Slanted goes Athens: Parachute

Im April besuchten wir in Athen den Schriftgestalter Panos Vassiliou in seinem Studio Parachute. Folgt unserer Reise auf dem Slanted Blog oder Facebook und freut euch auf das nächste Slanted Magazin über die Designszene Athens, welches ihr noch bis nächste Woche zum vergünstigten Preis vorbestellen könnt und welches dann in die ganze Welt verschickt wird. Das Magazin und die entstandenen Video-Interviews von unserer Tour werden bald veröffentlicht.

The first time I met Panos Vassiliou must have been back in 2007 during The International Conference on Typography & Visual Communication (ICTVC). Slanted was a rookie, nobody knew us. Panos did. Very much interested of what is happing outside of our own countries to sharpen perspectives, we hooked up easily. His company has developed an expertise in bringing Greek flavors to Latin typefaces and— beyond that—develop award winning type families of remarkable harmony and complexity. 

We also met at many other conferences or award events as Ed-Award in Stockholm (2008) or Granshan in Yerevan/Armenia (2012). Each time I was in Athens for holidays, hopping to one of the numerous islands, we took time to meet, talk about our businesses while enjoying a frappé or a bunch of beers. 

So it was a great pleasure to take the Slanted team to meet Panos and his wonderful Parachute-team in the his new studio close to Monastiraki metro station, facing the Acropolis. Located in Kifissia, a suburb of Athens for many years, Panos took the decision to move back into city-centre. Even though a lot of restaurants, bars and stores closed because of crisis, he decided to go the other way round and take a risk by investing a lot of money and turning a creepy hole into a clean and nicely designed office. After entering a giant turning door you are in the heart of a type design studio, with all its kind of items, prints, books, mags, and things we nerds love. Coming to Parachute feels like entering a typo-cocoon. 

Text by Lars Harmsen