Slanted Magazine #19 – Super Families

Page 1

Meine Eltern schenkten mir einen kurzen Vornamen. Hinzu kam ein Zweitname mit Bindestrich, den ich nie verwende. Von meinen beiden Patenonkeln bekam ich jeweils noch einen Namen hinzugefügt – einer davon sorgt hier im Süden der Republik für Heiterkeit. Hinrich ist gestorben. Arnulf lebt noch, habe ihn in meinem ganzen Leben aber nur 3–4 Mal gesehen. Mein Großvater, mitunter Gründer von Profamilia, hat 12 Kinder gezeugt, ein dreizehntes ist nach seinem Tod aufgetaucht. Auch er lebt nicht mehr. Als ich ihn nach einem seiner Ärztekongresse in einem Saarbrücker Hotel besuchte – er muss so um die 80 gewesen sein – saß er in einem zu groß gewordenen schwarzen Anzug auf dem Bett, die lackierten Schuhe ordentlich ausgezogen und neben den Nachttisch gestellt. Wir begrüßten uns. Ich fing an, von mir zu erzählen, fragte nach ihm. Nach einer Weile schaute er mich mit lächelnden Augen aus seinem durch den Krieg zernarbten Gesicht an (er muss ein sehr attraktiver Mann gewesen sein) und fragte verdutzt: »Wer bist denn du?« Er hat schlicht und ergreifend den Überblick verloren. So geht es uns auch, im Gewirr der Super-Schrift- familien. In vielen Ländern geht die Geburtenrate massiv zurück. Nur die Königshäuser (Dank an Ken Johnston /  Corbis) sind bedacht, für Nachwuchs zwecks Arterhalt zu sorgen. Schriftfamilien dagegen werden immer zahlreicher und vor allem umfangreicher. Ein Trend, dem wir etwas ambivalent gegenüberstehen, setzen doch viele Designer momentan eher auf Reduktion und gestalten ihre Erzeugnisse mit einem einzigen Schriftschnitt. Was soll das Ganze also? Braucht es diese feinen Nuancierungen?

Family Stories

My parents gave me a short first name. Then they added a second, hyphenated name, that I never use. From my Godfathers, I received another two names, which are comical in southern Germany. Hinrich is dead. Arnulf is still alive, but I only ever saw him 3 or 4 times in my entire life. My Grandfather, founder of Profamilia, had 12 children, and a 13th after his death. When I visited him in a Saarbrücken Hotel after one of his doctor conferences (he must have been about 80 years old), he sat on the bed in a black suit that was too large for him with his polished shoes neatly placed next to the nightstand. We greeted each other, I explain myself, and then asked him questions. After a while, he looked at me with smiling eyes and a puzzled face scarred by war (he must have been a very attractive man) and asked “Who are you?” He had simply lost track of himself. It goes with us too, in the jumble of mega type families. In many countries, there is a large drop in birth rates. Only the Royal Houses (thanks to Ken Johnston /  Corbis) are considerate of preserving their family lines. Type families, especially, are becoming more numerous and extensive. A trend we are somewhat ambivalent about, as current designers are equipping their products with a single font and even cuts. What is the point? Do we need these subtle nuances?

Clarendon

detnals

Breite halbfette Grotesk

ngised kifarg & eifargopyT

Akzidenz Grotesk

Neue Moderne Grotesk

Futura Helvetica

Avant Garde

Avenir

Bureau Grotesque

Lars Harmsen for Slanted editorial staff

91 repus seilimaf

Bell Gothic

Univers

Bell Centennial

Corporate ASE

slanted

Cheltenham

Typografie & grafik design

DIN

Demos Praxis

19 super families

Clearface Gill Sans

Syntax Frutiger

(o_O)

Trinité

Lucida Stone Proforma

Rotis Quay Sans

Scala

Officina

Legacy

Meta

Lexicon Quadraat

Lars Harmsen für die Slanted Redaktion

Thesis

Chalet

Mrs Eaves Miller

Rhode

Benton Arnhem

Bau Dispatch

Stainless

Titling Gothic Museo

Ludwig Adelle

Trilogy Fakt Mr Eaves Modern

www.slanted.de –– Typografie & grafik design

fall 2012 ——— ISSN 1867–6510 DE EUR 14 / CH CHF 25 / UK £ 16 / US $ 26 / Others EUR 16

Familiengeschichten

slanted 19 –– super families

Dax

Kievit Fedra

Sintesi

Heron

Tablet Gothic

Salvo

Seria

Fresco

Amplitude Unit

Nexus

Clan Greta Secca

Akko

Milo

Mr Eaves

Good

Abril Regal

Productus

Fago

Heimat

Pluto

Beowolf

Info

Freight

Sensibility

Sense

More

Tabac

Normal Centro

Projects p.3 Fonts p.25 Essays p.92 Interviews p.120 Index p.143 Reviews p.157 Imprint p.162


Projects p.3 Fonts p.25 Essays p.92 Interviews p.120 Index p.143 Reviews p.157 Imprint p.162


SlantedJoseph 19 Rodriguez Life on Both Sides of the Super Border Families

Rafael Sanchez holds a portrait of his parents who are back home in Cheran, Michoacan, Mexico. St. Louis. MO. 02.97.

Slanted 19 — Photography

Joseph Rodriguez, P. 143

3


A migrant tobacco shows a portrait of his family who were left back in Mexico. Many of these men will spend years travelling throughout the US going from farm to farm making money to send back to their families who they will not see for years at a time. Benson NC. 05.97.

Maria Elena Chavez with her grandaughter in sadness after the loss of three of her sons who died while trying to cross the border. Cheran, Michoacan, Mexico. 07.96.

Slanted 19 — Photography

Joseph Rodriguez, P 143

10


Joseph Rodriguez Life on Both Sides of the Border

Holding a photo of his sons, Benjamin, Jaime, Salvador Chavez who all three were killed while trying to cross the border into the US. Cheran, Michoacan, Mexico. 11.97. (At top)

One woman prays for her families return home. Women are left behind to take care of the children as many of their fathers, husbands, and brothers (solos) cross the border to go to work in the US. Many of the families do not see the

bildbeschriftung rechts unten

Slanted 19 — Photography

Joseph Rodriguez, P XXX

11

men in their family for years at a time. Nogales, Sonora, MX. 05.97. (At the bottom)


Nicola Lo Calzo The Other Family

Slanted 19 — Photography

Nicola Lo Calzo, P 143

12


Slanted 19 — Photography

Nicola Lo Calzo, P 143

13


Slanted 19 — Photography

Txema Salvans, P 143

14


Txema Salvans Camping

Slanted 19 — Photography

Txema Salvans, P 143

15


snavlaS amexT gnipmaC

Slanted 19 — Photography

Txema Salvans, P 143

16


Slanted 19 — Photography

Txema Salvans, P 143

17


Slanted 19 — Photography

Shelby Lee Adams, P 143

18


Shelby Lee Adams Salt & Truth

Slanted 19 — Photography

Shelby Lee Adams, P 143

19


Todd Danforth Portrait of a family

Slanted 19 — Photography

Todd Danforth, P 144

22


Slanted 19 — Photography

Todd Danforth, P 144

23


Royal Families

Slanted 19 — Photo Story

Corbis / U PI /  B ettmann, P 143

24


Coronation Day Portrait of Royal Family King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret pose as a family on the King’s coronation day. London, UK. 05.37. (Left page)

Slanted 19 — Fonts & Type Labels

Novo, P 144

25


el und Eliane Hugentobler

e Gebrüder Grimm

hael & Ralf Schumacher

ght said Fred

phanie und Deborah Stotz

he Simpsons

ena & Venus Williams

he Beckhams

ael & Sylvie van der Vaart

ackson Five King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden with Princess Victoria. Stockholm, SE. 1977. (At top)

Royal Family poses in salon at Sandringham House February 4th. Photo session was in connection with forthcoming tour of Australia and New Zealand. Princess Anne is seated with her mother, Queen Elizabeth II. while sport­

Slanted 19 — Photo Story / Fonts & Type Labels

26

Corbis / U PI / B ettmann, P 143 FS Joey Pro, P. 144

jacketed Prince Charles stands next to his father, Prince Philip. Sandringham, Norfolk, UK. 04.70. (Right page)


Slanted 19 — Photo Story

Corbis / U PI /  B ettmann, P 143

27


Max & Moritz

Ach herrje, herrjemine! Durch den Schornstein schwarz wie Raben

RitzeRatze Nicht allein in Schreiben, Lesen übt sich ein vernünftig Wesen

Fein geschroten und in Stücken

Lumpenpack

Äpfel, Birnen, Zwetschgen stehlen

Käferkrabbelei Bosheit ist kein Lebenszweck

NuN ist’s vorbei Mit der Übeltäterei

Slanted 19 — Photo Photography Story / Fonts & Type Labels

30

Corbis / U PI / B ettmann, P 143 FF DIN & FF DIN Round, P 145


Princess Margaret with her two children, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones at Windsor Castle, during recent filming of the joint ITV-BBC film documentary “The Royal Family.” Windsor, UK. 06.69. (Left page)

Luxembourg’s Royal Family The royal family of Luxembourg: Grand Duke Jean with his wife, Grand Duchess Josephine Charlotte and their children (l to r) Marie Astrid, Margaretha, Jean, and Henri, 1966. The Grand Duke came to the throne of Luxembourg’s consti-

Slanted 19 — Photo Story / Fonts & Type Labels

31

Corbis / U PI / B ettmann, P 143 Multi, P 146

tutional monarchy in 1964 upon the abdication of his mother, Grand Duchess Charlotte. Josephine Charlotte is the daughter of King Leopold III and Queen Astrid of Belgium. The eldest boy, Prince Henri, is the heir to the throne. 1966. (At top)


The Royal Tenenbaums a remarkable family gathering

111 Arthur Avenue He looks pretty good for a suicide

Did I hit the dog? Family isn’t a word. It’s a sentence

I’m going to kill myself tomorrow

Lindbergh PaLace hoteL These days I seem to think a lot

a failure as a father You’re my brother and I love you

Funeral of the late Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, former Shah of Iran. Cairo, Egypt. 07.80. (At top)

Prince Juan Carlos with wife Princess Sophia and children Princess Elena (left) Prince Felipe and Princess Christina in Zarzuela Palace. Madrid, ES. 1974. (Right page)

Slanted 19 — Photo Story / Fonts & Type Labels

34

Corbis / U PI /  B ettmann, P 143 FF Fago, P 145


Simpsons Familie Chaplin

BeeGees The Olsen Twins

€ 31.729 Bill Cosby Show

The Osbournes

Slanted 19 — Photo Story / Fonts & Type Labels

35

Corbis / U PI / B ettmann, P 143 Avenir Next, P 147


Arabian King and Clan get-together King Malek Saud of Saudi Arabia recently held a family party on the grounds of the Royal Palace following the last Mecca pilgrimage. He is shown in photo at left, with his youngest son by his side, and surrounded by bodyguards as they watched

the parade of Bedouin troops. The King’s sons gave an exhibition of sword dancing (Photo at right) during the family get-together. Mecca, SA. 12.54. (At top)

Royal Family of Thailand. The royal family of Thailand poses for a portrait before King Bhumipol’s private photographer. Queen Sirikit holds the newborn prince who is direct heir to the throne, while the king holds Princess Ubolratana. The king was so proud of

Slanted 19 — Fonts & Type Labels / Photo Story

44

Secca, P 149 Corbis / U PI /  B ettmann, P 143

his son that he took his own first pictures of the boy. This time, he changed from photographer to just plain father. Bangkok, TH. 09.52. (Right page)


Grandma Alexander the Great [Alexander de Groot] (Greek Script expansion) Charles (Karl) the Great [Karel de Groot] (Carolingian minuscule) Czar Peter 1. the Great [Peter de Groot] (Cyrillic script reform)

Daughter & Son, Brother & Sister

Карађорђевићи Ó Conchubhair Donn

Saxe-Cobourg ♥ gotha

Laborde de Monpezat

Mothers&Fathers 17 Weights • 9 Widths • 5864 glyphs

BABYBOOM

Slanted 19 — Photo Story / Fonts & Type Labels

45

Corbis / U PI / B ettmann, P 143 MF Bespoke, P 150 Thesis, P 150 Univers Next, P 147 Univers, P 147


THE HUXTABLES a family of doctors and lawyers

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY GRADUATE Everybody knows that the stork brings the baby

CLAIRE & HEATHCLIFF MALCOLM JAMAL AKA THEODORE ALOYSIUS This is the best elevator music I’ve ever heard

saxophone theme

BREAKING TRADITIONAL RACIAL STEREOTYPES AFRICAN AMERICAN GYNECOLOGIST

national broadcasting company FAT ALBERT & THE COSBY KIDS

Slanted 19 — Photo Story / Fonts & Type Labels

48

Corbis / U PI / B ettmann, P 143 FF Dax, P 145


Der Prince von Bel-Air Pluto Condensed MediuM italiC

The Beach Boys Pluto sans extralight

Muppets Pluto heavy

Schneeweisschen und Rosenrot Pluto sans Condensed italiC

The Olsen Twins Pluto sans thin italiC

Die Amigos Pluto Bold

101 Dalmatiner Pluto regular

She’s the one ... Britain’s Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer pose for photographers outside Buckingham Palace February 24th after the official announcement of their engagement. Lady Diana, 19, has been regarded as one of the world’s most eligible

bachelors. The wedding is to be in the summer – probably in Late July. London, UK. 02.81. (Left page)

Slanted 19 — Fonts & Type Labels

Pluto, P 147

49


Michael, Former King of Romania The former King of Romania, Michael, with his family in exile at Ayot House. Hertfordshire, UK. 04.55. (Right page)

Slanted 19 — Fonts & Type Labels

Henriette, P 152

56


Slanted 19 — Photo Story

Corbis / U PI /  B ettmann, P 143

57


Jack Radcliffe Alison

Alison Sleeping Cape Cod 1977

Slanted 19 — Photography

Jack Radcliffe, P 152

58


Alison Ballerina 1982

Alison at Stans Street 1987

Alison in Ocean City 1987

Alison at Penn Station 1988

Alison in New Hampshire 1989

Alison Driving Lessons 1990

Slanted 19 — Photography

Jack Radcliffe, P 152

59


TypoLyrics

Slanted 19 — TypoLyrics

64


Song: We are Family Band: The Corrs Font: Matryoshka Font Design: Peter Brugger, 2009 Label: Volcano Type

Slanted 19 — TypoLyrics

Hoax, P 152

65


Fontnames Illustrated

Family Business Nach den Fräuleins von Spring (Slanted Magazin #12) war klar, dass zum Thema Superfamilies diesmal eine weitere Illustratorengruppe vorgestellt werden sollte. Doch wer ist die beste Zeichner-Familie im deutschsprachigen Raum? Findet man sie in Berlin, Hamburg oder München? Nein! Denn fernab dieser Metropolen haben Rita Fürstenau, Lisa Röper und Michael Meier im Jahr 2007 in der Documenta-Stadt Kassel ihren eigenen Verlag gegründet. Im Umfeld der Kunsthochschule und ihrem engagierten Illustrationsprofessor Hendrik Dorgathen entstanden, hat sich das Kleinstunternehmen prächtig entwickelt. Mittlerweile gilt Rotopol als eine der wichtigsten Adressen, wenn man nach hochwertigen und eigenständigen Illustrationen und Comics Ausschau hält. Die stetig wachsende Schar Gleichgesinnter veröffentlicht nicht nur eigene Editionen, sondern illustriert u.a. für die New York Times. Ihren Arbeiten fehlt dabei stets die inhaltliche und gestalterische Beliebigkeit, die noch immer allzu viele Arbeiten – insbesondere aus den »achsocoolen« Hochburgen – auszeichnet. Das machen allein die Arbeiten deutlich, die sie für diese Ausgabe der Fontnames Illustrated angefertigt haben. Respekt! Raban Ruddigkeit Slanted 19 — Fontnames Illustrated

