contribution to Yes Yes Yes, a group show that will open on April 18, at Colli in Rome. And finally, around May 1, the Whitney Museum will re-open at its new location – featuring a graphic identity that we designed in 2012 (and that has been maintained by the Whitney’s in-house design team ever since). In fact, on the occasion of the opening, we’ve been asked to create some new work for the Whitney – more about that later.” This is just one of the many updates Experimental Jetset posted on their website regarding their agenda for the first half of 2015 and obviously productivity is not something this team of three lacks in.

Zang! Tumb Tumb

Consisting of Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen this small, independent, Amsterdam-based graphic design studio was established back in 1997. The trio, who met and collaborated during their studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy formed Experimental Jetset and since the beginning of their adventures in the world of the letters, they decided to focus on printed matter and site-specific installations. Best known for their typographic solutions have completed projects as diverse as the new graphic identity for the Whitney Museum of American Art (2013), to the iconic ‘John & Paul & Ringo & George’ t-shirt print (2001).

“We want our work to become a part of reality, not an imitation of it”

Although they describe their work as “scavenging the ruins of Modernism”, Experimental Jetset’s graphic design output belongs to our times. Conscious “of its origins and place in design history” they see their work as an archive of influences. From the iconic poster by Dutch cartoon artist Bernard Willem Holtrop with a reversed lower case “A” that inspired the trio for its “sharp and clear design but contrarian element”, through the No Wave post-punk sub-culture that sprung up in New York City in the late 1970s and early 80s to the relationship between pop culture and the avant-garde – exemplified, for example, by the record sleeve of The Beatles’ White Album designed by pop artist Richard Hamilton in 1968, everything is an inspiration.

Whitney Graphic Identity

“For us, a fascination with graphic design started with stuff like record sleeves, music magazines, fanzines and band t-shirts”, says Van den Dungen. “That got us interested in graphic design in the first place and I think a lot of the work that we do is still related to that. There is always this sense that we referring to those groups or movements.” Provo was just one of them. The Dutch counterculture movement, which Stolk’s father was a founding member of was focused on provoking violent responses from authorities using non-violent action and it was a family issue for her. After all, “since mainstream printers did not want to print the subversive material of the movement, activism forced her father to become a printer.” 

Although they have become synonymous with the use of Helvetica, Stolk wants to set the record straight. “We actually hate Helvetica”, she says.

Owing a huge debt to Dutch graphic designers such as Wim Crouwel and other influential thinkers and visual disruptors alike (French Marxist theorist Guy Debord, Italian artist Lucio Fontana, French film director Jean-Luc Godard or Stanley Kubrick’s “relentless merciless aesthetic”), Experimental Jetset are not interested in reproducing reality. “We want our work to become a part of reality, not an imitation of it” they say. “We try to make the viewer aware of the reality of representation by revealing the methods of reproduction and of printing”.

The Printed Book

Obsessed with details, with an almost “neurotic desire to control even the smallest elements in our work for better or for worse” Experimental Jetset porftolio is influenced by their involvement as teenagers in the 1980s with the “post-punk sub-cultures such as New Wave, Psychobilly, 2 Tone and Mod”, notes Brinkers. And although they have become synonymous with the use of Helvetica typeface Stolk wants to set the record straight. “We actually hate Helvetica”, she says. “If anything we see it as more of a natural tone of voice as part of our everyday vocabulary. We are not the sort of actors who speak in a different voice or put on another mask every time we play another role”, she explains. “We basically signed our own death sentence – in Helvetica obviously!” she commented on their appearance in Gary Hustwit’s documentary about the over popular font. Maybe the fact that the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired back in 2007 a large selection of their work in 2007 for inclusion in the museum’s permanent collection will make you acknowledge that Experimental Jetset are a living part of today’s typographic history but that is merely an understatement.

