Although technology-driven graphic design is dazzling, I hope to find a different narrative perspective. Inspired by our ancestors’ use of nature to create tools, I decided to seek answers from nature.

I conducted six natural experiments: water, fire, earth, wood, wind, and light and I used ink to visualize water and wind, burned or buried paper for fire and earth, pressed leaves onto paper for trees, and made perforations on paper to let light shine through. Essentially, I set some parameters and let nature generate the images.

In the end, the experiment’s images were full of random beauty, which surprised and delighted me.

The catalog for the exhibition “Type & Chairs – Stühle und Schriften im Vergleich” features fonts and chairs on display with informative text about each design concept, designer, and historical context. Written by design students from the University of Applied Science Mainz, the text is accompanied by historical images and typographic examples by Valeria Schriber and Niklas Wolf. The catalog concludes with a comparison page that highlights the historical and conceptual similarities between fonts and chairs. The cover, made of mirrored paper, features a screen-printed graphic title and reflects the exhibition’s comparative aspect.

“Un sucio montón de papeles”, talks about reading censorship during the Franco regime, based on burning publications and information control. Each section provides real documentation, stories, images and books that allow us to reconstruct historical memory. Due to burning and prohibition of some books, many of them disappeared; for this reason, this book remembers them through empty book images that imagine how they could have been. A book about books that ceased to be books once censored.

Between spoken and written language: »Stimme« (voice) presents »Phonograph«, an optophonetic font for german speech. To improve the effect of the special typeface, the publication shows classic typography and book design. At first sight, one could overlook, that it consists of a notation of oral signals. Transformed into an art object, its aura opens a wide space for reflections on the connection of acoustic and graphic communication. The aesthetic quality of texts is here based on physic signs, each letter characterized by its soundwaves. The book presents a full translation of »Stimme – Annäherung an ein Phänomen«, originally edited by Doris Kolesch and Sybille Krämer, Suhrkamp, 2006.

„Wunder erwarten“ / „Expecting miracles“ originated from a feeling of helplessness and dissatisfaction with global developments, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing climate crisis and the anti-democratic developments all over the world. The project elaborates the complexity and possibilities of political action, outside of the institutional understanding of politics. “Expecting Miracles” demonstrates existing structures and conditions and encourages a rethink: „The future is uncertain, the only thing that can be anticipated at this point in time is the fact that if we do what is necessary, we can expect nothing less than a miracle.“

“Marianne & Henriette” documents a students art project which reinvents the history of the Niederwürzbach pond, whose outline resembles that of Lake Constance. Mixing fact with fiction, the story digresses, making use of science fiction elements of the 1980s and Russian Constructivism. The Swiss brochure’s upward page direction gives the impression of opening a treasure chest. Narrative and research report intertwine and can be read in parallel sections. Graphic quotations of the styles addressed in the text act as third storyline to give the reader a feeling of uncovering secrets of an archive collection.

Built out of 471 individual fragments, comprised of deconstructed work, collected and documented environmental and contextual elements such as waste bins, tree skin, “no smoking” signs, or newspaper clippings deriving from his daily life, as well as various other experimental projects, this book has become a physical manifestation of the “axis” Takada has created, where an order is generated not through a systematic application of logic, but rather in the acceptance and love for, and in the utilization of chaos which seems to have resulted in a completely new form of existence.

Ongoing book series for Suhrkamp Theater Verlag, including color scheme, cover design, typesetting and overall concept (set in ABC Arizona)

A unique fashion book in a very limited series designed with different papers and a slide cover where the print text changes thanks to the effect created by the 45° texture on the polyvinyl acetate cover.

I created this book to showcase my typeface »Wurmcode Serif«, which is part of the exhibition »Punktpunktkommastrich« at DLA Marbach. The typeface is based on woodworm holes, especially on a branch with painted worm holes by Eduard Mörike (which is also part of an exhibition at the literature archive).
I created this type specimen by laser cutting every single glyph out of the pages and gluing the laser cut pages back on thicker paper. The chosen paper is embossed with a wooden texture.

The 3D printed book does not need a pulp body to materialise, nor does it require edge cropping/trimming — it prints as it is — no distinction between the flesh and skin. When does the print become a page, when does it birth a book?

It does not crumple, cannot carry dog ears, and ages slower. With the ability to quite literally print beyond the bounds of pages, it questions not just what a book is, but what a book can be.

How does 3D-printing process the ‘death’ of print? How do you kill what does not (need) bleed?