Raban Ruddigkeit, P 152

68


Fontname: Greta Font Design: Peter Biľak, Nikola Djurek, 2007-2008 Label: Typotheque

Slanted 19 — Fontnames Illustrated

Rita Fürstenau, P 152

69


Fontname: Pluto Font Design: Hannes von DĂśhren, 2011, 2012 Label: HVD Fonts

Slanted 19 — Fontnames Illustrated

Michael Meier, P 153

70


Fontname: Regal Pro Font Design: Panos Vassiliou, 2010-2012 Label: Parachute

Slanted 19 — Fontnames Illustrated

Thomas Wellmann, P 153

71


Fontname: Trilogy Font Design: Jeremy Tankard, 2009 Label: Jeremy Tankard Typography Ltd

Slanted 19 — Fontnames Illustrated

Isabel Seliger, P 153

74


Daniel Schumann Princesses and Football Stars

Slanted 19 — Photography

Daniel Schumann, P 153

75


Slanted 19 — Photography

Song Chao, P 153

76


Song Chao Miner’s Families

Slanted 19 — Photography

Song Chao, P 153

77


Slanted 19 — Photography

Song Chao, P 153

80


Şirin Şimşek Caches

Slanted 19 — Photography

81 81

Şirin Şimşek, P 153 Song Chao, P 153


Roger Hagmann A Portrait of Community Life at Castle Tonndorf

Slanted 19 — Photography

Roger Hagmann, P 154

82


Slanted 19 — Photography

Roger Hagmann, P 154

83


Matthew Avignone Stranger Than Family

After Haircut, 2011 Aldi Mom, 2010 Jami in Bedroom, 2011

Dad and the Boys, 2010 Nick After Shower, 2010 Grandpa Marios Funeral, 2011

Slanted 19 — Photography

Matthew Avignone, P 154

84


YOU EI THER K NOW CO LOUR OR YOU DON’T

www.hks-farben.de


Essays & Reports, Interviews, Index, Reviews and Imprint

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Ian Lynam, p 154

92


Japanese Graphic Design: Not In Production

IAN LYNAM

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Ian Lynam, p 154

93


A look at the world of graphic design as focused through the lens of Japan

2011 saw the opening of Graphic Design: Now in Production, a massive, sprawling exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the U.S., with the exhibition set to later travel to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina. Accompanying the exhibition is the release of an exhibition catalog with the same title. Both the exhibition and the catalog were curated by Andrew Blauvelt of the Walker Art Center and Ellen Lupton of the Cooper-Hewitt, with Ian Albinson of artofthetitle.com, Jeremy Leslie of magCulture. com and Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio of BrandNew / Under Consideration in additional curatorial roles. The catalog‘s introduction reads that the book is “Gently inspired by The Last Whole Earth Catalog,” mixing “short chunks of text with images from contemporary practice, anchored by a series of longer essays.” The introduction speaks about the pitfalls of attempting to shore up a recent history, in particular the past decade, of graphic design as a sphere of activity and production, and in this respect, the catalog falls far short of its attempt at documenting graphic design on a truly global scale. Methodologically, putting together a para­graph about assorted practices, projects, methodologies and visual trends is a fairly easy task. As a practicing graphic designer, I was aware of an easy ninety percent of the projects covered within the book. Sure, it takes time to

write 500 short paragraphs about 500 subjects, but all within are easy targets. What is truly lacking in the book and exhibition is a sense of scope: Graphic Design: Now in Production represents a North American /  Western European worldview toward graphic design that eschews the labors of much of the world. Notably absent is much mention of recent graphic design activity in Africa, Asia and the South Pacific. With short-format writing the dominant trend at the present moment, solid strategic thinking should be present in initiatives to represent any holistic approach to an area of cultural production. Sure, the writing can be short and pithy, but it should be far-reaching in the material covered. If observed on a macro-level certain countries get the short end of the stick. Korea – for one – is wholly unrepresented in the catalog. Ahn Sang-Soo1, the most influential graphic designer in that country whose work has revolutionized and energized graphic design as an area of intensified interest, receives no mention. Younger, well-known Korean graphic designers whom have studied abroad such as Sulki and Min Choi also receive no mention, despite helping to define a very defined and widelypublished aesthetic and methodological approach2. Less well-know, but equally influential and highly participatory projects such as Ondol / A Few Warm Stones3 are also ignored. In essence, the message being sent is, “Thanks, Korea. We’ll gladly take your study abroad students, but we’ll be damned if we’ll acknowledge any contributions from your country.” Also lacking are contributions from so many other countries – the effect of easily available software and computing on Ethiopian and Eritrean music packaging, the Thai signage landscape, branding in Singapore and innumerable others. New Zealand gets a random single hit through the work of David Bennewith’s monograph on Joseph Churchward, but nowhere is Kris Sowersby, New Zealand’s leading type designer mentioned. Japan, the country in which I reside, gets a mention in the catalog, though one that is fleeting and not wholly correct. The activity of the Morisawa Corporation gets a brief writeup by curator Andrew Blauveldt: Morisawa The Japanese language employs three different language systems: kanji, hiragana and katakana, representing thousands of characters. This reality, coupled with the complex nature of character strokes, makes font design for the Japanese language especially difficult and demanding. Japan’s leading maker of fonts is Morisawa, a company whose roots reach back to 1924. Morisawa typically spends up to four years to meticulously render its typefaces, which can be found throughout the country in use on everything from signs to screens. A more accurate description is that the Japanese visual language is comprised of a number of other systems, as well – including Latin characters and analphabetic symbols.4 To be ignored is one matter, but for a whole country‘s activity to be given a glossed-over, under-informed conflation through the prism

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Ian Lynam, p 154

94


of a sole company / easy target is just as insulting. Sure, Morisawa are the biggest type foundry /  distributor in Japan, but they are by no means the best. The past decade has seen Morisawa’s primary advance be a push for annual font licensing through their Morisawa Passport subscription program, not the development of excellent typefaces. Many smaller type foundries have popped up or refined their game, offering far more formally thorough typefaces that render better at smaller sizes than Morisawa’s offerings. The point: in essence, an attempt at an easy summation and a lack of sophisticated understanding is provided in lieu of in-depth cultural analysis. More­over, if the Morisawa entry was not included, this whole essay most likely would have never come into being. Morisawa is an odd choice as the representative of design activity in Japan. Known quantities /  old guard such as Kenya Hara and his work for Muji, Groovisions, Hideki Nakajima, and Kyohei Sugiura are not mentioned. Newer Japanese practitioners whose work is widely respected and whom have helped shape global aesthetics over the past decade such as W+K Tokyo Lab (in the realm of formally rich, detail-oriented motion graphics), Dainippon Type Organization (operating at the intersection of concept and modular typography/lettering) and Yugo Nakamura’s THA (trailblazing web-based aesthetics and practices5) also go unmentioned. In their stead, the reader is lobbed an easy, sloppy catch – akin to summing up American graphic design as summarized by Adobe, or British graphic design as being exemplified by Monotype Imagine Ltd. Aside from purely typographic and orthographic concerns, Graphic Design: Now in Production neatly mirrors the lack of regard and research exhibited by graphic design-oriented writers and researchers toward areas other than Western Europe and North America since the establish­ment of a body of writing about graphic design as a practice.6 Graphic design is not merely an America / Euro-centric First World pursuit and the cultures and histories surrounding the development of graphic design elsewhere are worthy of pursuit. A potentially decent analogue lies within the early career of the Los Angeles punk band Bad Religion: do not stray from what is a quantified and accepted ‘standard.’ After forming in 1979, the band released two albums- their eponymous first LP and the follow up, How Could Hell Be Any Worse? This was followed by the synthesizer and New Wave-driven Into The Unknown, an album that befuddled / enraged fans and new listeners just shrugged at, as adventurous and progressive an album as it was for a punk band attempting to evolve. Other cultures explore graphic design through histories that are very much innately their own, while simultaneously being influenced by what we are more familiar with. Bad Religion did this in 1983, to the resultant anger of their fans, then quickly recorded a far more ‘palatable’ EP titled Return to the Known7 that returned to the retrograde sonic tropes of poppy punk that we are more familiar with.

It is more exciting when we leave the safe comforts of the easily found and head to other locales to explore and learn, and even more so, to report on our findings – what will hold one’s interest longer, any Green Day song or an Ethiopian negus war chant transcribed to saxophone by Getachew Mekuria? The Ramones’ blueprint of “Beat On the Brat” or a polyrhythmic, hypnotic engagement with history distilled through a contemporary instrument? Sure, one may “rock” more in terms of immediate impact, but what about leaving a lasting impression and inviting the listener to step outside of his or her com­fort zone? There is the safe, and moreover, there is the easy. What comprises “the known” in America and Western Europe is less-established elsewhere – for this, Graphic Design: Now In Production is wildly helpful or designers abroad to analyze and understand the bodies of work cataloged within. Despite this, the range of work covered is not nearly wide-reaching enough. As usual, Experimental Jetset get a disproportionate amount of coverage8 and fills it with a cocky, one-trick pony, having distilled a “punk rock” reaction to design practice and history and then slathering it with an easy quote from a dead theorist9. Åbäke get their usual turn, as well – their poor form and ‘exploratory’ practice backed up with the somehow still ‘cool’ parasite magazine hogging up a handful of pages. I do not disagree that Experimental Jetset and Åbäke should be mentioned and get their fair due – I mean, where would we be in this contemporary age overwrought with Helvetica without EJ?10 – but are they so important as to trot out visual and semantic equivalents of a wet fart as ‘premium’ content for this catalog and have it go unmentioned? And wouldn’t the Åbäke parasite magazine reduced to a photo with a blurb jutting from the gutter of one page be enough? Then, there are the glaring omissions – where is the wild and exciting form-making of Universal Everything / Matt Pyke? Where are Craig Mod’s lovely paeans about electronic publishing and design? Where are Nieves and the current trend of pithy chapbooks masquerading as zines? Where is the @font-face / webfont revolution? Where are Northern Mexico’s amazing DJ logos? I mean, the churchburning black metal cult get their moment, but what about the blissed-out folks surrounded by terror, yet exercising none themselves? And why the fuck is the Linux logo in there? No graphic designer gives a shiiiiiit about that fucking thing. In short, the state of graphic design is on fire, but everyone’s too busy Tweeting and “starting up”11 and mimicking Archis layouts to get down to business. It is with this disregard for acknowledgement and discontent with the cultural viewpoint expressed in Graphic Design: Now in Production that Japanese Graphic Design: Not in Production has been put together. Gently inspired by a myopic worldview of graphic design activity, and mimicking the form and format of Graphic Design: Now in Production, what follows is an overview of contemporary Japanese graphic design practices in a mix of short-format texts accompanying images, bolstered by longer essays. The focus of this feature is equally myopic, showing only a number of important projects and practices from within Japan that have surfaced in the past decade. It is my hope that it will act as a localized supplement to the greater understanding of design activity. Japanese Graphic Design: Not in Production focuses on the activities of highly active designers, type foundries and Japanese design publications from the past ten years. The goal of this section is to help promote cognizance of graphic design activity in Japan – acknowledgement of such activity is often hindered by the linguistic and social differences between Japan and the rest of the world, yet this gap is lessening. The activity of publications like Idea and +81; Japan-based international designers like Helmut Schmid, AQ, and Craig Mod; and internationally-minded Japanese graphic designers like Kenya Hara have helped to increase the communication and awareness of Japanese graphic design as a sector of culture and cultural production. It is my hope that this special feature in Slanted helps serve the same purpose. It is by no means a holistic, comprehensive collation of all important graphic design activity in contemporary Japan, and pointedly veers in the direction of smaller, more critically-oriented practices and publications.12 This is my personal bias, but hell, I wrote it. Because a culture has a different language and a divergent history does not mean that said culture is off-limits. This should be a challenge to individuals examining graphic design as documentarians – the world is larger than navel-gazing information graphics analyzing one’s personal consumption habits13, as popular as that may be. Other languages and cultures are intensely more interesting in the long run. In particular, Japan‘s history in regards to graphic design has been little analyzed both in the historic and contemporary schemes in the English language14. It is worth straying from the comfort­able and easily understood to cast a wider net: observing and analyzing graphic design from a wider perspective. It is also worth questioning what is presented in officious formats: because something is plated does not make it food. In the case of Graphic Design: Now in Production, this analogy may not be wholly apt, but I, for one, left the dinner table still feeling hungry. ssahn.com Notably, that of the Werkplaats Typogrpahie. — sulki-min.com 3 Ondol is a student research project led by Chris Ro that explores Korean graphic design and typographic history in journal form also go unnoticed. Despite having only two volumes published to date, Ondol has greatly added to the discourse and body of Korean graphic design literature, education and understanding. — betterdays.kr 4 The following is excerpted from Japanese Typography Part One: Building Blocks, published in Slanted Magazine #11: 1

The core components of the Japanese language:

2

kanji

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Ian Lynam, p 154

95

This is the family of Chinese logographic characters im­ ported to Japan which are utilized to write nouns and the bases of verbs and adjectives. Kanji are morphograms – visual symbols which represent words rather than sounds. They can be a bit confusing, however, in that the forms of Chinese calligraphy were borrowed and used to represent natively Japanese concepts and subjects. Some kanji are fairly direct pictograms, while others represent ideas. Kanji include huge numbers of compound characters, as well. Some kanji can have up to ten different readings (base meanings / morphemes).