NAiM Zoo Letter Z

Observatorium

NAiM Re-Action

NAiM Playboy Architecture

Stedelijk Museum Open, postage stamps

NAiM Panels

Still the Modern World

Flag Show

Maastricht New Year 2

Jérôme St-Loubert Bié

NAiM The Smithsons

International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam 2014

Statement & Counter

High Risk

104 / Le Cent Quatre 2

EP Sternberg Press

Paradiso Poster/Folder

NAiM Clip/Stamp/Fold

NAiM / Club Ceramique

BE Graphic Identity

Helvetica / Blu-ray

John Paul Ringo George

Sirens

Two or Three Things

A Monsieur Olivier–style road sign. A bold, red stenciled 1920s type for Paris’ Métro system. A mosaic by 19th-century Italian artist Giandomenico Facchina as part of the Théâtre Antoine, in the 10th arrondissement. A series of Art Nouveau letterforms Hand-painted signage covering one side of the announcing the Samaritaine department stores’ offerings near Pont Neuf. The futurist-inspired architectural letterforms adorning the grand, curved wall of a primary school designed by architect René Requet-Barville, in the 11th arrondissement. For many Paris is the city of lights, for celebrated graphic designer Louise Fili it is the city of the letterform. Its stunning signage is a constant inspiration and a major on Fili’s own work.

Following the success of Grafica della Strada, a book in which she celebrated Italy’s typographic legacy capturing an impressive menu of lettering styles and materials from Bologna to Turin, Graphique de la Rue is Fili’s typographic lettre d’amour to Paris. As the renowned Italian-American designer has been strolling picturesque Parisian rues and boulevards for more than four decades, holding just a map and a camera, she was cataloging the work of generations of sign craftsmen. Today these photographs are becoming her own typographic travelogue, a visual diary of hundreds of Paris’ most inventive restaurant, shop, hotel, street, and advertising signs that will inspire lovers of typography and armchair travelers alike.

“The Art Deco letterforms on the facade of an old laiterie or the delicate gold-leaf typography of a boulangerie can make me giddy with delight”

Classic neon café signs are juxtaposed with the dramatic facades of the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère. Colorful mosaics cheerfully announce hotel entrances, department stores, fishmongers, even public toilets. Hector Guimard’s legendary entrances to the Paris Métro stations brush elbows with graceful gold-leaf and dimensional Art Deco, Futurist, or Art Nouveau architectural lettering, as well as whimsical pictorial signs (giant eyeglasses announce optics, and oversized hanging shears indicate a knife and scissors maker). Many of these masterpieces of vernacular design, now destroyed, live on solely in this book.

“The Art Deco letterforms on the facade of an old laiterie or the delicate gold-leaf typography of a boulangerie can make me giddy with delight,” she writes in Graphique De La Rue. “This book is my typographic love letter to Paris.” She prefers to discover this wealth of striking yet elegant in early morning “when the city belongs to no one but me and a silent army of green-suited street cleaners. I race through the desolate streets, chasing down every photogenic sign, playing cat and mouse with the sun until about 10:30 a.m... I then plan the rest of my day—as the incessant flaneur around the city, making unexpected typographic discoveries” she adds.

For those who can’t follow Fili’s footsteps in an instant, Graphique de la Rue is available September 1 from Princeton Architectural Press.

A graphic designer, a curator and a writer at heart Ellen Lupton “makes this industry smarter. If graphic design has a sense of its own history, an understanding of the theory that drives it and a voice for its continuing discourse, it’s largely because Lupton wrote it, thought it or spoke it.” comments AIGA on the woman who wants to teach us something about design once again. Featuring more than 125 works from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition “How Posters Work” shows how dozens of different designers have mobilized principles of composition, perception and storytelling to convey ideas and construct experiences. On the occasion of this event, we asked Ellen Lupton, senior curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, to present us her favorite typographic posters that are on view at the museum through Jan. 24, 2016. This is a top ten that will take your breath made of letters away. 

“Alexander Gelman, Walls of the City, 1992: I love the complexity of this piece and its sense of time and place. The composition references the collages of torn posters that may be found layered on the street. We perceive two planes (two sheets of paper) because the lines of text that seem to be printed on each one align visually.”

Alexander Gelman

“Jianping He, In Between, 2012: I’m fascinated by typography that tells a story about its own making. These stretched letterforms employ digital distortion in a way that feels very physical. You can almost smell the rubber melting.”

Jianping He

“Cornel Windlin, The Birth of Cool, 1997: The typography is brutally cool, but the surface is hot. The pink, textured background gives flesh and blood to this amazing poster.”

