Contrasta is a contemporary display face with a vast amount of alternates & ligatures intended to mimic custom lettering.
A work in progress. Designed by Todor Georgiev in the period 2020–2023.
Peter Radelfinger: Falsche Fährten
Peter Radelfinger is an obsessive collector. Falsche Fährten visualizes the thousands of (analog & digital) folders of texts, poems, and images he collected for over 14 years—with content ranging from serious and tragic, to absurd, ironic, and comical. Peter meticulously files his collections with four distinct codes based on type: FF (Text), FBP (Image: Print), FBD (Image: Digital), and FBN (Image: Network). Referencing his manuscript, the book interlaces FFs on the left with FBPs or FBDs on the right; until the FBNs and Index begin, and it switches. A script was written to automate the image loading and numeration, and place the text boxes. A custom typeface was also designed: FFS.
sottosopra
“Sottosopra” is a lowercase Latin alphabet designed and built on a modular grid.
Its peculiarity is that all 26 letters are divided horizontally along a single line.
The shape of the letters tries to be as simple and neutral as possible, avoiding falling into style exercises.
The alphabet has been built with modularity so that each half letter can be combined with another half, thus giving life to an infinite creative process.
Combining two different halves is therefore not perceived as an error, but also gives way to discover and create new non-existent forms. Furthermore, the tiles have no direction, so they can be assembled freely.
TIME TO BREATHE – An experimental journey with the texts and photographs of Reinhard Karl
The book “Time to Breathe” is the result of an artistic and creative exploration of the work of the mountaineer Reinhard Karl. His photographs and texts inspired me for a journey on which I entered into a dialogue with his world. It is a declaration of love to analogue photography, the art of woodcut and linocut and the magical attraction of the medium itself, a book as a reliable object that can be experienced with all the senses.
Ornament is Crime
An architectural publication on architecture is used to create Ornament is Crime. The various pages are cut up with a scalpel. In the process, blocks of text are removed and the printed elements of building parts and the like are left behind; the sequence of pages and the original book remain. The various layers now form a kind of relief. Opening to any random double page spread, we see a three-dimensional architectural landscape, a kind of model presented in space. In the video work we see two hands flipping through the book object page by page, leafing through it, and in so doing creating all sorts of combinations of architecture as in a kind of “architectural generator.
Graphisme en France Issue 28 : Creation, tools, research.
As a way of challenging habits of the graphic designer process and in direct relation to the subject of the texts, each section of the publication was formatted using a different editing tool or software. In this performative process, F451 used five different tools and software: Adobe InDesign 17.4/18.0, Paged.js 0.3.5, LibreOffice Writer 7.4.1.2, Microsoft Excel 16.64, and HTML5 + CSS3 + Javascript ES6. While the layout templates aimed to achieve graphic interoperability, the pages of the book showcase distinct characteristics that highlight the unique possibilities and limitations of each software environment.
A Wandering Poem
“A Wandering Poem” is the printed collaboration between travelling poet Christian Marques and visual interpreter Angharad Hengyu Owen. An experimental literary project which embodies a bi-disciplinary re-exploration of an eight-month journey from Europe, across the Middle East, to Asia: Undertaken by the author himself, crossing seven countries, covering roughly 11’500 kilometers by land, unearthing one poem a day. The result is a bilingual (EN/PT) collection of emotional imprints, where each poetic free-verse works hand in hand with its unique visualisation on paper, offering a multi-layered and inner-directed reading experience, and ultimately a voyage of sorts through printed words.
Typographic posters and covers
Posters for polish theatres + covers of comics anthologies
Voyager
The font image is inspired by the signal of the Voyager spacecraft. His odyssey has been going on for 46 years, the signal was interrupted and resumed.
nicht gönnen können – Personal examination of the feeling of envy
As an adult, how can one deal with one’s own envy, confront others’ envy and communicate one’s needs without losing face. During my Master’s studies, I dealt with this feeling for several months. These thoughts became texts and illustrations. To complement this, I asked other people to anonymously write down moments when they were envious. If they wanted, they could also draw the emotion. Finally a collection of honest expressions and uncomfortable truths was formed, risoprinted and bound by hand.