1 W+K Tokyo Lab

1 W+K Tokyo Lab

1 W+K Tokyo Lab

1 W+K Tokyo Lab

2 Utrecht

3 Shirai Design Studio

3 Shirai Design Studio

3 Shirai Design Studio

4 Black Bath

5 AQ

5 AQ

5 AQ

5 AQ

6 Art Space Tokyo

6 Art Space Tokyo

6 Art Space Tokyo

6 Art Space Tokyo

7 Akiyama Shin

7 Akiyama Shin

7 Akiyama Shin

7 Akiyama Shin

7 Akiyama Shin

7 Akiyama Shin

8 Yokoyama Yuichi

8 Yokoyama Yuichi

8 Yokoyama Yuichi

9 Axis type family

10 Typecache.com

10 Typecache.com

11 Ryochi Tsunekawa

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Ian Lynam, p 154

98


12 Oubunshotai & Oubunshotai 2

12 Oubunshotai & Oubunshotai 2

13 THA

13 THA

14 Booklet Press

14 Booklet Press

14 Booklet Press

15 Kunihiko Okano

15 Kunihiko Okano

16 Graphic Passport

16 Graphic Passport

17 Graniph

18 so+ba

18 so+ba

18 so+ba

18 so+ba

18 so+ba

19 CIA

21 Bunpei Yorifuji

22 Harata HeQuiti

23 Daijiro Ohara

23 Daijiro Ohara

23 Daijiro Ohara

23 Daijiro Ohara

23 Daijiro Ohara

23 Daijiro Ohara

24 Gakiya Isamu

25 Tokyo Art Book Fair

20 Dainippon Type Organization

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Ian Lynam, p 154

99

21 Bunpei Yorifuji


see Japan protect its strengths and maximize its poten­tial. We feel sorry for a conception of love hollowed out to command unambiguous and un­con­ditional acceptance of the status quo. We cer­­tainly appreciate specific strengths of the Japanese system: excellent transportation, healthy food, public civility, product diversity, and visual proficiency. The question is whether these system outputs fully justify the less desirable elements running behind the scenes – monopoly, duopoly, oligopoly, organized crime, statism, patriarchy, feudalism, or worse. More importantly, are these dark forces integral to producing desired out­puts or can they be cleanly removed like vestigial organs? In the past, we may have been excessively militant about eradicating the fantastical myths that seem to overpower the realities of the Japanese nation. As Japan blossoms in the international garden, a few cling to Néo-Orientalisme, a Romantic ideology updating the old lust towards submissive geisha and beautiful ukiyo-e with an obsession for Japan’s post-1980s cultural and technological accomplishments. Japan certainly provides the world with alternate social, economic, and polit­ ical systems for serious consideration, but we should not make the mistake of believing that we have discovered a utopian parallel to our own society. If we really want to advocate certain policy triumphs in Japan for global betterment, we must fully understand the sometimes painful realities behind the working order. So we will continue to harpoon fictional whales in the Neo-Orientalist pod, but we shall not charge the fields like a grand cavalry of humorless party-poopers. We must admit: the fantasy of Japan is often lovely in its own right. Man cannot live on data alone. By all means, we should celebrate the collective fantasy itself as exquisitelyrendered fantasy. Yes, we will continue to fight the nefarious use of fiction as a deceptive political tactic or cynical tool for economic gain, but we should hardly shun all poetic tributes to Japan in a narrow search for prose. We have taken the name Néojaponisme as a convenient rubric for our pursuits. This is not a revival of that specific Japonisme visual design style of the 19th century (now often construed as “Neo-Japanesque”), but we do indeed identify ourselves as impudent inheritors of the origi­ nal Japonisme spirit. We too are non-Japanese inspired by Japanese culture, and we too hope to advocate Japanese products and creative culture that may have been devalued or ignored in Japan. But let us correct the fundamental philosophy of the previous movement in two areas: First, we expand the idea of Japonistic Japanese inspiration beyond pure visual aesthetics to a broader appreciation of myriad creative fields. Second, we remove any Orientalisme or selfserving fantasies at the base of appreciation. We know thee not, Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum: fall to thy prayers! VII. We Want! We Don’t Want! Starting afresh, we authors, editors, and supporters at Néojaponisme adopt a new stride to move forward and avoid the tarpits of previous sojourns.

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Ian Lynam, p 154

106

1. We no longer want to hear the echoes of our own voices bouncing off the cocoon walls! We invite a host of authors and speakers, artists and thinkers, professors and students, enemies, compatriots, dissidents, and traitors to speak their mind in the virtual pages of our humble journal. 2. We shall bring the words and thoughts of the Japanese public sphere into the current lingua franca and shall aim to eventually bring our English thoughts into Japanese! Why rely on hearsay when you can hear what is actually being said? 3. We refuse to be buried within the steel of a fixed structure! Vaporize the essay! Rip the blog in half! Drown the podcast! Frisk the fisk! Long live the essay! Celebrate diversity and inconsistency! Format innovation should walk hand-in-hand with content innovation! 4. We shall not drown in a sea of text! Welcome, visuals. Hello, music. How are you doing today, video footage? Salut, holographic meta-tags. 5. We refuse to abandon the Net to hollow carbohydrates! Down with link collections! We must provide an alternative to the ever-growing number of Boing-Boingian cultural capsules masquerading as substantive intellectual sustenance! Enough pointing already, Netizens! Such a constant flow of sugary meme morsels will ruin your appetite. Who will sit down and read an essay when the Internet Gods provide hundreds of fragments and gimmicks in its place? We denounce this addiction to sweets and promise to provide protein to the hungry masses. Do children dream of being linkers or linkees? 6. We shall build up and promote the Future to fill the wreckage of our creative destruction in the Present! Nobody wants to hear our whining! If we tear up a poisonous oak, we must plant a fair elm in its place. For every discussion on the prob­lems swimming in our pool, we must relay a glimmer of hope twinkling on the horizon. 7. We shall continue to fight the intrusion of business logics on our creative expressions! Eradi­ cate tie-up advertorial by 2008! Stop creating hierarchies of cultural importance through adver­ tising outlays! The only way to take pop cul­ture seriously is to take pop culture apart, and sometimes dismantling does not please the dismantled. 8. We reject all forms of celebrity, idolization, and implicit social hierarchies! Fame is a symptom we confuse for the ailment. Like charisma, celebrity is not something possessed, but describes the aggregate response of others towards a specific individual. The social re­lations behind the phenomenon of celebrity are wholly negative: creating barriers and ranks between the like-minded. 9. We shall speak to a broader audience than this old ghetto! We are transmitting live from Tokyo, Japan to the rest of the globe! Slouching in our tender corner of the world, once again we point our queries to the stars! We hope you will be listening when fragments of answers ricochet off the atmosphere and return to our little transceiver. W. David MARX, August 27, 2007. — neojaponisme.com


Stefan Claudius

Jenseits der Interpolation – Entwurf einer Schriftsippe mit Superpolator

Modern Scotch Slab Italienne Master

Kontrast

Kontrastreich Regular

Gewicht

Kontrastarm Regular

Interpolation

Extrapolation

Kontrastarm Bold

Schematische Darstellung und Bildschirmfoto des Designspaces in Superpolator.

Stefan Claudius ist Schriftgestalter aus Essen. Aktuell arbeitet er an einer Schriftfamilie, die als Ausgangsbasis zunächst vier Stile haben soll: Slab, Scotch, Modern und Italienne. In seinem Artikel lässt er einen Schulterblick zu und formuliert seine Überlegungen zur Interund Extrapolation in Superpolator. Work in progress. Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Stefan Claudius, P 149

107


Julia Sturm

On typographic superfamilies – investigating the history, nature and rationale of extended typeface families

In her final Master Project at EINA Escola de Disseny i Art Barcelona UAB Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Julia Sturm attends to superfamilies. This is an excerpt from her thesis. 2.1 “Family” and “superfamily” In order to approach the phenomenon super family one has to start at the very beginning with investigating the term and nature of typographic families themselves. The terminology “family” is not to be confused nor compared to the equivalent of the biological world. In the typographic world “family” as we know it today is a rather artificial label we have imposed upon members which would naturally not form a family themselves. As a matter of fact Robert Bringhurst refers to families as unions and alliances1 when talking about the sociology of typefaces. Uppercase and lowercase letters started their existence under complete different circumstances over 1,000 years in history apart. Yet we have allied them and accustomed ourselves to that practice over time so strongly that their co-appearance has been almost completely implanted in our tradition as being one system while in truth it is actually the first typographic “coalition” – later being joined by small caps and Arabic numerics. Italics have a different origin on their own and it was not until the 16th century that they were designed in order to associate to the Roman and thus joined the union. This union (roman, italic and also titling figures) found the common standard of our days’ understanding of a text family – which, as shown, was in fact already a first extension of the system. “Among recent text faces, two basic family structures are now common. The simplified model consists only of roman, italic and titling figures, in a range of weights (...). The more elaborate family structure includes small caps and text figures (...)”2 Regarding the fact that these traits and elements scale the benchmark of a standard type family today, anything beyond could principally be considered an extension of the typeface family – or an “extended family.” However, form and function of the extension can be manifested in many different directions and to highly varying degrees. The term leaves a lot of space of interpretation and just as much of a scale concerning the degree of the extension. Some possibilities of signifying “super” are manifested in the extended number of glyphs (adding special characters such as ligatures or reaching beyond the Latin alphabet system) or they are manifested in the extended number of weights, widths or even in different constitutive variations such as a serif and a sans serif version. The Type Director’s Club New York, for example, categorizes into families or superfamilies according to the numbers of variations featured. Thus, up to eight styles is considered a typeface family while beyond eight styles it is regarded a type system or a superfamily1.

The line, however, should not be drawn this radically. The following chapters will show that in truth categorization is not this countable and simple. Various examples will be introduced – versatile both in nature and size. 2.2 “System” and “seriality” As varying the parameters and degrees might be and as imposed the family system from a historical point of view appears to be, through all results a certain coherence seems, nevertheless, necessary in order to fulfil the criteria of belonging to the same group. Otherwise it must not be considered more than an arbitrary collection. This makes the extension of a font always an extension in relation which poses the question if and how typographic systems occur. The Oxford Dictionary defines a system as a “regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole,” and a “set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network; a complex whole.”2 The alphabet itself, for example, is a system (a writing system). A system requires of its elements a certain seriality, a pattern in appearance and behavior, in order to be enclosed in the same system and separated from others. Concerning the Latin alphabet (and all phonetic alphabets) a seriality in behavior can be seen in the act of writing and reading: An ‘a’ always evokes the sound and meaning of an ‘a.’ A pattern of appearance becomes important for typeface design and therefore for the discussion about superfamilies. Of course, an ‘a’ always has to look (more or less) like an ‘a’ in order to be identified as that specific element of the typographic system (and to evoke the related be­havior). However, the seriality, must go beyond the pure shape. In typeface design visual regularity is not only a question of form but much more of formality: “(...) Type design has a ‘serial’ nature by itself. Letterforms one by one have to match the desirable uniformity inside the alphabet. (...) The resulting total spirit we call ›consistency‹ constitutes one of the basic parameters to judge the quality of a typeface.”3 This uniformity can appear in different manners (which is only logical having talked about the diversity among superfamilies). On the one hand, for example, there is an underlying system of relation, a formal seri­ality. A foundational pattern which causes seriality on a constitutive base. Thus, the concept is constant, however, the modification of parameters can result in quite different aesthetical outcome. In typography,

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Julia Sturm, P 154

110


one could talk for example of the idea of a “skeleton” or a “master” and its dependencies. This formal seriality could be endless as in, for example, adding a theoretically indefinite number of weights to a font, or it could almost be “binary”. Serif and non-serif versions can be such examples of definite seriality. There is a serif to the letter, or there is not, 1 or 0 (although for the good of the entire truth it is to say that this radical system excludes “mix” or “slab-serif ” versions or other morphological possibilities that might arise in the future). Besides formal seriality, there is also the form of perceived seriality which would result in aesthetical coherence. The modification of the foundation is for the sake of the final concordance of all characters. In typographic context, one form of perceived seriality is optical adjustments of letterforms that are logically uniform, however, optically irreg­ ular. Adding decorative details is a further example: The elements are of no constitutive matter but support the aesthetical overall »personality« of a typeface. Hence, for the first concept (formal seriality) the initial coherence is the foundation, while as for the latter (perceived seriality) the final coherence is. Both are, however, versions of serial systems and both occur applied to typography – not seldom in combination. Following the assumption that a system is expandable the connected seriality must be – consequentially –, too. It is the task of the designer to detect the seriality, separate it (as kind of a style and construction pattern) and apply it throughout all further branches of the family. “Then the idea of ‘series’ would be an inherent aspect, regardless of the direction in which the series can be extended: weights, serifed, un-serifed or mix versions, condensed or expanded, ornaments, math signs, phonetic or musical notation systems, alternatives characters, swashes and ligatures, in sum: series extended through all kinds of qualities of typeforms.”4 For a good typographic font the uniformity must be existent and “feelable” throughout all the letters; for a typographic family it must ad­ ditionally be feelable throughout all the styles; for a typographic super family throughout all families and so on. However, having talked about formal and perceived seriality, it seems only logical that there is also the possibility of inhering solely a formal, underlying seriality. In typographic judgement, the family will thus ap­pear badly designed or inconsistent. However, in terms of logic it still qualifies for the term family system or superfamily since it holds the same constructed base. While formal seriality can be “proofed” and understood by reconstructing the elements, perceived seriality is to a great extend subject to personal judgment and maybe even taste. Typographic family resemblance might be visible to some while arguable to others. 3. Type as a system – systems of type In the original version of this work, numerous examples of extended families, systems and concepts of extensions are subject of discussion in this chapter. However, for this version only a handful examples are listed and presented in all brevity in order to illustrate the theories mentioned above. A first attempt to link fonts systematically was the parameter of optical size, followed by first versions of varying widths (Clarendon) and weights (Cheltenham). However, it was not until Adrian Frutiger started to create his Univers in the 1950s that, first, the idea of a superfamilies truly prospered and that, second, there clearly had to be a systematic linking amongst its mem­bers. The family was based on a grid system of even vertical and horizontal units, arranged along the crossing of the x- and y-axis and expandable in relation into both directions. He, therefore, was first to consciously and systematically perceive and produce type families as a “continuous space defined by two axes; width and weight.”5 Impressively so however is, as scientific and systematic the concept seems in the aftermath, Frutiger had initiated the system out of optical judgment and only later imposed explaining rules upon it. “This ‘accordion’ wasn’t mathematical, I determined the stroke widths of the single weights and also the letter widths by feel.”6 Thus, Frutiger combined both forms of seriality (formal and perceived seriality) to a yet unseen and most successful synthesis. Compared to the idea of extending families in size, weight and width, the idea of creating corresponding serif and sans serif typefaces (the most common­ly assumed version of superfamilies today) is, as a matter of fact, comparatively new. It is not quite clear on who first introduced this concept – and if it was, the criteria are to be argued about. It is, however, gener­ally agreed upon that the Dutch type designer Jan van Krimpen made one of the first attempts – if not the first at that time then undoubtedly one of the most elaborative attempts – to constitutively connect several typefaces to one family. He began his work by creating the roman alphabet Romulus in 1932 and a Sloped Roman which were soon followed by a

Semibold and Semibold Condensed, as well as a Script type (Cancelleresca Bastarda), a Greek version and finally different versions in weight and width of Romulus Sans (however, Romulus Sans Semibold Condensed was never officially released). Throughout the entire process of creating the Romulus family van Krimpen tried to relate back to the Romulus Roman as closely as possible. When talking about the bold ver­sions, van Krimpen even mentions a “rigid system of boldening stems and hairlines.”7 Yet, it is rather striking and the more interesting how van Krimpen later on in his reflective book continuously annotates that more freedom or even independence would have let to a, though less systematic, more satisfying result. A contemporary approach to the idea of systems in typography is KalliCulator, the 2006 The Hague Type & Media graduation project of Frederik Berlaen. He developed a tool to create typefaces based on the writing theories of Gerrit Noordzij and the concept of Donald E. Knuth’s Metafont. Much like Knuth’s Metafont, KalliCulator describes the path of the stroke and calculates the contrast around that model. The contrast is created according to the mixture of the mathematical middle of the stroke and the automatized, imaginary calligraphic tool. Following Noordzij’s theories of writing, Berlaen has investigated the nature of the broad nibbed and pointed pen and converted them into mathematical parameters. This thinking and programming process lays the foundation of what becomes highly interesting to the discussion of superfamilies: Since the pure skeleton is independent from any tool or style the user can now apply – and even interpolate – numerous parameters (such as the type of pen), being able to create countless versions of glyphs and fonts based on only one skeleton. Ideologically it is also an interesting example to the idea of superfamilies: It respects the nature and process of the callig­ raphic origin of the letters, however, at the same time making use of today’s digital culture and it’s ability for serialization. Excerpts from the Final Master Project Master of Advanced Typography EINA Escola de Disseny i Art Barcelona UAB Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 20.12.2011. Supervising tutor: Josema Urós. The original work in its entire length can be found at juliasturm.de/OnSuperfamilies.pdf 1 Robert Bringhurst, The elements of typographic style, Ed. 3.1 (Vancouver, Hartley & Marks, 2005), 53. 2 Bringhurst, 54. 3 Alejandro Lo Celso, Serial type families ( from Romulus to Thesis), typotheque.com/articles/serial_type_families_from_romulus_to_thesis (15.10.2011). 4 Lo Celso. 5 Peter Bil’ak, Family planning, or how type families work, typotheque.com/articles/type_families/ (15.10.2011). 6 Adrian Frutiger quoted in Osterer and Stamm, eds., 92. 7 Jan van Krimpen, On designing and devising type (London: The Sylvan Press, 1957), 59.