Cornel Windlin

“Philippe Apeloig, Bruits du monde [Noises of the World], 2012: Smudging the letters creates the sense of time passing. The poster is “blue” in every sense: brooding, melancholy, lethargic. The typography is struggling to get out of bed, dragged back into time by emotional inertia.”

Philippe Apeloig

“Felix Pfäffli, Salzhaus, 2014: Felix Pfäffli’s poster for the music house Salzhaus in Winterthur, Switzerland, features enormous geometric letterforms wrapped together in an impenetrable embrace. Each letter has its own identity, creating a remarkable abstraction.”

Felix Pfäffli

“Mieke Gerritzen, Next Nature, 2006: The posters and products of Meike Gerritzen comment on the glut of information in digital society. Here, messages crowd into every available space, recalling the hectic rhythm of a supermarket ad or a televised news feed.”

Mieke Gerritzen

“Ralph Schraivogel, Cinema Afrika Filmtage, 2006: In this astonishing poster by Swiss graphic designer Ralph Schraivogel, the linear patterns radiate from the words “Cinema Afrika,” resembling topographic lines on a map. Concentric lines engulf this edgeless, borderless landscape, leaving planes and boundaries uncertain.”

Ralph Schraivogel

“Niklaus Troxler, Jazz Willisau: In 1975 Swiss graphic designer Niklaus Troxler founded the Willisau Jazz Festival, which he directed until 2009. His series of posters for the festival represents an ongoing study in design process, as Troxler explored diverse means to create letterforms outside the norms of typography and typefaces.”

Niklaus Troxler

“M/M (Paris), Crustinien des Galapagos, 2013: The posters of M/M (Paris) are their own kind of art. They never merely promote a film or event but become unique cultural commentary. The hand-lettering in this poster is mysterious, erotic, sticky.”

Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak

“Wolfgang Weingart, NR. 4, 1974: Weingart’s designs will never cease to astound me. This is one of his relatively early posters, made when he was reinventing what it meant to be a “Swiss designer.” He has taken the most minimal elements of typography and created magical creatures.”

Wolfgang Weingart

They were born in Germany yet the American architectural landscape was mesmerizing enough for the young creative duo Geebird & Bamby to reintroduce us the American Dream. “The New World” is a series of freely designed buildings that is shaped by an original set of rules, metrics and processes. The seemingly familiar reality of this project is inspired by the magnificent body of work showcased during the post war era and the later 20th century in the fields of Photography, Architecture, Film and Design. To name just a few in no particular order: Paul Rudolph and the Sarasota School Of Architecture, Saul Bass, Minoru Yamasaki, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Charles and Ray Eames, Ed Ruscha, Paul Thomas Anderson, Paul Rand and Wim Wenders.

Robert Achtel’s and Jens Bambauer’s partnership was initiated in 2009 with the primary objective to create, manufacture and distribute “The New World” as an original visual design product straight from their studio in Wiesbaden, Germany. Based on the partnership’s architectural photography from California, Nevada and Florida this universe manipulates existing modernist and brutalist elements of the American Dream in a stunning, haunting way. Capturing and altering the signage of architectural elements they produce art. The letterforms and the meaning of the words they choose bring their spirit alive. The aesthetic look of their digital artwork is “defined by the interrelation between minimalist graphic shapes and a photo-realistic visualization”.

“Through a lively crossover of artistic disciplines, the artists pursue an intensive dialogue with modernity, both in form and design. The buildings appear as if they came from a parallel world. And yet, with their timeless elegance, they somehow seem familiar to us. This mixture of amazement and recognition, of wonder and reflection, produces a remarkable effect” says Stephan Reisner. “Fantasy penetrates the images and changes our view of the past and the present into a spectacular dream for the future. It is part of the artistic concept of Geebird & Bamby to leave the functions of the buildings deliberately vague and ambiguous. A cinema named “Fox” is showing a film with the thought-provoking title “The Man Who Lived Forever”, a building resembling a supermarket has the rather appropriate logo “The Good Life”, and there is also building for “The Modern Gentleman”. We are pulled into a thrilling game of allusion, recognition, and idealisation. As we look upon these utopian buildings we long for their existence.”