Anne Gathmann: Statics of Resonance
On the occasion of the documenta 14, the church of St. Elisabeth showed a site specific installation by the artist Anne Gathmann The artwork is one large hanging bow, consisting of 4000 aluminum bars. The single bar with its distinctive shape and materiality becomes the key visual for the whole visual identity and is found on all the printed matters.
The book is accessable from two sides. The used paper features a coated and an uncoated side leading to a destinctive rhythm throughout the entire book: One spread coated (images) one spread uncoated (text), etc. The 90° rotated text runs through the book as one long ribbon, same with the images. Reference numbers link text to art pieces.
Hypertourist
»Hypertourist« is a design-philosophical, cultural and media-historical examination of travel.
Is there a difference between travelers and tourists? Who will design the travel of the future? And – do you need a suitcase for virtual travel? »Hypertourist« is a hypertextual, non-linear journey. It has neither order nor hierarchy, it will never be complete or finished. Each user can start at any point, arrange the intermediate stops themselves, skip or repeat them. Each person can shorten, change or add to the journey. As a hypertourist, everyone experiences their own, hyperindividual journey.
political and emotional dimensions of language
What are microaggressions and how do they feel? How does catcalling feel for affected individuals? Language can hurt, and that’s exactly what the illustrations show. The speech bubbles poke, squeeze, and choke the characters.But behold! The heroine, the gender star, takes action. Large megaphones protest for equality and structural change. In an optimistic vision of the future, the speech bubbles intermingle in a great diverse communication. New ideas develop from the conversations and a respectful and enriching exchange is outlined. In this particular collaboration, the theme and content of the illustrative work are supported by the endless page and the uncut continuity of the storyline.
The search for boredom – An investigation of the effects of digital change on creativity processes
This work is a theoretical exploration and a solution approach that does not demonise growing connectivity, but combines it with boredom, thereby building a bridge to creativity. To visualise the feeling of boredom, the text is printed on continuous paper by a dot matrix printer, which in itself is a very decelerating and boring activity. The book block was then split lengthwise down the middle so that the two halves can be turned parallel to each other, but don’t have to. Anchored in a handmade cover, the result is a book object that already looks like a dusty file cover from the outside and gives the audience a completely new reading experience.
TRUE_FAKE
The project stems from a series of reflections on the current social context, where it is and will be increasingly difficult to identify the dividing line between truth and fiction. Playing with this dichotomy and exploiting an old personal project born to experiment with unconventional symbols, I created these enigmatic words/icons composed of non-alphabetic symbols where the perception of the text becomes difficult and ambiguous and deceives current OCR technologies.
LOVE STRIPES / LOVE STRIKES
A typographic op art visual composition of the word LOVE. Experimenting with stripes and colour variations and the infinite possibilities to use colour or black and white
ALEODOR
This typographic experimental work is part of a branding project for a science museum and it was developed under the concept “Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.”
Aleodor Science Center is nurturing a new world of intelligence, by reducing the distance between what’s perceived as familiar and what seems strange in science. It’s bringing science closer to people’s interests, by developing a new way to discover it.
Aleodor Generator.
The symbol generator was created as a public tool for the Aleodor Science Center staff and the general audience as well. It generates graphic elements for all the brand communication materials and it makes possible an interactive dialogue.
Das gewöhnliche Design
Das gewöhnliche Design (The ordinary Design) is a hidden classic of German design history, something the vinyl era would have called a B-side hit. Newly edited by Frank Philippin and Florian Walzel, the facsimile returns the work to a wider audience.
As early as 1976 a group of students and young professors at the Faculty of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt questioned the way design objects were generally perceived, talked, and written about. Frustrated by the contrast of their self-perception as comprehensive designers and the prospect to have future careers as mere product stylists, they were looking for an alternative understanding of what constitutes good design. The group led by Friedrich Friedl and Gerd Ohlhauser started to collect ordinary things such as bottle openers, air pumps, or bus timetables. In an ad-hoc approach these objects, all from anonymous authors, where exhibited at the faculty under the title The ordinary Design. This show, which presented only “boring” everyday commodities, surprisingly received national attention and discussions flared up in the design press. In a comical manner the young designers had used means of traditional exhibition design like velvet covered pedestals, usually reserved for “high art.”