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

Julia Sturm, P 154

111


Unit David Gothic Shields & Uniform Set Gothic, wood type as precursor

“Innovations, being prepared over a long period of time, remained dormant for the most part, undiscovered and misunderstood, only to suddenly awaken, providing a characteristic expression for an entire century.” – Fredrich Friedl1

David Shields is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Art & Art History at The University of Texas at Austin, is the Chair of the Design Program and the caretaker of the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection which is a comprehensive collection of wood type manufactured and used for printing in America during the nineteenth century. In this article he writes about the importance of the Unit Gothic Series which can be seen as a predecessor of Univers.

The development of the typographic sans serif follows a path of revival and renewal from a crude set of capital letters through a series of stylistic and organizing innovations leading to the formal refinement and complex family structures that we take for granted today. Two newly uncovered designs of wood type reveal the accepted progress of midcentury conceptual innovations began fifty years earlier that previously acknowledged. Sans serif faces gained broader popularity in Germany, England and America at the end of the 19th century. This growing popularity increased the demand for type families expanded beyond the single weight variations that characterized sans serif type up to that point. Berthold’s Akzidenz Grotesk was released in 1896. Cobbled together from existing and new sans serifs “… Berthold managed to make a coherent family out of all the different Grotesks it had acquired.”2 Akzidenz Grotesk’s success was followed by strong competition from Stempel Foundry’s Reform Grotesk in 1903, ATF’s Franklin Gothic in 1905 and the Bauer Foundry’s Venus in 1907. While not fully integrated, the development of more coherent families of related weights and widths pointed to the standardization and modularity that would follow mid-century. The sans serifs released at the turn of the 20th century expanded the traditional palette of typographic variation previously limited to regular, italic and bold by offering three or four weights of a standard width with a weights of condensed and extended added in short order. New designs inspired by Akzidenz Grotesk began to emerge in the 1950s, displacing the geometric sans serifs that had become popular in the 1920s and 1930s. These new designs, commonly referred to as neogrotesque, were typified by larger families of weights and widths developed to provide visual uniformity lacking in the inconsistently designed sans serifs of the early 20th century. The most important neo-grotesques released during this period included the Haas Foundry’s New Haas Grotesk and Bauer’s Folio in 1956, and Deberny & Peignot’s Univers in 1957. Of these, Univers was the most systematically conceived from the start. Designed by Adrian Frutiger, Univers, was made up of weights and widths that related modularly to create “a visually programmed family of 21 sans serif ” styles which “form[ed] a uniform whole that [could] be used together with complete harmony.”3 It’s systematic ordering along a matrix of two axes revealed a rational and visually harmonious connection between each item in the system. While the styles that made up the families developed at the turn of the century did not relate seamlessly, there were two little known faces produced during this period that would act as precursors to the more systematic type families to be released mid-century and as well as foreshadow the interpolated superfamilies of the late-20th century. The Hamilton Mfg Co’s Unit Gothic and the Tubbs Mfg Co’s Uniform Set Gothic were both released as original wood type designs in the second half of 1907. While neither attained the aesthetic refinement that would define Frutiger’s Univers fifty years later, each was developed as a visually related series driven by a pragmatic need for making composition faster and more efficient. The Hamilton Mfg Co’s Unit Gothic was first shown in the August 1907 issue of The Inland Printer in an advertisement addressed to “progressive poster-printers.” The design concept was unique for it’s time as it included a series of seven systematically interrelated and visually harmonious widths. The Unit Gothic series was numbered, No 716–No 722, rather than named. Each width was scaled mathematically to produce “an even and gradual reduction in widths.”4 No 718 was the standard unit of the series, No 716 & No 717 were extended and No 719–722 were condensed. No 717 was 25 % wider and No 716 was 50 % wider than the standard. The four narrower faces were reductions in width of 25 % (No 719), 50 % (No 720), 62 ½% (No 721) and 75 % (No 722). The ad also stated that “other variations in the width from the Standard Unit [could] be supplied as desired at regular prices.” The mathematical scaling was not primarily a function of aesthetics but rather of the pragmatic need for compositional efficiency and speed. All characters were “uniform in width and length” that allowed one letter to be “lifted and another put in its place without further justifying.” The capitals and figures of the standard, No. 718, were cut on square bodies. The scaled widths were configured to allow the condensed style to “be placed in the space occupied by one of the standard units, and with the most condensed face four letters will occupy the space of a standard unit.”5

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

David Shields, P 154

114


In addition to the ad in The Inland Printer, Hamilton also produced an oversized circular of Unit Gothic specimens in late 1907. Known copies of this circular are housed in the ATF Library Collection at the Butler Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, Columbia University as well as in the archives of the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. The Tubbs Mfg Co’s Uniform Set Gothic was first shown in the October 1907 issue of The Inland Printer. The Tubbs design was much more am bitious than Hamilton’s, if not as mathematically exact. A single stylistic weight included a range of 26 evenly scaled widths. The full series of Uniform Set Gothic was comprised of three weights – light, medium and heavy – each with a range of scaled widths totaling 60 different faces. The Tubbs ad for Uniform Set Gothic showed a medium weight that included 26 evenly scaled widths. The advertisement promoted the Gothic series as a more efficient system for compositors and stated that all the Gothics were intended to be self-spacing due to “a slight shoulder on the sides which does away with the time lost in putting leads between letters.”6 The ad does not indicate any sort of numbering or naming system to differentiating each weight or width, or even how the scaling between widths was determined. Unfortunately the The Inland Printer ad with these shortcomings of detail is the only known example yet found of the Tubbs’ Uniform Set Gothic. The ad specifically mentions the availability of “large specimen sheets mailed upon request.” Examples of these specimen sheets have yet to be located. The Uniform Set Gothic appears to be the first type explicitly designed along two axes and predates Univers by fifty years. In October 1908 the Hamilton and Tubbs companies entered into a bitter legal dispute over trade secret infringement. While the case ended with the court dismissing the bill of complaint it led The Hamilton Mfg Co to aggressively buy out Tubbs Mfg Co in June 1909. There is no record of Tubbs’ Uniform Set Gothic ever being shown again. Hamilton never promoted the Uniform Set Gothic, but instead continued to show their own series of Unit Gothics in specimen books well into the 1960s. It is hard to measure the impact of these early innovations on typog­ raphy as they do not seemed to have directly influenced other work in wood type much less the broader typographic world at the time. The concepts embodied by both faces emerged from their dormancy with greater understanding and popular acceptance fifty years later with the introduction of the neo-grotesques. 1 Friedl, Fredrich. The Univers by Adrian Frutiger. Translated by Katja Steiner and Bruce Almberg. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag form GmbH, 1998. 2 Majoor, Martin. “Inclined to be dull.” Eye, Spring 2007. 3 Meggs, Philip. A History of Graphic Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1983. 4 The Hamilton Mfg Co, “Hamilton’s Unit Gothics,” advertisement, The Inland Printer, August 1907, vol 39 no 5, p 644. 5 “A notable improvement in wood type,” The Inland Printer, August 1907, vol 39 no 5, p 751. 6 The Tubbs Mfg Co, “Tubbs Uniform Set Gothics,” advertisement, The Inland Printer, October 1907, vol 40 no 1, p25–26.

The Hamilton Mfg Co advertisement for their Unit Gothic in the August 1907 issue of The Inland Printer. Tubbs Mfg Co advertisement for the medium weight of their Uniform Set Gothic in the October 1907 issue of The Inland Printer.

Schematic diagram of 21 Univers styles, Adrian Frutiger.

The Hamilton Mfg Co’s Unit Gothic & Roman Border specimen circular from late 1907.

Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports

David Shields, P 154

115


10 × 10

We asked 10 questions to 10 type designers from all over the world. Read an interview with 100 answers from different points of views.

Christian Schwartz Erik van Blokland Hannes von Döhren Ian Party Luc(as) de Groot Łukasz Dziedzic Nadine Chahine Paul van der Laan Peter Biľak Yanone

1. What is a superfamily? Christian Schwartz Generally I think people think of a superfamily as a typeface with two or more major components, i.e. serif and sans. FF Meta and FF Unit are good examples. At Commercial Type we use the term “collection” instead, because we found that we were spending a lot of time explaining the term “superfamily.” Our customers easily made sense of a family like Guardian, which has Sans and Egyptian (Slab), but didn’t necessarily accept the same term for something like Lyon that has Text and Dis­play versions (if there is no sans, how can it be super?), or a collection like Stag that includes so many disparate parts and silly special effects. “Collection” seemed like a broader term. Erik van Blokland A structure for a typeface that extends beyond weight variations or roman / italic styles. Hannes von Döhren A superfamily is a type family consisting of 20 fonts or more. It often contains typefaces of different categories (like sans, serif, slab or condensed & extended). They have one gene and can be used perfectly together. Ian Party In my point of view it’s a certain amount of typefaces which fit and work together (for example when the x height is the same) but the structure can be really different. Times and Helvetica could be a superfamily – in a way that’s the project of Suisse BP. In a larger scale, we could say that all the retail fonts in our catalogue constitute a superfamily: They are thought to be used together and share the same approach of design and aesthetic. Luc(as) de Groot A typographic superfamily needs a super amount of time to design and is never finished, it looks super, and works super for super complex assignments. Łukasz Dziedzic It’s a set of fonts with which one designer can solve all typographic de­­sign problems in the most complicated publication. It’s also a big bag from which each of ten designers will choose just one font – dif­ferent every time. Superfamilies with “one big name” are a relatively new

Slanted 19 — Interviews

10 × 10, P 146–155

120


Yanone Any family of typefaces with above average coolness / quality / size values. 2. What are the reasons for designing a superfamily? Are there conceptional and / or economical reasons? Time is money, so is it worth designing a superfamily?

Guardian Egyptian Headline Bold by Christian Schwartz.

con­cept. Earlier, one designer used different names for different families but designed them in a way that they can all work together. For example, Adrian Frutiger’s Univers is Univers Sans, his Glypha is Univers Slab, his Egyptienne F is Univers Clarendon and his Linotype Centennial is Univers Modern. If these fonts were designed today, he probably would have used such names. Nadine Chahine It’s a set of related typeface styles that embody the same general design concept. A superfamily will have many weights and often various widths as well. The first and best example is Adrian Frutiger’s Univers. Paul van der Laan In my opinion a superfamily is a typeface with a very extensive choice of cuts. And these cuts can differ in many ways but they should at least share a certain DNA with each other. They can differ in terms of weight (from hairline to ultra black), width (from compressed to extended), intended optical size (from headline to caption), construction (from roman to italic to blackletter), spacing (proportional versus monospaced), contrast (from monoline to high contrast), or the existence / absence of serifs for example. A superfamily should have one name that serves as an umbrella for all cuts. As much as I would like to classify the works of certain type designers as one superfamily (take Gerard Unger for example, whose Swift, Argo and Oranda could perfectly fit together) this cannot count. Some foundries have even artificially created super­fami­ lies by retrofitting certain typefaces together that historically had different names – Frutiger Serif was initially conceived as Meridien for instance. Superfamilies are from all ages though – it stems from the natural desire by man to constantly break barriers and outperform competitors. Therefore the superfamilies of the past can easily be overlooked, and the superfamilies of today might be the “ordinary” families of tomorrow. Peter Biľak Type terminology and classifications is always a step behind the type development, so many terms are unclear. Superfamily means for some people combination of sans and serif fonts, for example Scala Sans and Scala Serif. Others use it to indicate a very large family of many styles, more than you’d typically expect. Personally I have been avoiding using this term, as its meaning is unclear. But I do think that my own family is super, though!