Set in a time characterized by the conflict of Modernist and Postmodernist convictions, its influence on later 20th century history, and ultimately, the world we live in today, “The New World” is manufactured in cooperation with Oschatz GmbH & CO KG, one of Germany’s leading image production firms, founded as a photo laboratory in 1922. Each print is available in a limited edition of 100 pieces as PLEXIGLAS® sealed Kodak exposures, laminated on DIBOND®. This is a utopia you can own. For more information on this project click here

The Broken Hearts Hotel Series II | 2013

Ever Mall Series II | 2013

Oasis Diner Series II | 2013

Liquor Swamp Series II | 2013

World of Drugs Series II | 2013

The Modern Gentleman Series I | 2011

Fox Theatre Series I | 2011

Trans Pacific Terminal Series I | 2011

All Mart Series I | 2011

The Good Life Series I | 2011

His risograph prints (a trend that is popular among younger designers nowadays) are not the only thing that is stunning in his work. In point of fact, this ultra creative Swiss graphic designer has made a name for himself since graduating and setting up his own design studio, Feixen, in his hometown of Lucerne in 2010. Felix Pfäffli is one of the youngest designers to be newly acquired by Cooper Hewitt and his work is on display among legendary designers and other newcomers in Smithsonian Design Museum's current exhibition, How Posters Work. “He is an incredible powerhouse” says curatorial assistant Caitlin Condell.“Something Felix plays with is the scale of depth”, she adds.

From book and magazine covers through posters, T-shirt graphics and custom typefaces this young man displays a creative wealth you have to acknowledge. Always adapting multiple approaches depending on the commissions his stellar body of work is boldly versatile. Although Pfäffli has worked on anything, his primary medium of preference is poster design with typography playing a major role in his craft. “When you’re designing a poster, there’s nothing to hide. What you see is what you get. I like that. It’s an honest medium and hugely versatile – I don’t see the poster as being solely confined to just being print-on-paper. I think the idea of a poster is just to have a limited, defined space. How big, or how it is produced is unimportant. I can well imagine that the poster of tomorrow will be animated, responsive, interactive and kind of intelligent. The whole process of how you think and work when making posters will inevitably change. Maybe we won’t even print them any more” he says to Gavin Lucas.

Computer Arts magazine, WIRED magazine, Fast Co. and Etapes are some of the clients of this man of many talents, Pfäffli teaches typography, narrative design, and poster design at the Lucerne school of graphic design if he is not busy exploring new skills and techniques. He describes his style as reductive and illustrative, trying always to create images that are simple, loud and concise. “I hate to repeat myself. perhaps you could describe it as a straightforward pop with a touch of swiss tradition” he says.

Smart tailoring each one of his projects, he is confident enough to push legibility to the limit. After all “it makes no sense to do things by half-measures”. This was the best advice he has ever been given and we are obliged to agree.

Few people have mastered the craft of typography as this Swiss type designer had and even fewer made our habitat a readable place in the most literal sense. Born in 1928 in Unterseen this son of a weaver experimented with invented scripts and stylized handwriting in negative reaction to the formal, cursive penmanship then required by Swiss schools, since he was a boy. “I was fortunate. Early in life, I understood that my world was a two-dimensional one. At sixteen I knew that my work would be in black and white” he said. For him reading always meant linear and black and white. A belief he mastered throughout his career with every single typeface he created.

A predominant figure in twentieth century European design, Frutiger has created some of the most popular typefaces of the 20th and 21st century. Univers, Frutiger (created for the Charles de Gaulle airport), Egyptienne, Serifa and Avenir are just some of the 30 font families he gave to our world and since the 1950s he was an inspiration to many aspiring designers throughout the world. One of the few typographers whose career spanned across hot metal, photographic and digital typesetting, Frutiger’s career path was a legendary one. His woodcut series of lettering styles illustrating the evolution of the Roman alphabet which he delivered while he was just a student in Zürich is a stunning piece of work and the entry ticket to Deberny & Peignot foundry in Paris where it all started.

Versailles family concept

“I first experienced the power of type to make the whole intellectual world readable with the same letters in the days of metal. This awakened in me the urge to develop the best possible legibility. The time soon came when texts were no longer set in metal types but by means of a beam of light. The task of adapting the typefaces of the old masters from relief type to flat film was my best school. When we came to the “Grotesk” style of sanserif, however, I had my own ideas which led to the Univers® family. Technological progress was rapid. Electronic transfer of images brought the stepping, followed by my feelings for form. But today, with curve programs and laser exposure, it seems to me that the way through the desert has been completed” he said. “From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader. In the course of my professional life I have aquired knowledge and manual skill. To pass on what I had learned and achieved to the next generation became a necessity.”