Together with the unspectacular exhibits this provoked or at least irritated the audience. At the same time the absence of any heroic, iconic, or aesthetically refined qualities among the things shown seemed to mock the whole design education. The approach was original enough so that the Rhenish Open-Air and Regional Museum Kommern bought the extraordinary ordinary exhibits, repeated the show, and printed an exhibition catalog. The catalog (104 pages) contained among others contributions by Bazon Brock, Peter von Kornatzki, and Adelhart Zippelius. The 110 black-and-white photographs provide a specific snapshot of what unspectacular product normality meant in the mid-70s.
Although this must be considered one of the earliest attempts to anchor the appreciation of mundane qualities in design discourse, the catalog became a rarity and is now available in only a few libraries. By publishing a facsimile, the editors make a design classic more than just available again; this renews the question: How much of design is owed to the ordinary? In a time that dedicates its cultural attention almost exclusively to novelty and exceptionalism, everyday utility is the silent opponent of “design.”
Das gewöhnliche Design
Publisher: Slanted Publishers
Editors: Frank Philippin, Florian Walzel
Authors: Friedrich Friedl, Gerd Ohlhauser
Design: Frank Philippin
Publishing Direction: Lars Harmsen, Julia Kahl
Format: 15.2 × 22 cm
Volume: 104 pages
Language: German
Workmanship: Softcover with Stitch-Binding, black offset-printing with spot color
ISBN: 978-3-948440-48-0
Price: €15.– (DE)
BUY
BERLIN
Publication made by the Faculty of Architecture of the Universidad del Desarrollo, corresponding to the experience of teachers traveling to the city of Berlin, Germany.
The book was articulated as an atlas of 3 major themes. Circular cuts were made as a guide when consulting the book. The abstract illustration, understanding Berlin as a large park, was a contribution to get away from the classical images of its architecture.
DESERT
Catalog of the exhibition of the photographic work of the artist Roderik Henderson at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), Chile.
In the search for new formats, the proposal was a series of collectible postcards as a book, in which each visitor received a different selection. The work of stereoscopic photography was enhanced with an envelope that allows viewing of the variable content, together with a strong visual identity of the name of the exhibition: Desierto
Design, Populism and Politics
Being populist and political in this polyphonic visual communication environment means trying to say everything for everyone at the same time. This poster does just that. It tries to convey its slogan under the name of “polyphony” in the midst of confusion. The title of the symposium is written in three fonts that have become popular, and all three are superimposed on top of each other. None of these three typefaces can fully reveal its own character; it gets lost in the others or hides behind them. When the three are together, they do not form a coherent unity, on the contrary, they create a crowd.
Digital Me (Or: What the World Wide Web Knows About Me)
Within three weeks, as much data as the internet has about me was requested and collected. The resulting archive served as the basis for further design, all images and codes used can be found in this archive. Several individual works were created. In these, the focus was on an experimental approach to designing and conveying the feeling of powerlessness. One of them is the following book. Dimensions: 14 × 15 × 36 cm, 8.288 pages.
The stones, onto which images from the archive have been mapped, serve here as fragments or even digital artifacts that support the content. These elements are augmented with augmented reality (AR).
ET–ET
ET-ET is a thesis project for a Master’s degree in Communication Design and Publishing at ISIA U in Urbino. The project involved the development of a private website prototype for a multiparametric interdisciplinary system for historical and visual analysis. The prototype was based on the cataloging standards of REICAT and ISBN, and implemented with typical aspects of historical and graphic analysis. The prototype filtered and analyzed a sample of 54 archival posters, providing automatic statistical elaboration of the study data. The book ET-ET presents the entire project, from its theoretical origins to the final prototype, showcasing the analysis results through texts and infographics.
Open Arts Forum Poetry 2019
Open Arts Forum: Poetry 2019 is an anthology of poems aggregated from the online platform Open Arts Forum for Poetry. This collection was sourced algorithmically, according to social engagement: it contains those poems published in 2019 that were the most-liked and most-commented. This subtracts part of the editor’s traditional role in forming a book and instead turns that responsibility over to, first, the crowdsourced opinion of the works and second, the algorithm responsible for assessing engagement. Each poem is published together with its number of likes and comments, allowing the reader to consider not only the poem but also also the context of its social impact.