Christian Schwartz Most of our typefaces are developed for specific clients, so it’s rare for us to develop a multi-part collection unless someone has commissioned us to do so. Stag, for example, is entirely made up of commissioned fami­lies, believe it or not. Esquire commissioned the Slab, the Sans, the Stencil, and the Sans Round over a three year period, and Las Vegas Weekly commissioned the Dots. Erik van Blokland Typefaces need to facilitate in building typographic contrast. Big to small, light to dark, wide to narrow, one rhythm to another. Not that family size automatically means more choice. I see some superfamilies and I won­der if it might have been better to spend more time on the basic design instead. Another potential problem is that the family members are too close together. That offers “some” degree flix. Hannes von Döhren Superfamilies are often used to solve complicated design challenges. In a big company with a lot of applications, or in magazine / newspaper design with different requirements a superfamily can be a big advantage because it delivers the right font for every situation. Ian Party The goal is to create a package where the client can find what he needs, it’s a guaranty that everything will fit together, same character set, same features and of course same technical specification as x height, ascender, descender, uppercase. It’s also an aesthetic choice. As a designer I would tell the client that by using type from the same family, it wouldn’t be a bad choice. It’s a design ideal. Luc(as) de Groot My reason to design superfamilies is to fill design gaps; because something was missing, because it was needed. No economical reasons what­ soever. Time is money? Bullshit. Is it worth to write a super book or a super song? Yes, for the soul, not for the money. Łukasz Dziedzic In the end, a graphic designer’s goal is to create a typographic system for a publication. Earlier, and still very often today, graphic designers carefully pick different families (for example a sans and a serif ), which may have different names and may even come from different type designers – but they work well together. But often it’s tedious, because these families sort of fit together, but have small differences in x-height or proportions or grayness, so the designer has to use tricks like small size adjustments or minimal scaling. A superfamily conceived by the type designer is a tool which can help the graphic designer solve his problem so that consistency of taste and style is achieved across all fonts, and it’s easy to use, prefabricated. Working on a superfamily involves research which sometimes takes a long time, so the money aspect is a rather unpredictable. Nadine Chahine The different interpretations bring different flavors of the same basic concept and this offers more variety and freedom in design. Paul van der Laan Making a family with a large number of cuts today is easier than it ever was. Before digital type the process of making different cuts was extremely labour-intensive. Fortunately technology improved – the first font editors that I used in the mid-nineties already offered some support for interpolation of different cuts. But for the better part you still had to do many things manually and, most importantly, you had to plan every­ thing ahead. Current day font editors, and especially dedicated tools for interpolating fonts (such as Prepolator, UFOstretch, Superpolator, etc.) make it childishly easy to use interpolation as part of your design process. So, from a type designer’s point of view making superfamilies can be quite economical. Adding new cuts that are closely connected to the rest of the family is less time consuming than making completely new designs. But this is also a danger and can create laziness. I see many typefaces out there with such a large number of weights that from a functional point of view I don’t see any benefit. Sometimes all these “free” interpolated weights are merely an easy way to bloat the family in the hope that it will generate more money. Peter Biľak As described above, it is not entirely clear what a superfamily is, so the reason for designing it will not be entirely clear neither. I’ve designed

Slanted 19 — Interviews

10 × 10, P 146–155

121


Albert-Jan Pool

Ein industrieller Look muss nicht überkonstruiert aussehen

round

FF DIN

italic

condensed

cond. italic

light

regular

medium

bold

black latin

cyrillic greek

Albert-Jan Pool studierte an der Königlichen Akademie in Den Haag und begann ab 1987 seine Laufbahn als Schriftgestalter, Typograf und Grafikdesigner in Deutschland. Auf Anregung von Erik Spiekermann gestaltete Pool die typgrafisch optimierte FF DIN, die durch den Ausbau um weitere Schriftschnitte zu einer Super-Familie heranwuchs. Julia Kahl hat Albert-Jan Pool im Mai 2012 auf der TYPO Berlin getroffen, um zu erfahren, wie die Zukunft der FF DIN aussieht und was er von anderen DIN-Schriften hält. Slanted 19 — Interviews

Albert-Jan Pool, P 145

126


Julia Kahl: 2010 wurde die FF DIN Round veröffentlicht und machte die FF DIN damit zu einer Super-Familie. Warum braucht man Super-Familien ? Albert-Jan Pool: Ich denke, dass Super-Familien den Anwendern eine Hilfestellung geben. Zum einen gibt es unglaublich viele Schriften und viele Designer sind sich nicht sicher, wie sie diese vernünftigerweise kombinieren können. Innerhalb einer Super-Familie können sie immer andere Mitglieder auf die gleiche Bühne stellen und das Publikum hat trotzdem noch das Gefühl, dass alle Szenen eine Theatervorstellung bilden. Zum anderen ist es natürlich auch Marketing, weil wer weiß schon, dass man ITC Avant Garde und ITC Lubalin Graph, beide von Herb Lubalin gestaltet, perfekt kombinieren kann, weil die Schriften praktisch gleich sind. Nur die eine hat Serifen und die andere nicht. Das weiß fast niemand. Kennst du die Schrift Meridien? Ja, von Adrian Frutiger. Nicht schlecht! Viele kennen sie gar nicht, deswegen haben die bei Linotype dann gesagt, daraus machen wir die Frutiger Serif. Ob das nun gut gelungen ist oder nicht – darüber kann man länger debattieren, aber Frutiger Serif wird demnächst bekannter sein als Meridien es jemals gewesen ist. Ein anderes Beispiel wäre Frutigers Serifa, die wie auch seine Glypha wunderbar mit der Univers kombiniert werden kann – heute hätte man einer dieser Schriften vielleicht Univers Slab Serif (Egyptienne) genannt. Das heißt, Schriften haben sich auch hin zu Super-Familien entwickelt? Ja, es gab eine Entwicklung. Könnte man sagen, dass man jetzt anders damit umgeht und man früher einer Schrift vielleicht einfach einen neuen Namen gegeben hätte, obwohl sie Verwandtschaften zu einer bestehenden Schrift vorwies? Ja, es gibt z. B. die Schrift Schneidler Mediaeval und die dazugehörige Kursive heißt Amalthea. Würde heute keiner so machen. Ursprünglich sind das alles verschiedene Sachen gewesen. Die Italiener hatten im 15. Jahrhundert die Idee, die Versalien bzw. Großbuchstaben nicht nur als verzierte Initialien am Anfang eines Kapitels oder Absatzes einzusetzen, aber diese konsequent am Anfang jedes Satzes mit den Kleinbuchstaben zu kombinieren. Dies führte dazu, dass die traditionell leichteren Grundstriche der Versalien an die der kräftigeren Kleinbuchstaben angeglichen wurden. Später hat man die bis dahin selbstständige Kursive nur noch als Auszeichnungsschrift zur Antiqua eingesetzt. Damit man die Bleilettern gleich richtig nebeneinander setzen konnte, wurden die Ober-, Mittel- und Unterlängen der Kursive an die der Antiqua angepasst. Und so entwickelte es sich immer weiter. Man machte im 19. Jahrhundert fette Schnitt dazu, später die Fett Kursive und noch mehr Gewichte – und dann eben mit und ohne Serifen. Du hast vorhin gemeint, dass der Designer, der sich eine SuperFamilie kauft, viele Möglichkeiten hat. Aber birgt das nicht zugleich auch eine große Gefahr in sich, die Schnitte und Stile schlecht zu kombinieren? Die Gefahr besteht bei einer guten Super-Familie kaum. Das ist eine rela­­ tiv sichere Sache, weil alles zusammen passt. Es ist mit Sicherheit keine gute Idee, wenn ich einen Fließext in der FF DIN Regular setze, die Round Regular als Auszeichnung zu verwenden, weil man den Unterschied nicht sieht – aber das sieht jeder Designer. Ich habe da keinerlei Befürchtungen. Vielleicht an dieser Stelle noch ein dritter Grund für eine SuperFamilie: Bei einer neuen Produktmarke oder einem Corporate Design sagt man immer, dass es für 10–20 Jahren halten muss. Es gibt aber Zwei, die das nur schwer aushalten: Erstens sind das die Designer selbst, denen es nach zwei Jahren langweilig geworden ist und die etwas Neues machen möchten. Dem Publikum da draußen ist es bis zu diesem Zeit­punkt vermutlich noch nicht einmal aufgefallen, dass es das neue Cor­porate Design überhaupt gibt … Zweitens werden die Werber, die Pro­duktmanager voran, schon unruhig und wollen Produktmarken ver­ändern, bevor das Publikum die Marke überhaupt verstanden hat. Dann ist es ganz gut, wenn man im Corporate Design Schriften mit vielen unterschiedlichen Stilen definiert hat, wie diese hier z. B. von Daniel Perraudin (zeigt auf ein Schriftmuster der Dato). Diese Schriftfamilie ist sehr lebendig und die Script-Variante (Schreibschrift) bietet eine wunderbare Alternative bei solchen eher seriösen Angelegenheiten. Diese Super-Familie spielt mit unterschiedlichen Kontrasten, mit und ohne Serifen, Antiqua, Kursive und Script – alles unter einem Hut. Das ist eine schöne, große Palette! ... Wo wir gerade von Script sprechen … Da fehlt vielen Designern ein wenig Know-how. Sie wollen dann gerne noch etwas »nettes«, »freundliches« oder »natürliches« und suchen nach einer Schreibschrift, obwohl fast alle Schriften eine passende Kursive besitzen. Dieses Denken zu fördern, dass man das aus einem Guss haben kann und dass der Kontrast zwischen einem Fließtext und einem

Schriftzug für eine Produktmarke vielleicht nicht so groß sein muss, ist natürlich erst einmal eine Aufgabe der Ausbildung und der visuellen Erziehung unserer Kunden, aber die Super-Familien bieten hier eine sehr praktische Hilfestellung. Eine Marke, die man nicht mehr erkennt, weil die typografische Gestaltung ihrer Einzelteile keinerlei Gemein­ samkeiten aufweisen, ist ein Problem, nicht nur für die Corporate Designer und Werber, sondern vor allem für deren Kunden. Weshalb wurde 2010 die FF DIN Round veröffentlicht? Das war, weil “Round” in war! Ist es das noch? Weiß ich nicht so genau. Aber im Verkauf läuft die Schrift ganz gut. Sie hat bereits viele FontFonts überholt, die es schon seit Jahren gibt. Es ist sicher auch für FontShop einfacher, die FF DIN Round zu veröffentlichen, als einen Round-Schnitt für eine andere Schrift, weil sie auf einem bereits gut eingeführten Namen aufbaut Wie viele Schnitte hat die FF DIN Round? Fünf: light, regular, medium, bold und black. Und die FF DIN? Die FF DIN hat 20, also fünf aufrechte, fünf kursive, fünf schmale und fünf schmal-kursive. Wie gestaltet man so eine Super-Familie? Wie entscheidet man, in welche Richtung man die Familie erweitert? Ich denke, es liegt sicher stark an der Schriftsippe, an dem, was bereits vorhanden ist. Bei der FF DIN ist das ein spezieller Fall. Sie basiert auf den 1931 in der DIN 1451 genormten Verkehrsschriften; der DIN Mittelschrift und der DIN Engschrift. Diese wurde ursprünglich mit dem Ansatz gestaltet, dass man als Anwender »eine Schrift für alles« haben konnte: zum Gravieren, für die Beschriftung mit Schablonen, um Schilder zu malen, Schriftzeichen zu stanzen und zu prägen. Das war die eigentliche Idee. Man setzt sich einmal hin, konzipiert das vernünftig und hat dann so etwas wie eine Norm-Schrift. Natürlich war auch die Austausch­barkeit der Lieferanten ein wichtiger Punkt. AEG, Siemens und die Reichsbahn zum Beispiel waren ja Großeinkäufer und die wollten nicht jedes Mal auf ’s Neue mit ihren Druckern diskutieren, was die einge­setzte Schrift angeht. Damals ging es in dem Normen-Ausschuss nicht vorrangig um den Einsatz der Norm-Schrift in Corporate Designs – das Wort war damals noch nicht erfunden worden. Vielmehr ging es um den Einsatz auf Formularen, Türschildern, Wegweisern, Straßenschildern, Bahnhofsschildern ... All diese Sachen, von denen man geglaubt hat, dass sie nicht gestaltet werden müssten. Heutzutage ist das unvorstellbar. Fast jeder Designer gestaltet auch Leitsysteme oder Formulare. Die Norm-Schrift für Zweckbeschriftungen wurde natürlich auch des Öfteren graviert. Durch den runden Bohrkopf entstanden automatisch runde Endungen an den Buchstaben. Eine Art DIN Round war also eigentlich schon immer da gewesen. Und wenn dann auf einmal Round hip ist, dann macht man natürlich auch eine FF DIN Round. Also war es in diesem Fall eine logische Erweiterung der Schrift? Ja, logisch, historisch. Das musste einfach gemacht werden. Wie weit kann man die Schriftschnitte bei einer Super-Familie auffächern? Nun ja, grundsätzlich so weit man möchte. Es gibt kaum Grenzen. Man könnte auch noch eine Stencil- und eine Slab Serif Variante von der FF DIN machen ... im Prinzip sogar eine DIN Serif (Antiqua). Man kann schon sagen, dass man jede Schrift beliebig weiterführen könnte. Auf der anderen Seite haben sich manche Schriften eingeprägt, wie z. B. eine Garamond – macht es Sinn eine Garamond Sans oder Garamond Slab Serif zu gestalten? Ich denke nicht. Der Charakter einer Schrift ist manchmal sehr stark. Auch der Bezug zu einer gewissen Anwendung der Schrift kann sich manifestieren. Die FF DIN ist ja eher unauffällig, könnte man vielelicht sagen. Wie geht es mit ihr weiter? Es geht momentan in Richtung Sprachausbau. Griechisch gibt es bisher nur für die Normale, also nur für die fünf aufrechten und nicht für die kursiven Schnitte. Für Corporate Designs von international agierende Firmen und deren Marken ist es vor allem wichtig, erst einmal diese Aufgabe zu erledigen. Die Griechen sitzen jetzt zwar in der Kreditklemme, aber wirtschaftlich und kulturell gesehen sind Europa und Griechenland nun mal eine Einheit. Zeitgleich werden wir mehr Gewichte gestalten ... das ist momentan wichtiger, als z. B. eine DIN Serif zu veröffentlichen. Hast du – neben der FF DIN versteht sich – noch eine andere Lieblings-Super-Familie? Die Thesis von Luc(as) de Groot (LucasFonts) fand ich schon immer gut. The Serif, The Mix, The Sans – das war einfach genial. Das war auch die erste funktionierende Super-Familie mit mehr als zwei Varianten. Es hing schon in der Luft, dass da etwas gemacht werden musste, aber Lucas war der Erste gewesen, der das konsequent umgesetzt hat. Die Corporate A·S·E von Kurt Weidemann, mit ebenfalls drei Varianten,

Slanted 19 — Interviews

Albert-Jan Pool, P 145

127


Panos Vassiliou

Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans

PF Centro Sketches.

The Greek type foundry Parachute was founded by Panos Vassiliou who has been awarded numerous times for his varying type designs. He designed different big type families in the custom design field such as PF Centro or PF Regal Pro. Peter Brugger, type designer himself, stayed some time in Athens with Panos and conducted this interview in July 2012. Slanted 19 — Interviews

Panos Vassiliou, P 146

130


Peter Brugger: Hi Panos, thanks for having this interview. You studied Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. Why did you go abroad and how did you become a type designer? Panos Vassiliou: Well, it was certainly a long way to become a type de­signer but I definitely enjoyed the journey. Along the way and after finishing UofT, I worked in the engineering field for a couple of years, I got involved with acting as part of a theatre company, founded a design studio, became a lecturer at a local college, published a monthly magazine and a few years later I started Parachute. “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” I certainly did not have these words in mind when I decided to become a type designer. You are mostly self-trained, how do you come along with this? I have no regrets for that, even though sometimes I wish I had received a proper academic education in type design. That would have made things a lot easier in my professional career. On the other hand I feel lucky because I turned my hobby and my passion into a profession. Ever since I lay my hands on letterforms, typography has become an obsession. On top of that I have obtained a great asset which is no other than my university education and the experience I gained in diverse fields during the course of my professional career. This always comes back to you. Why is your foundry called Parachute? Is there a story behind? After some years of preparation “in the hiding,” Parachute dropped in out of nowhere. This alone would be enough to generate mixed emotions in the local market (eventually the same happened several years later when we decided to make an appearance in the international market). The name was picked to entertain any possible reservations towards the un­known and works as a contradiction between what we think it is and what it really is. But there is also a more realistic attachment to this name, the one which connects the name to the infamous quote by Frank Zappa: “The mind is like a parachute, it doesn’t work if it isn’t open.” Parachute has a strong connection to advertising agencies and to the corporate design field. How do you get in touch with them? There is no magic to what we do. In fact, we never did any heavy promotion of our work. In general we keep a low profile and never speak unless we have something to say. In the beginning we concentrated on the local market. In 2003 we released our first major catalog, which included several classic revivals of historical importance as well as many original designs. Later our type library was updated, as several of the older de­ signs were either discarded or redesigned to reflect current aesthetics with an emphasis placed on text typefaces. Our website was not realized until 2007 with its first major update just a few days ago. Our name has basically traveled around by word of mouth. I’m not in favor of being everywhere all the time. In fact everybody else is. We are rather a boutique type agency and we would like to keep it that way. On the one hand your are dealing with retail fonts, but you also got involved in custom type projects. Is there a special area you like most in the custom design field? Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to work on several custom projects for quite a few high profile customers. We have established a good rapport with our corporate customers. We understand their needs and offer useful solutions. Such was the case with the European Commission when they decided to use a customized version of Square Sans Pro as the official typeface for their publications and its new logo. I’m always excited with a new project mostly because it is different from any other. You never get bored in this job. Working for a publication may be more gratifying as – if it happens – you get the best and most critical feedback about your job. For instance, I had a great time designing Regal Pro for Grazia magazine, as among other things extra care was given to the visual personality of the typeface and its association to the reader’s emotions. Recently this set of families was also picked by the Spanish newspaper EL PAÍS for its weekly trendsetting fashion magazine S Moda which is a collaboration with Conde Nast. In another case, we were commissioned to design a complete set of fonts for the Financial Times Deutschland, which included a serif, a sans serif and a slab version. This involved a different approach from the previous project, since not only the medium is different but the readers as well. In this case I designed a condensed customized version of Centro Pro. You started quite early to design complex contemporary typefaces which include Latin, Greek and also Cyrillic. What was the force behind starting things like these? An ever-increasing global market which required well-designed contemporary typefaces to support other scripts than Latin. Back in 2003 there were only a few typefaces that supported all European languages and most of them – if not all – were classic text typefaces. I was determined to create a new type library that included a variety of contemporary text as well as display typefaces which covered a wide spectrum of languages. The idea was very appealing and challenging at the same time. It was

Slanted 19 — Interviews

Grazia and Travel + Leisure Magazine.