Early Univers drawings

“Throughout the modern world, from megastore to corner shop, text set in Frutiger’s Univers sings out from a thousand different magazine, books, posters and CD covers. Univers is proving to be one of the most important and enduring typefaces of the twentieth century, a masterpiece of structured diversity” says Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin. From his sans-serif typeface Frutiger for the then newly built Charles De Gaulle International Airport that welcomes you at Roissy, France, through the linear bands of rope-drawn signs of script in concrete of his Métro alphabet at any railway station in Paris to ASTRA-Frutiger’s widening ascenders and descenders which is used by Swiss authorities as the new font for traffic signs since 2003 his traces will remain intact and alive forever. He wanted to become a sculptor but his father discouraged him. Later in his life he wanted to become an architect. “I would have been a poor architect, because my thinking is not three-dimensional” he said. Thank God the word of type managed to keep his poetic mind busy for all of us to read.

“The whole point with type is for you not to be aware it is there,” Frutiger once said. “If you remember the shape of a spoon with which you just ate some soup, then the spoon had a poor shape. Spoons and letters are tools. The first we need to ingest bodily nourishment from a bowl, the latter we need to ingest mental nourishment from a piece of paper.”

Adrian Frutiger passed away last week at the age of 87.  We will definitely miss him.

Photos from: “Adrian Frutiger – Typefaces: The Complete Works”, Birkhauser, 2014

Minuscule a of Concorde romain with all diacritics –final artwork with measurements in millimetres

Drawing of the 'Katalog' a with measurements and corrections – indian ink,opaque white and pencil on satin paper.

Small Capital and oldstyle numerals for 'Iridium'

Final artwork for the lowercase a of Dolmen'45

Adrian Frutiger's original drawings with measurements (background) superimposed by the PostScript version of Avenir LT 35

In our everyday life we are not only confronted with an abundance of pictures without reference or context but also typefaces that try to persuade us. One can only respond subjectively, following inherent (unconscious) selection and aesthetic rules. But to what extent are these decisions made randomly? Or, are they rather embedded in our cultural memory? In the many conversations with the cultural philosopher Herbert Lachmayer (DaPonte Institute, Vienna) on these subjects the name Aby Warburg kept reoccurring.

Aby Warburg: Collective memory

Aby Warburg was an art historian who developed the idea of “collective” and “social memory” in the 1930’s. His last work “the Mnemosyne Atlas” is an anachronic attempt to map the pathways that give art history their pathos (or emotionally)-laden meanings. Warburg thought this visual encyclopedia would animate the viewer’s memory, imagination, and understanding of what he called “the afterlife of antiquity.”

Here is what the Mnemosyne Atlas looks like in today’s visual library.

These are some examples of writing styles from antiquity.

Let us first consider Aby Warburg’s idea of “cultural memory”, which is ingrained in our heritage. These writing styles were widespread for centuries. So it seems plausible that the key of writing being aesthetically pleasing and appealing to one’s emotions relies mainly on the recognition of a “human touch”. This seems to still be the case today.

Modernism and the myth of neutrality

There have recently been several projects, which aim to revive the age-old quest for a neutral design. As I have a Swiss Design and Educational background, I was always rather sceptical of so called ‘Neutrality’, also in design. I rather think that so called Modernist or Swiss Design today is highly stylized and does not reflect the idea of design as a utilitarian tool. In “the Crystal Goblet” Beatrice Warde suggests that good design and typography are invisible. But the research I found seems to suggest that typefaces are expressive themselves and function beyond being mere vessels for language. For example ‘Helvetica’ is in theory meant to be a neutral typeface, but ‘Helvetica’ light is considered stylish and bold is instructional. It has many personalities within it. In the same way that it is impossible for your voice to be completely neutral the same applies to typefaces.’ (Sarah Hyndman). So I attempted to find a new approach.