Panos Vassiliou, P 146

131


I can be happy with some of the work I’m doing, though, and design still inspires me

Philippe Apeloig

Philippe Apeloig is one of the most influential graphic designers of the last decades. He is noted for his posters, many of which are in the collection of MoMA, and for his typographic approach. Lars Harmsen met Philippe Apeloig in his studio in Paris in the beginning of 2012 where they had a desultory conversation. Lars Harmsen: Let’s talk about one of your projects that I really like, the Association des Bibliothécaires de France (ABF). Philippe Apeloig: The French Library Association came to me in 2006 to discuss their annual conference. That year’s topic was “Tomorrow, What Will the Library Be?” They wanted a new logotype to embody this idea and to promote the library, which led to a conversation on what the library represents today. They asked that it have no silhouettes of books and shelves, because the library will probably not be only a place of books and shelves in the coming years. There has been a transformation in what libraries hold, and how they serve the public. A better descriptor for the library today would be “space,” I think – a multipurpose space in which the visitor moves between research and information choices. That multi-functionality still involves reading, but also being a repository for special collections – printed and electronic materials for diverse audiences, videos, films, rare books, photographs, maps, manuscripts and correspondence, and so on – displaying exhibitions, screening films, presenting lectures and poetry readings, maintaining electronic work­ stations for public use, providing green and public gathering spaces, and more. My clients were working with some architects on the design of such a multi-use space, and they modeled a plan for how the library could be transformed on a limited budget. I was shown the floor plans and was able to see how it worked. Based on those, I designed a typeface with a basic shape that could be interpreted as a chair or table. Since ABF hosts the conference every year, with new themes each time, I wanted to make the type evolve over time, according to the focus. My approach was strictly typographic, and I could tell they were shocked.

Library workers tend to be traditional. For instance, their old logo used an awkward calligraphy, and I had just jumped them into the 21st century! We ended up having a great discussion about the design, but I would never have created such a typeface without sitting down with them first to discuss their direction. My understanding of their ideas and goals allowed a successful discussion to take place and for us to find common ground. The design of the typeface evolved year after year for the ABF con­ gresses. The annual poster offered the opportunity to convert it into silhouetted characters: each of the white letters floats in front of its own “echo,” a boldly geometric counterpart in black. This shadow element becomes a graphic focal point that really holds the eye. Because each letter resides within a kind of solitary confinement, reading is inhibited, creating a game of decoding the words. The font then evolved from thick, heavy lettering to a new, very light design that uses only the outlines of the letters. Two young designers in Zurich with a type foundry called Nouvelle Noire – Clovis Vallois and Anton Studer – have been working hard to complete the ABF design, with all the glyphs. There are three different fonts: ABF Petit, ABF Grand and ABF Linéaire. The typeface will be available for purchase in September 2012 through nouvellenoire.ch. I have observed that you are very playful in your approach to design. Is that one of the rules you follow? Typography is really quite boring ... just imagine the amount and dif­ferent types of media we browse constantly: print, screen, iPhone. A designer can stick to existing type – what’s conventional, what’s been

Slanted 19 — Interviews

Philippe Apeloig, P 156

140


Crossing the Line – Fiaf Fall Festival Client: FIAF : French Institute / Alliance Française de New York, Poster, 100 × 150 cm, 2010.

seen a million times – that’s one way of doing design, and it can be good. However, it’s not my way. I am more interested in a creative aesthetic that goes behind and beyond the boundaries of readability, one not restricted by functionality. Why not feel – and be – as you said, playful? Even if someone comes to you with a certain commitment asking you to solve a problem, you must find a place for freedom. Design can go far beyond just solving technical or communication problems. I like to bring things that have not been used very much before into the equation and to surprise myself. I don’t know where I’m going. Sometimes it really does just happen by accident, and I get something that I like. Is it a technique of creating things by looking for the accident? Of course, I mean, it’s my technique. It’s something that I’m constantly researching – there’s no recipe. Before I start I don’t say, okay, this is what I’m going to do, and pick out a typeface. It can go so much further, especially when we have the possibility of creating a visual identity for a company or a nonprofit organization. Of course, when you create the layout for a book you pick out a typeface that provides legibility and smoothness, but when you have an assignment, it’s much more interesting to engage the power of creation. This is always my first consideration, and the way I like to design. There seem to be two schools, or two ideas, of how identity should evolve. One says to create something very strong and just leave it as it is and brand it everywhere, while the other says to develop a system that evolves with the demands of the media. It depends on what you have to communicate. For example, you might be asked to design an identity for a gallery that shows all kinds of design works: furniture, objects, lighting, rugs, and so on. In this case, it is better to step back and go with something neutral and very light in terms of what constitutes design. It’s not appropriate to bring in something complex or stylish that misrepresents or competes with the overall collection. To have unity amid diversity, it’s better to have a clean system. Or in the case of a series of posters, utilizing an official typeface that I didn’t design, such as my posters for the Fête du Livre in Aix, a festival that honors a different writer or literary genre each year, expressive typog­ raphy and composition, variable scale, color, and graphic density – even physical texture – allowed me to individualize each year’s theme. The subjects were highly diverse as you can imagine, ranging from Kenzaburō Ōe to Phillip Roth to new writing from Asia to the African

playwright Wole Soyinka, and so on. As a graphic designer, my goal is to develop something in a very artistic way. It could be painting rather than design objects ... for me there’s no difference. ... or dancing? ... or dancing, because anything that suggests movement and rhythm really interests me. Where does this come from? It’s an inspiration I’ve always had. First of all, I never wanted to be a designer. It is something that chose me, more than me choosing it. My studies at school and my internships in the Netherlands helped me realize that I could express myself with letters and use them in a very creative way. To be a super technician with the software is tiring to me. What I like is to view the letters as a medium and create with them. I feel I could just as easily have chosen dance or painting – these things are my main inspiration. I attend many performances and I look at art a lot. It’s a pity that people still consider graphic designers as just technical problem solvers or agents of another’s agenda. I don’t see design like this. It’s different for me. Design is a total art form. We live in a time in which we are witnessing the end of the hierarchy between fine art and design. It seems that you must have reached a point in your career where the client commissioning you knows how you work. No, they don’t. People who come to me are often far removed from the design world, which I really like, because you can educate them in some ways. You mentioned dancing. It’s as if you have a partner and begin the tango or waltz. You teach him or her how to perform the steps, how to make a particular move. Design is another form of dancing, in a way. It’s a partnership, and you have to direct your partner, bring them to your ideas and solutions. To do something interesting in design, other than merely respond to functional problems, it is essential to develop a strong relationship and clear communication with the client. The approach and attitude are those of an artist, not a tradesman. What is the easy part and what is the difficult part of being a designer? There is no easy part. It’s difficult, because you have to deal with shape, concept, technique, and creativity – a mix. Then you have to ensure that the end result is good enough and that you push yourself a step further into invention. On top of that, we’re still very dependent upon the quality of printing and other factors intrinsic to the process. It’s similar to making a movie. The film director is dependent on so many others for realizing his or her vision. Nevertheless, new technology has allowed more and more directors to control so many aspects of their films that they were unable to control before. As graphic designers, we can now choose to be like painters of the past. Centuries ago, painters also responded to clients and commissions. I mean, if you look at Velázquez’s mid 17th-century painting, Las Meninas, his subject was not so challenging. His clients probably had traditional expectations. His job was to paint a portrait of the King and Queen. But look what he did with it! The main subjects are only seen peripherally, reflected in the mirror and representing the past, even death. They are either standing where we are, or perhaps the mirror reflects their painted portraits from the canvas on the easel. At any rate, their daughter, the Infanta Margarita, and her strange coterie are now the main subjects and symbolize life (though bizarrely) and the future of the monarchy. We admire the painting today because of this brilliant concept and treatment, not because of the original assignment. It’s the same for design: it’s the way you conceive of and execute a design that makes you creative. That graphic designers can choose to make works more like Velázquez is possible today due to technology. But this greater potential means that the design has to be more and more independent. Compare design today to the way it was done in the past: you couldn’t manipulate the type yourself, you had to have a typesetter. It wasn’t easy or flexible. Creating your own type took months or years. Today, very quickly, you can experiment and play with type. It doesn’t matter how refined it is, what’s great is that it’s possible. And if it’s possible, it means you win, in terms of freedom and creativity. This is a very good moment for designers because they’ve become their own producers. For me, a cycle is being completed. If you consider the history of art, and when design first entered the scene ... I’m talking here about poster design … posters were created by painters, such as Toulouse-Lautrec or Bonnard, who perceived a new way to make money from their work. Seurat could have become a graphic designer, but didn’t dare move away from his painting and drawing (he was a fantastic draftsman!) to experiment with an industrial technique. He also didn’t have time – he died too young. But, in my opinion, he would have been a superb graphic designer, simply because his paintings and drawings are conceived like posters, with their stylistic silhouetting and dot technique. He saw the world through a pointillist lens, through dots, which is like the screen.

Slanted 19 — Interviews

Philippe Apeloig, P 156

141


from Germany. He was also involved in the extension of the FF bestsellers FF Meta and FF Info as well as in the work on the new weights of ITC Officina. Since 1999 he works as a freelanced type designer in Berlin.

10 × 10

p 120–125

Łukasz Dziedzic typoland.com FF Clan (2006) is an extensive family from Łukasz Dziedzic. A fresh take on the contempo­ rary sans model, FF Clan is comprised of seven weights in six widths. Dziedzic’s experience in publication design is evident in these strong, readable types, which feature a large xheight, short descenders, and small caps. The thin weight is delicate but substantial, ideal for fashion and cosmetic campaigns. At the other end of the scale, the ultra-weight makes a powerful statement in posters and headlines. FF Good (2007–2010) is an upright, straightsided sans serif in the American Gothic tradi­tion designed by Warsaw-based designer Łukasz Dziedzic. In 2010, it was radically overhauled increasing from nine styles to 60 styles. It includes five weights ranging from light to black, in condensed, regular, and wide, all with matching italics, and small caps for both roman and italic styles. The base FF Good fonts are mastered for text use, while FF Good Headline fonts are intended to set larger-sized copy. It’s easy to find sans serif typefaces with multiple widths and weights – but large serif families are much less common. The 30-font FF More (2010) fills this void. Five weights – each in Condensed, Regular, and Wide – answer every need of publication design, from strong headlines to readable text and space-efficient information graphics. FF More’s sturdy serifs and gentle contrast withstand the rigors of maga­zine and newspaper design. The typeface retains clarity despite size or background. Before becoming a type designer, the Warsaw-born (1969) high-school dropout Łukasz Dziedzic was a sound technician, carpenter helper, bass guitar & vocalist, software developer, and became editorial designer and art director, drawing his first typefaces. His own studio (tyPoland.com) develops font families (custom: empik, Getin Bank; retail: FF Clan, FF Good, FF Mach, FF Pitu, FF More; opensource: Lato, used by e.g. United Airlines, the Scottish government, HRS, U.S. TSA, The In­dependent, AP, GQ India, OK! Germany, PAGE, MacWelt ... Photo by Michał Korta.

FF Dax (1995–2000) is a contemporary streamlined sans serif family family with three widths: normal, wide, and condensed. For Hans Reichel (1949–2011), the concept behind FF Dax was to combine the clarity of a narrow Futura with a more humanist touch. The typeface’s most obvious and influential characteristic is the lack of spurs in the d, g, m, n, p, q, r and u. In keeping with Reichel’s completist ways, all the widths are available in six weights: light, regular, medium, bold, extra bold, and black. Hans Reichel (1949–2011) was a musician, instrument builder, graphic designer and type designer. Designers and typographers know him as the creator of the popular Barmeno and the world-renowned FF Dax family. For more than 30 years he’d made a name for himself as an accomplished acoustic and electric guitar player. He was also the inventor of the Daxophone, an instrument where thin strips of wood are played with a bow to mimic animal sounds and human voices.

Martin Majoor martinmajoor.com When Martin Majoor first designed FF Scala and FF Scala Sans, the idea behind this was to design a serif, humanistic typeface from which a sans serif version would be derived. He called it: two typefaces, one form principle. This became the basis of his type design philos­ ophy. Ten years later (2004), he expanded his idea of “two typefaces, one form principle” into “four typefaces, one form principle,” creating a new superfamily as a result: FF Nexus. Martin Majoor has been designing type since the mid-1980s. After a student placement at URW in Hamburg, he started in 1986 as a typographic designer in the Research & Devel­ opment department at Océ-Netherlands. In 1988 he started working as a graphic designer for the Vredenburg Music Centre in Utrecht, for whom he designed the typeface Scala for use in their printed matter. Two years later FSI FontShop International published FF Scala as the first serious text face in the then-new FontFont-Library. In 1993 FF Scala was augmented with a sans serif version, FF Scala Sans. In the eyes of the designer the Sans and the Serif versions complement each other admirably. They follow the same principle of form but are two distinct designs. In 1994 Majoor started working on the design of the Dutch telephone directory, for which he did both the typography and, more importantly, created a new typeface, Telefont. FF Seria and FF Seria Sans followed in 2000, and in 2004 FF Nexus with Sans, Serif, Mix and Typewriter versions have been published.

Hans Reichel daxo.de

Slanted 19 — Index

p 31 Multi Type-Ø-Tones, Barcelona (ES) laurameseguer.com

Laura Meseguer laurameseguer.com Multi (will be released 2014 / 2015) is a versatile and custom sans serif typeface family for the redesign of regional newspapers. This typeface family is intended to match the emotional attributes targeted by the new layout: very warm, dynamic, newsy, contemporary, accessible ... with an exclusive personality. The family con­sists of two subfamilies: Multi H is distinctive in headlines and large sizes and Multi T is functional for small size texts. Main features: humanistic construction, flare and asymmetry, from light condensed to extended black. Laura Meseguer is a type and graphic designer based in Barcelona. She specializes in ty­ ­pographic design and type design. Through her own type foundry, Type-Ø-Tones, she pub­lishes as well as promotes all her type designs. She is also teaching and gives lectures and workshops. She holds awards from the ADG-FAD and a Certificate of Typographic Excellence (TDC2 2005). She is a member of ATypI. She is the author of the book TypoMag. Typography in magazines and the co-author of Cómo crear tipografías. Del boceto a la pantalla.

p 32 / 36 Centro Pro / Regal Pro Parachute, Athens (GR) parachute.gr p 130–132 Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans

Panos Vassiliou parachute.gr Centro Pro (2007) is an award-winning typeface. It received a Gold Award from the European Design Awards 2008 and an Excellence Award from the International Type Design Competition 2009. Centro has become very popular among printed media. It is an ideal choice for newspapers, magazines and cor­ porate applications, a rare case of contempora­ ry type family working across three alphabets. Centro Pro meets an ever-growing demand for such typefaces among pan-European companies and institutions.

People and Projects

146


Regal Pro has first been published in 2010 as a custom design for Grazia magazine, Regal was later revamped and redesigned for commercial use. Targeting a consumption-wise and well-educated woman, it required a typeface that is not strictly based on classic forms, but incorporates several distinct elements that express a modern woman’s personality and the products she consumes. This set of five super families has already received six international awards and distinctions including a Red dot: best of the best 2012. Panos Vassiliou is a graduate of the University of Toronto. He designs typefaces since 1993, including commercial fonts as well as commissions from national and international companies such as Ikea, European Commission, Financial Times, National Geographic. He started Parachute® in 2001 setting the base for a typeface library that reflected the works of several designers as creatives around the world obsessed with type. He has received several international awards.

p 32 Panorama Bureau des Affaires Typographiques, Paris (FR) batfoundry.com

Jean-Baptiste Levee jblt.co Panorama (2004–2012): Widening horizons in versatility. Panorama is not a family, it is a typeface system. Multi-widths, multi-weights, matching italics, it is an all-purpose, highly versatile workhorse for the always demanding graphic designers. The extreme weights (ex­ tra-light, extra-black) and widths (extra-condensed, extra-extended) create stunning titling effects. In text, Panorama switches impact for usability and reveals the delicate color that this friendly Sans can produce. Panorama is specifically intended to work well in critical reading conditions such as transportation signage or small text. Jean-Baptiste Levee is a typeface designer with a focus on exclusive corporate fonts. He is a co-founder of the Bureau des Affaires Typographiques, the first French typeface design & distribution company on the Internet. He designed over a hundred typefaces for industry, moving pictures, fashion and publishing. His designs are featured in the permanent collections of the printing Museum in Lyon (FR) and the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach (DE). He is also the country delegate for France at ATypI. He is a regular lecturer and teaches typeface design at the Caen-Cherbourg school of Arts & Media and at the University of Corte. He is the president of Zone Opaque, artists’ books factory in Pantin (FR). He is a typography writer and editor on pointypo.com. Photog­ raphy by Pascal Bejean.

p 32 / 49 Klint / Pluto HVD Fonts, Berlin (DE) hvdfonts.com 10 × 10

p 120–125

Hannes von Döhren hvdfonts.com Klint (2009) is a superfamily with a technical appearance and humanistic streak. The family includes five weights; each weight ships in three widths: condensed, regular, and extended. All of the 15 Klint variants have a companion Italic and beside that there is a rounded version – 35 fonts in total. Klint’s large x-height makes it especially legible at small point sizes. Klint fills the rising need for super-families with a technical feeling that are also legible in both text and display settings. The Pluto-Clan is a superfamily consisting of 64 fonts. The quirky Pluto (2011) and the straight Pluto Sans (2012). Both in eight weights plus italic and condensed versions. Pluto is sweet and playful, while Pluto Sans has a straight but friendly appearance. The geometric architecture and the large x-height makes it perfect for longer copy small sizes. This con­ tem­porary type family is ideal for use in retail, cosmetics, food and advertising. Hannes von Döhren was born in Berlin (DE) in 1979. After completing his studies in graphic design, he worked in an advertising agency in Hamburg. Since 2008 he runs his own type foundry HVD Fonts. Within the last years he has released several type families like Livory, ITC Chino, FF Basic Gothic, Reklame Script and Brandon Grotesque which was the most successful release at MyFonts in 2010. In 2011 he has received the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from the Type Directors Club NY.

p 35 / 45 / 52 Avenir Next / Univers Next / Univers / Neue Helvetica / Akko & Akko Rounded Linotype, Bad Homburg (DE) linotype.com

Adrian Frutiger, Akira Kobayashi linotype.com The word Avenir means future in French and hints that the typeface owes some of its interpretation to Futura. But unlike Futura, Avenir Next (2012) is not purely geometric; it has vertical strokes that are thicker than the hori­ zontals, an ‘o’ that is not a perfect circle, and shortened ascenders. These nuances aid in

Slanted 19 — Index

legibility and give Avenir a harmonious and sensible appearance for both texts and headlines. Avenir includes new small caps, newly designed true italics, and a complete new range of condensed weights. Adrian Frutiger was born in 1928 at Unter­ seen, Switzerland. After an apprenticeship as a compositor, he continued his training in type and graphics at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. Frutiger went to Paris in 1952 and worked as a typeface designer and artistic manager at Deberny & Peignot. He established his international position as a typeface designer with his Univers sans serif font in 1957 and founded his own studio in Arcueil near Paris in 1961. Akira Kobayashi studied at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo, and later followed this up with a calligraphy course at the London College of Printing. He is a freelance type designer since 1997. He worked at many several design departments in Japan before he started to work as a type director at Linotype GmbH in May 2001.

Adrian Frutiger & Linotype Design Studio linotype.com Frutiger was successful in staying true to his initial aims; the new Linotype Univers does indeed work in longer texts as well as for dis­play settings. In 2010 the typeface family was extended and renamed into a more logical naming of Univers Next to fit better in the Platinum Collection naming. Linotype Univers is a completely reworked version of the original Univers typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957. It is a brilliant and cohesive font family of 63 weights and styles including the four monospaced typewriter weights. All the existing weights were completely redrawn, with careful attention paid to making the proportions more consistent with each other and improving fine details such as curves and thick-to-thin stroke ratios. CV Adrian Frutiger: see information to Avenir Next.

Max Miedinger In 1983, D. Stempel AG redesigned the famous Helvetica typeface for the digital age, creating Neue Helvetica for Linotype: a self-contained font family. It is the quintessential sans serif font, timeless and neutral, and can be used for all types of communication. Today, this family consists of 51 different font weights. All weights are also available in Central European ver­sions, supporting the languages of Central and Eastern Europe. Lastly, 34 weights are avail­able in Cyrillic versions. Max Miedinger was born 1910 in Zurich and died 1980. He was trained as a typesetter in Zurich after which he attends evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule. 1947–56, he was customer counselor and typeface sales repre­ sentative for the Haas’sche Schriftgießerei in Münchenstein near Basle. Director Eduard Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger to develop a new sans serif typeface. 1957, the HaasGrotesk face is introduced. 1960, the typeface changes its name from Neue Haas Grotesk to Helvetica.

People and Projects

147


Favorite Publications by cohen+ dobernigg, Hamburg (DE)

cohen+dobernigg John Cohen, Daniela Dobernigg cohen+dobernigg Sternstraße 4 20357 Hamburg Deutschland T +49 (0) 40 40185110 codobuch.de Montag bis Freitag 10–20 Uhr Samstag 10–18 Uhr Bei cohen+dobernigg finden sich neben bekannten Standards gedruckte Delikatessen, die in der Flut der lieferbaren Bücher leider oft untergehen. Besondere Schwerpunkte sind hierbei die erzählende Literatur und alle Aspekte des kul­ turellen Lebens wie Film, Theater, Popkultur, Design, Photographie, Mode, Denken.

Questionnaire Sollten wir Bücher in Zeiten der Digitalisierung mehr als ein Kunstobjekt sehen, oder ist es immer noch eines der wichtigsten Informationsmedien? Der heutige Stand ist, dass das Buch auf jeden Fall noch einichtiges Informationsmedium ist, inwieweit sich das in der Zukunft ändern wird, ist auch für uns eine spannende, aber noch nicht entschiedene Frage. Viele Leser schätzen aufjeden Fall gerade den Offline-Charakter des Mediums, der in Zeiten, in denen vielerorts eine Entschleunigung als erstrebenswert gepriesen wird, sehr wohltuend sein kann. Immer mehr kleinere Independent Verlage strömen auf den Markt und verlegen ihre Publikationen selbst. Welche Auswirkungen hat das auf die gesamte Branche? Neue Verlage, vor allem wenn sie innovativ sind, können der Buch­branche nur gut tun. Unsere Buchhandlung legt seit Anbeginn ihres Bestehens vor rund zehn Jahren großen Wert auf die Zusam­ menar­b eit mit kleinen, unab­ hängigen Verlagen, gerade weil wir wissen, wie schwer es für junge Verlage ist, sich im Buchhandel bekannt zu machen. Unsere Kunden freuen sich über die Auswahl jenseits des Mainstreams. Wie sieht das Editorial Design von morgen aus? Im Buchbereich wird man sich wieder mehr mit Detail befassen. Gerade in Zeiten der elektronischen Konkurrenz können sich gedruckte Publikationen unter anderem durch feines Design und klare Strukturen abheben.

Abstract City Knesebeck Verlag, München (DE) knesebeck-verlag.de

Low Cost Design Volume 2 Silvana Editoriale, Mailand (IT) silvanaeditoriale.it

Der Illustrator Christoph Niemann ging 1997 nach New York und schaffte es dort bis auf die Titelsei­ ten so berühmter Blätter wie dem New Yorker oder dem New York Times Magazine. Mittlerweile wieder zurück in Deutschland, bietet Niemann in diesem Buch einen Überblick über seine unglaublich vielseitigen Arbeiten. Hier wird New York mit Legosteinen erklärt, die Begeisterung seiner Söhne für U-Bahn-Pläne gekachelt im Badezimmer umgesetzt, oder mit kleinen Bastelarbeiten der Fall der Berliner Mauer nachgestellt. Die oftmals großen Themen werden dabei mit einer ganz wunderbar subjektiven Note versehen, was das Buch nicht nur für Profis in Sachen Illustration, sondern auch für alle anderen zur spannenden Lektüre werden lässt. 269 S., 22,5 × 16,5 cm, durchgehend farbig illustriert, 2012.

In diesem Buch geht es nicht um die vielen formschön designten und mehr oder weniger nützlichen Dinge, die professionelle Produktdesigner in namhaften Agenturen entwickelt haben. Stattdessen gibt es viele bunte Beispiele dafür, dass pure Notwendigkeit manchmal auch einen guten Designer abgibt. Ein Korkenzieher, der eine abgebrochene Türklinke ersetzt, oder allerlei Kleinmöbel aus den verschiedensten Materialien, diese Ideen sind nicht nur kostengünstig, sondern oft so banal, dass man fast vergisst, dass ihnen trotzdem eine Designidee zu Grunde liegt. Design von der Straße, Design aus teils ärmlichen Verhältnissen, von Leuten, denen im Augenblick ihrer Kreation mit Sicherheit nicht bewusst war, was sie da gerade erschaffen, und doch, zweifelsohne: Design! 216 S., 28,5 × 20,5 cm, durchgehend farbig illustriert, 2011.

Cause we got style! Dokument Press, Årsta (SE) dokument.org Die späten 80er Jahre. Ganz ohne Internet macht sich bis tief in die europäische Provinz eine Jugendkultur breit, deren Erkennungszeichen, Trainingsanzug und Sprühdose, unverkennbar sind. Das Phänomen Hip Hop begeistert junge Menschen von Skandinavien bis in die Schweiz, und dieses Buch zeigt, wie unglaublich cool sie dabei aussahen. Und was besonders fasziniert: Ganz ohne digitales Netzwerk ähneln sich die Uniformen und Gesten von Finnland bis in die DDR doch sehr. Man muss nicht dabei gewesen sein, nicht einmal die dazugehörige Musik gut finden, um in dieser Ansammlung bunter Turnschuhe und Graffiti nicht nur ein Stück Zeitgeschichte zu erkennen, sondern in erster Linie: verdammt viel Style! 144 S., 28,5 × 21,5 cm, zahlr. s-w & Farbfotos, 2011.

Slanted 19 — Reviews

158

Beschiss-Atlas Ludwig Verlag, München (DE) randomhouse.de Die Welt ist ungerecht. Soviel wüsste man auch ohne die Lektüre dieses Buches, aber die Details dieser globalen Ungerechtigkeiten werden einem beim Lesen erst so richtig bewusst. Die Journalistin Ute Scheub hat etliche haarsträubenden Fakten aus den Bereichen Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Umwelt zusammengetragen. Vervollständigt werden diese aber erst durch die sensationellen Illustrationen von Yvonne Kuschel. Immer wieder ertappt man sich verschämt dabei, sich selbst bei den größten Schweine­ reien der Menschheitsgeschichte noch an den zahlreichen Illustrationen zu erfreuen, die diese begleiten. Und das macht den Beschiss-Atlas nicht nur zu einem sehr informati­ ven, sondern auch zu einem sehr schönen Buch. 207 S., 22,5 × 17 cm, durchgehend farbig illustriert, kartoniert, 2012.


Selected Book Reviews slanted.de/themen/books Current State: Snowboarding Almost Anything, North Rockhampton (AU) currentstate.almostanything.com

The Most Expensive Restaurant Ever Built Sleeperhold Publications, Antwerpen (BE) sleeperholdpublications.com

Current State: Snowboarding ist eine Liebeserklärung an das Leben außerhalb der Pisten, voller Über­ raschungen, Emotionen und wunderbaren Fotos. Typopassage 5 SCHLEBRÜGGE.EDITOR, Wien (AT) typopassage.at

I Love Franklin Gothic viction:ary, Hong Kong (CN) victionary.com

Ovidiu Hrin gestaltete die fünfte Passage in Wien. Er kokettiert in seinen Arbeiten mit dem Unperfekten: Sein offenes Gestaltungsverständnis integriert den Prozess stets in das Endprodukt.

Jede Schrift hat ihre ganz eigene Aus­s trahlung. Der sechste Band der I love Type Serie, konzipiert von twoPoints.net, beschäftigt sich mit der Franklin Gothic.

Die vierte Ausgabe ist ein Taschenbuch, in dem Arbeiten von Künstlern vorgestellt werden, die eine durchgehende Storyline bilden. Jedes Kapitel steht aber auch für sich selbst.

Peter Granser – Was einem Heimat war Bücher und Hefte Verlag, Berlin (DE) buecherundhefte.de

Shaping Text BIS Publishers, Amsterdam (NL) bispublishers.nl Wie erstellt man ein Layout? Wie lesen wir? Welche Schrift passt am besten und wie wird mein Text leserlich? Shaping Text ist ein Must-Have für jeden, der sich mit Typografie auseinandersetzt.