The Rhetorical stance

In Aristotle’s theory of Rhetoric: Logos, Pathos and Ethos are the key dimensions for speaking and communicating effectively. As typefaces have a rhetorical ability and can communicate certain emotions, I felt the need to investigate to what extent the reader can be influenced by typography. I looked at existing psychological research that attempts to quantify the effect of typeface designs. I designed a typeface that is equal in its expression by combining traditionally separate categories of typography. “Sans-Serifs” for traits such as Consistency and Logic (Logos), “Humanist” for emotions, imagination (Pathos) and “Serifs” for credibility and trust (Ethos).

Rhetoric of Typography

Aby Warburg is an anachronic typeface. By saying this I mean it is not constructed in a traditional fashion but rather combines traits from different time periods. My aim is to make a typeface that is equal in its expression. The aim here is not to design a “final” typeface but rather to investigate what cultural characteristics can be applied to typography. I found that it is not a question of designing a perfect letter shape, but rather that the letters have the right combination of traits for a wanted effect.

Most readers don’t consciously pay attention to typography, due to the cognitive process of continuous reading, therefore I looked at both conscious and sub-conscious studies.

Sans Serifs such as Neue Haas Grotesk, Arial etc. were perceived as most plain and logical. (Font Effect poster)

Roman Style & Humanist Slight inconsistencies in letter shapes were perceived as more “natural” looking. Hence I adopted old style serifs and humanist characteristics for the characters. (Font Effect poster)

Sub-consciously Baskerville was perceived as more believable and convincing when compared to sans serifs and other serif types, due to its stark contrast and solid columns. (Errol Morris: NYT Blog)

The Font Effect poster is a visualisation that I designed in order to test my own typeface. As a basis I took the findings of the study “Impression Management Using Typeface Design” by Pamela W. Henderson, Joan L. Giese, and Joseph A. Cote. This research was vital because rather than testing specific typefaces, it found that multiple type classifications (Geometric, Serif etc.) are perceived similarly by the audience. Generally when asked people did not respond to categories such as Serif, Sans-Serif. More broad categories became apparent, for example Verdana, Century Gothic and Times were all seen as Reassuring & Harmonious in cluster studies. But by far highest Scoring were script faces resembling human handwriting. From this research I developed the emotional font variations you see in the app.

The ‘Aby Warburg’ Typeface project was my final thesis at the Royal College of Art in London. I wanted to focus on designing a serif typeface in my second year, but the more I read up on the subject, I noticed the many accepted rules which exist in type design that seemed to be set in stone. It got me curious about where they come from and whether designers and non-designers actually perceive and react to typefaces differently. In the end I found that they do.

Words and images for Typorn: Kai Damian Matthiesen  

It has been a massive journey to capture and define the legacy and influence of concrete poetry on current visual poetry” says Victoria Bean & Chris McCabe. The duo have just co-edited an anthology about the rise of concrete poetry in the digital age in a book that has been released by Hayward Publishing. Featuring artists like Jenny Holzer, Cerith Wyn Evans, John Giorno, Fiona Banner, and Sam Winston with new work from original concrete artists such as Augusto de Campos, Eugen Gomringer, Decio Pignatari, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Henri Chopin, and Bob Cobbing theThe New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century is a testament on where this art made of letters has been and where it goes. Typorn wanted to know what visual poetry is all about. Sam Winston's world has already captured our attention but we wanted to know more. Is it bold graphics? Words with meaning? Something entirely different? Here, exclusively for us, Victoria & Chris share 20 things anyone should know about this typographic realm. 

“We have put a sharp focus on the word ‘new’ in our title, exploring how image manipulation, cut and paste, digital text and the internet have all influenced work in this area. One of the most exciting strands can be seen in the work of James Hoff and Eric Zboya who use algorithms and viruses to form work in which text is in the back - rather than foreground; the ghost of the machine of visual poetics. This isn't a book that could have been made through simply surfing the web. We asked all 106 contributors to suggest names of poets or artists that we should consider for the book. Visual poets spiralled into more visual poets. We have looked at well over 500 possible candidates. Enjoy the knowledge with us.”

1. The origins of concrete poetry started in 1953 in Brazil, Germany and Sweden with the formation of the Noigandres group (siblings Augusto and Haraldo de Campos and Decio Pignatari), the publication of Eugen Gomringer’s poems ‘Konstellations’ and Öyvind Fahlström’s manifesto for concrete poetry.

                                                Noigandres group

2. It wasn’t until 1955 when Decio Pignatari was invited to Europe, and met Max Bill’s secretary, Eugen Gomringer, that they realised they were both referring to their work as ‘concrete poetry’. This was seen as the starting point of the international movement.

Eugen Gomringer “Ilse Garnier”

3. A universal language: the Noigandres group set out to “change literature by creating a universal picture language, a poetry that can be read by all – regardless of what language they spoke. Letters would double as carriers of semantic content and as powerful visual elements in their own right” a quote from Kenneth Goldsmith from The New Concrete.

Augusto de Campos “SEM SAIDA”

4. The geographic trajectory of the original movement became a global one through the publication of journals and magazines, and artists and writers travelling between South America and Europe, America and the UK. Anthologies and exhibitions also played an important part in spreading this new work.

Victoria Bean “The World Geography of Concrete Poetry”

5. There were two major concrete poetry anthologies in the 1960’s Mary Ellen Solt’s Concrete Poetry: a World View and Emmet Williams’ An Anthology of Concrete Poetry* which was first published by Hansjörg Mayer and the Something Else Press in 1967. We feature many artists from Williams’ seminal book: Eugen Gomringer, Franz Mon, Pierre and Ilse Garnier, Augusto de Campos, Decio Pignatari, Aram Saroyan, Bob Cobbing, John Furnival, Henri Chopin, Hansjörg Mayer, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edwin Morgan.

*This anthology was recently reprinted by Primary Information.

Aram Saroyan “ian Hamilton Finlay” 2007

6. One of our contributors, Hansjörg Mayer, typographer, printer and publisher, was a central figure in the original concrete poetry movement and is known for his ‘Typoems’, ‘Typoactions’, ‘Alphabets’ some first appeared in 1961 in a series called the ‘First Alphabet’. He began the ‘Last Alphabet’ in 1968 but was too busy publishing and lecturing at the time to complete it, but has recently resumed work on it.

Hans Jörg Mayer “The Last Alphabet” 

7. Edwin Morgan, another original concrete poet, continued to work with visual poems throughout his writing life, creating this code poem a few years before he died; “its curious made-up language of Runic and Cyrillic returns us to the idea that visual poetry emerges from humankind’s first languages and that the merging of the visual and textual in visual poetry is a form potent with current possibilities.” Chris McCabe

Edwin Morgan “Code Poem”

8. Ian Hamilton Finlay is still a huge influence today. Brazilian artist Antonio Claudio Carvalho was moved to make his piece ‘THE DAY IAN HAMILTON FINLAY DIED’ on the day the artist passed away. Aram Saroyan’s piece ‘ian hamilton finlay’ features the poet’s name with double dots above each ‘i’. Tony Lopez and photographer John S Webb have made a collaborative poem that is, in part, a homage to Ian Hamilton Finlay’s poetry and Wild Hawthorn Press.

Antonio Claudio Carvalho “SAD”

9. Other dedications to the original poets can be seen in W Mark Sutherland’s poem ‘Dairy Products, Aviation, and Insects (for E. Gomringer)’ which references an original work by Gomringer while Eugen Gomringer titles his poem ‘Ilse Garnier’ as a dedication to the concrete poet and wife of Pierre Garnier. Phillip Gallo’s ‘untitled’ features Dieter Roth’s name in the text and Steve McCaffery’s ‘portrait of EP (in memoriam Francesco Conz)’ is a neat expression of Ezra Pound’s name and influence over the early movement.
Steve McCaffery’s and Phillip Gallo’s “£ZRA”

10. Dom Sylvester Houedard, also known as dsh, was a Benedictine priest at the Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire and an original concrete poet in the UK. His amazing typewriter ‘typestracts’ still inspire a range of artists today including Sam Winston whose piece ‘Backwords’ is featured in The New Concrete.

                                                Sam Winston “Backwords”

11. Concrete poetry has always been a good place for political expression. Henri Chopin uses his typewriter and coffee cup stains to tell us how he feels about Mr Bush, while the three Turkish poets featured in the book are open about their need for visual poetry to express their political ideals and thoughts: Serkan Işin writes on his website Zinhar that “poetry is a mechanism that allows us to produce anti-codes to help us intervene against the codes that are imposed on us by the city/life.” Jörg Piringer’s work fallen, takes the English translation of The Communist Manifesto and lets the text fall into a pile at the bottom of the page making it unreadable, stripped of its original meaning.

                                 Serkan Isin “kozmikoda”

12. The original concrete art movement in the ‘40s was inspired by the way painters and sculptors embraced the materiality of their work with a strong emphasis on abstraction. Today, even with the shortcuts of the digital environment, contributors to The New Concrete still found the need to express their work through materials:Letraset for Derek Beaulieu, purple magic marker for Christopher Knowles, watercolour for John Giorno, and cigarette papers for Tom Phillip’s featured page from A Humument. Paula Claire’s piece poetry in emotion was created not by Photoshop or Illustrator, but by using layers of type photocopied onto acetate and moved slightly to create a circular movement.

Paula Claire’s “A Sonnet in Motion”

13. futura then futura now; Hansjörg Mayers’ publishing projects in the early ‘60s included prints, portfolios, books and the broadside series futura which featured his own work and that of many major practitioners of concrete poetry at the time - all set in the Futura typeface. Antonio Claudio Carvalho has recreated this series of broadsides under the name p.o.w – prisoners opposed to war, featuring The New Concrete contributors Roel Goussey, Chris McCabe, Sophie Herxheimer, Nick-e Melvile, Sam Winston, Simon Barraclough, Tom Jenkins, SJ Fowler, Hansjorg Mayer, Victoria Bean, Augusto de Campos, Peter Finch and Julie Johnstone.

Roel Goussey “Tombeau”

14. A new type. Tom Comitta’s ‘Balding Type’ typeface is composed entirely from online image search results. If you look closely you'll see Dali's moustaches, Demi Moore's mowhawk, Denzel Washington's goatee and many anonymous people. The most visible body is Alicia Silverstone’s in the letter Z. The Henningham Family Press' project, ‘An Unknown Soldier’, includes an invented typeface too, ‘Trench’, whose name reflects the subject of the work which is the First World War.

Tom Comitta “Balding Type”

15. Ian Hamilton Finlay created the one word poem in the ‘60s but contemporary artists have taken this further: some making visual poems without any words: Eric Zboya’s work involves a process called Algorithmic Translation – a process that, through a series of mathematical calculations, transforms the text from Howl into an inky explosion capturing the original energy of the piece. Some have used computer viruses to take pre-existing pieces of text and transformed them into beautiful or arresting images. The language element can be seen as what’s in the background, the code, virus or algorithm that makes the surface image possible. 

Eric Zboya “Howl”

16. Visual poems exist across many different mediums. At the launch of The New Concrete at the Whitechapel Gallery we saw visual poetry presented as performance, song, animation and film. Andre Vallias’ version of Dante’s Divine Comedy has been translated into QR codes, while Simon Barraclough’s poem ‘Tromsø’ is part of his Sunspots project which includes a book, songs and film.

SJ Fowler “Lego poem”

17. The internet, computer and data are proving to be a massive influence on visual poetry. After several Google translations, the line length of the lyrics of Starship’s song ‘We built this city on rock and roll’, were turned on their side to became a natural cityscape for Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim’s piece.

Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim “We built this city”

18. Is concrete a strand of visual poetry or was visual poetry born out of concrete? The current visual poetry that we were interested in collecting in The New Concrete is that which shows its direct influence from concrete poetry. Although visual poetry is an ancient form beginning with the later Greek civilisations, concrete poetry as a specific historic movement between the 1950s and 1970s has created such a rich legacy that current poets and artists are still responding to its ripples.

                        Bob Cobbing

19. Concrete poetry is often very funny. Tom Jenks, a poet from Manchester, cites his influences as Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan‎, Peter Finch distorts the Welsh Assembly into ‘arsembly’ and Jesse Patrick Fergusson has created a piece in which he picks his own head from a tree made from text.

Jesse Patrick Fergusson “Picking”

20. These are three concrete and visual poetry sites you can explore. Anatol Knotek, an artist and visual poet from Vienna, and contributor to the anthology, has two visual poetry sites: anatol.cc and visual-poetry.tumblr.com. UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to historical and contemporary visual, concrete and sound poetry: ubuweb.com

Enter the kingdom of typographic poetry and buy your copy here