In diesem Fotoband geht es speziell um die 100-jährige Landschaft auf der Schwäbischen Alb, welche 1939 zwangsgeräumt wurde.

Design in Question Lars Müller Publishers, Zürich (CH) lars-mueller-publishers.com

Das BILD Buch Taschen Verlag, Berlin (DE) taschen.com

Have I recently thought about design when I was having a good time? Diese und weitere Fragen stellten sich mehrere hundert Autoren, die nun in einem 420 Seiten dicken Buch von Vera Baur Kockot und Ruedi Baur zusammengetragen wurden.

Zum 60. Geburtstag der von vielen geliebten und gehassten BILDZeitung, veröffentlichte Taschen ein 11 kg schweres Buch im Überformat 53 × 73 cm, das ab Juni 1952 je eine ausgewählte, monatliche Titelseite in diesem Kompendium zeigt.

Freitag–Ein Taschenbuch Lars Müller Publishers, Zürich (CH) lars-mueller-publishers.com Wer kennt sie nicht, die Kulttaschen aus LKW-Planen?! Das kleine Buch illustriert anhand vieler Interviews die Firmenhistorie, gibt interessante Einblicke in Produktgestaltung, Herstellung, Vertrieb und Marketing.

Die Publikation des gleichnamigen Wettbewerbs, präsentiert die Gewinnerarbeiten und gibt Aufschluss, warum diese Publikationen zu den schönsten der Schweiz gehören.

Information Graphics TASCHEN Verlag, Berlin (DE) taschen.com

Less and More Gestalten Verlag, Berlin (DE) gestalten.com

In dem gewaltigen Informationsfluss um uns herum, der im Alltag interpretiert werden muss, fällt es uns nicht immer leicht, unsere Umwelt zu verstehen. Infografiken können uns mithilfe visueller Kommunikation dabei helfen, den Durchblick zu behalten und komplexe Themen wahrzunehmen und zu verstehen.

Die umfassende Werkschau zu Dieter Rams, Deutschlands einflussreichstem, lebenden Gestalter. Auf über 800 Seiten wird sein Werk in über 700 Fotografien und zahl­reichen Skizzen, Modellen und Prototypen abgebildet.

Skateistan Skateistan, Berlin (DE) skateistan.org

Die schönsten Schweizer Bücher 2011 Verlag Hermann Schmidt, Mainz (DE) typografie.de

Wie fühlt es sich an, eine der ersten Skateboarderinnen des Landes und zugleich ein Mädchen in einer konservativ muslimischen Gesellschaft zu sein? Slanted 19 — Reviews

159

Wear Your Face seltmann+söhne, Lüdenscheid (DE), Berlin (DE) seltmannundsoehne.de Das Buch zeigt 45 der bekanntesten Fotografen und Künstler, die sich kreativ mit dem Konzept Wear your Face auseinandersetzten.


Imprint

Production Printing E&B engelhardt und bauer Druck und Verlag GmbH Käppelestraße 10 76131 Karlsruhe Germany T +49 (0) 721 96226-100 F +49 (0) 721 96226-101 center@ebdruck.de www.ebdruck.de Paper

Publisher Slanted c/o MAGMA Brand Design Wendtstraße 4 76185 Karlsruhe Germany T +49 (0) 721 824858-50 F +49 (0) 721 824858-10 magazine@slanted.de www.slanted.de Slanted Magazine #19 Publisher MAGMA Brand Design GmbH & Co. KG Editors in chief (V.i.S.d.P.) Lars Harmsen, Uli Weiß Art-Direction Flo Gaertner, Lars Harmsen Managing editor Julia Kahl Editors Flo Gaertner, Lars Harmsen, Julia Kahl, Melisa Karakus Design Julia Kahl, Matthias Kantereit Assistance Melisa Karakus ISSN 1867-6510 Frequency 4 × p.a. (Spring, summer, autumn, winter) Slanted Weblog Editors in chief (V.i.S.d.P.) Lars Harmsen, Uli Weiß Managing editor Julia Kahl Editors www.slanted.de/redaktion

Iggesund Paperboard AB Head Office 825 80 Iggesund Sweden T +46 (0) 650 28-000 F +46 (0) 650 28-800 info@iggesund.com www.iggesund.com Cover Invercote Creato, 260 g/qm

Thanks

Distribution

Thanks a lot to all contributors of this issue. Special thanks to Indra Kupferschmid, Raban Ruddigkeit, Ian Lynam, Julia Sturm, Rudy VanderLans, Stefan Claudius, David Shields, Richard Kegler & Terry Wudenbachs, Maurice van Brast, Frank Wiedemann, Albert-Jan Pool, Panos Vassiliou, Peter Brugger, Andreas Frohloff & Ivo Gabrowitsch, Philippe Apeloig, Anne Tecklenburg, Michael Eibes & Olaf Leu Christoph Rambow & Thomas Marecki, Thomas Mäder, Ken Johnston. A big thank-you to all type desig­ ners and foundries who provided their fonts for this particular issue. Thanks also to Ahmed Badran (Iggesund), Saskia Rautzenberg and Andreas Spahn (Antalis) for their paper support, Thomas Appelius and Joachim Schweigert (E&B engelhardt und bauer) for their efforts and for the perfect printing!

National Distribution Julia Kahl T +49 (0) 721 824858-50 julia.kahl@slanted.de

Antalis GmbH Europaallee 19 50226 Frechen T +49 (0) 2234 2055-0 F +49 (0) 2234 2055-999 Germany info@antalis.de www.antalis.de

Stations and airports IPS Pressevertrieb GmbH www.ips-d.de International distribution Export Press SAS www.exportpress.com Distribution Switzerland Niggli Verlag, www.niggli.ch ISBN 978-3-7212-0854-2 Subscriptions www.slanted.de/abo Single Copies Slanted Shop www.slanted.de/shop Stores www.slanted.de/verkaufsstellen Amazon Marketplace www.amazon.de www.amazon.com Advertising

Inside Claro Silk, 135 g / qm Pop’Set 30 % recycled, fawn, 90 g / qm Tauro Offset, 80 g / qm Fonts

We offer a wide range of advertising possibilities on our weblog and in our magazine – print and online! Just get in touch. More information at www.slanted.de/mediarates Contact Julia Kahl T +49 (0) 721 824858-50 julia.kahl@slanted.de

Cover Compacta, 1963 Fred Lambert Linotype / linotype.com

Selection of DESIGN Awards for publications by SLANTEd

Text Visual section: Henriette, 2012 Michael Hochleitner Typejockeys / typejockeys.com

ADC of Europe 2010, 2008 ADC Germany 2012, 2011, 2010, 2008, 2007 Annual Multimedia 2008 Berliner Type 2008 (Bronze), 2009 (Silver) Designpreis der BRD 2009 (Silver) European Design Awards 2011, 2008 Faces of Design Awards 2009 iF communication design award 2007 Laus Awards 2009 Lead Awards 2008 (Weblog des Jahres), 2007 red dot communication design awards 2008 Type Directors Club NY 2011, 2008, 2007

Text section: Abril, 2011 Veronika Burian & José Scaliogne TypeTogether / type-together.com

The publisher assumes no responsi­ bility for the accuracy of all infor­­mation. Publisher and editor assume that material that was made available for publishing, is free of third party rights. Reproduction and storage require the permission of the publisher. Photos and texts are welcome, but there is no liability. Signed contributions do not ne­ cessarily represent the opinion of the publisher or the editor. Copyright Slanted, Karlsruhe, 2012 All rights reserved

Slanted 19 — Imprint Reviews

162


Familiengeschichten

Meine Eltern schenkten mir einen kurzen Vornamen. Hinzu kam ein Zweitname mit Bindestrich, den ich nie verwende. Von meinen beiden Patenonkeln bekam ich jeweils noch einen Namen hinzugefügt – einer davon sorgt hier im Süden der Republik für Heiterkeit. Hinrich ist gestorben. Arnulf lebt noch, habe ihn in meinem ganzen Leben aber nur 3–4 Mal gesehen. Mein Großvater, mitunter Gründer von Profamilia, hat 12 Kinder gezeugt, ein dreizehntes ist nach seinem Tod aufgetaucht. Auch er lebt nicht mehr. Als ich ihn nach einem seiner Ärztekongresse in einem Saarbrücker Hotel besuchte – er muss so um die 80 gewesen sein – saß er in einem zu groß gewordenen schwarzen Anzug auf dem Bett, die lackierten Schuhe ordentlich ausgezogen und neben den Nachttisch gestellt. Wir begrüßten uns. Ich fing an, von mir zu erzählen, fragte nach ihm. Nach einer Weile schaute er mich mit lächelnden Augen aus seinem durch den Krieg zernarbten Gesicht an (er muss ein sehr attraktiver Mann gewesen sein) und fragte verdutzt: »Wer bist denn du?« Er hat schlicht und ergreifend den Überblick verloren. So geht es uns auch, im Gewirr der Super-Schrift- familien. In vielen Ländern geht die Geburtenrate massiv zurück. Nur die Königshäuser (Dank an Ken Johnston /  Corbis) sind bedacht, für Nachwuchs zwecks Arterhalt zu sorgen. Schriftfamilien dagegen werden immer zahlreicher und vor allem umfangreicher. Ein Trend, dem wir etwas ambivalent gegenüberstehen, setzen doch viele Designer momentan eher auf Reduktion und gestalten ihre Erzeugnisse mit einem einzigen Schriftschnitt. Was soll das Ganze also? Braucht es diese feinen Nuancierungen?

Lars Harmsen für die Slanted Redaktion

Family Stories

My parents gave me a short first name. Then they added a second, hyphenated name, that I never use. From my Godfathers, I received another two names, which are comical in southern Germany. Hinrich is dead. Arnulf is still alive, but I only ever saw him 3 or 4 times in my entire life. My Grandfather, founder of Profamilia, had 12 children, and a 13th after his death. When I visited him in a Saarbrücken Hotel after one of his doctor conferences (he must have been about 80 years old), he sat on the bed in a black suit that was too large for him with his polished shoes neatly placed next to the nightstand. We greeted each other, I explain myself, and then asked him questions. After a while, he looked at me with smiling eyes and a puzzled face scarred by war (he must have been a very attractive man) and asked “Who are you?” He had simply lost track of himself. It goes with us too, in the jumble of mega type families. In many countries, there is a large drop in birth rates. Only the Royal Houses (thanks to Ken Johnston /  Corbis) are considerate of preserving their family lines. Type families, especially, are becoming more numerous and extensive. A trend we are somewhat ambivalent about, as current designers are equipping their products with a single font and even cuts. What is the point? Do we need these subtle nuances?

Lars Harmsen for Slanted editorial staff


Meine Eltern schenkten mir einen kurzen Vornamen. Hinzu kam ein Zweitname mit Bindestrich, den ich nie verwende. Von meinen beiden Patenonkeln bekam ich jeweils noch einen Namen hinzugefügt – einer davon sorgt hier im Süden der Republik für Heiterkeit. Hinrich ist gestorben. Arnulf lebt noch, habe ihn in meinem ganzen Leben aber nur 3–4 Mal gesehen. Mein Großvater, mitunter Gründer von Profamilia, hat 12 Kinder gezeugt, ein dreizehntes ist nach seinem Tod aufgetaucht. Auch er lebt nicht mehr. Als ich ihn nach einem seiner Ärztekongresse in einem Saarbrücker Hotel besuchte – er muss so um die 80 gewesen sein – saß er in einem zu groß gewordenen schwarzen Anzug auf dem Bett, die lackierten Schuhe ordentlich ausgezogen und neben den Nachttisch gestellt. Wir begrüßten uns. Ich fing an, von mir zu erzählen, fragte nach ihm. Nach einer Weile schaute er mich mit lächelnden Augen aus seinem durch den Krieg zernarbten Gesicht an (er muss ein sehr attraktiver Mann gewesen sein) und fragte verdutzt: »Wer bist denn du?« Er hat schlicht und ergreifend den Überblick verloren. So geht es uns auch, im Gewirr der Super-Schrift- familien. In vielen Ländern geht die Geburtenrate massiv zurück. Nur die Königshäuser (Dank an Ken Johnston /  Corbis) sind bedacht, für Nachwuchs zwecks Arterhalt zu sorgen. Schriftfamilien dagegen werden immer zahlreicher und vor allem umfangreicher. Ein Trend, dem wir etwas ambivalent gegenüberstehen, setzen doch viele Designer momentan eher auf Reduktion und gestalten ihre Erzeugnisse mit einem einzigen Schriftschnitt. Was soll das Ganze also? Braucht es diese feinen Nuancierungen?

Family Stories

My parents gave me a short first name. Then they added a second, hyphenated name, that I never use. From my Godfathers, I received another two names, which are comical in southern Germany. Hinrich is dead. Arnulf is still alive, but I only ever saw him 3 or 4 times in my entire life. My Grandfather, founder of Profamilia, had 12 children, and a 13th after his death. When I visited him in a Saarbrücken Hotel after one of his doctor conferences (he must have been about 80 years old), he sat on the bed in a black suit that was too large for him with his polished shoes neatly placed next to the nightstand. We greeted each other, I explain myself, and then asked him questions. After a while, he looked at me with smiling eyes and a puzzled face scarred by war (he must have been a very attractive man) and asked “Who are you?” He had simply lost track of himself. It goes with us too, in the jumble of mega type families. In many countries, there is a large drop in birth rates. Only the Royal Houses (thanks to Ken Johnston /  Corbis) are considerate of preserving their family lines. Type families, especially, are becoming more numerous and extensive. A trend we are somewhat ambivalent about, as current designers are equipping their products with a single font and even cuts. What is the point? Do we need these subtle nuances?

Clarendon

detnals

Breite halbfette Grotesk

ngised kifarg & eifargopyT

Akzidenz Grotesk

Neue Moderne Grotesk

Futura Helvetica

Avant Garde

Avenir

Bureau Grotesque

Lars Harmsen for Slanted editorial staff

91 repus seilimaf

Bell Gothic

Univers

Bell Centennial

Corporate ASE

slanted

Cheltenham

Typografie & grafik design

DIN

Demos Praxis

19 super families

Clearface Gill Sans

Syntax Frutiger

(o_O)

Trinité

Lucida Stone Proforma

Rotis Quay Sans

Scala

Officina

Legacy

Meta

Lexicon Quadraat

Lars Harmsen für die Slanted Redaktion

Thesis

Chalet

Mrs Eaves Miller

Rhode

Benton Arnhem

Bau Dispatch

Stainless

Titling Gothic Museo

Ludwig Adelle

Trilogy Fakt Mr Eaves Modern

www.slanted.de –– Typografie & grafik design

fall 2012 ——— ISSN 1867–6510 DE EUR 14 / CH CHF 25 / UK £ 16 / US $ 26 / Others EUR 16

Familiengeschichten

slanted 19 –– super families

Dax

Kievit Fedra

Sintesi

Heron

Tablet Gothic

Salvo

Seria

Fresco

Amplitude Unit

Nexus

Clan Greta Secca

Akko

Milo

Mr Eaves

Good

Abril Regal

Productus

Fago

Heimat

Pluto

Beowolf

Info

Freight

Sensibility

Sense

More

Tabac

Normal Centro

Projects p.3 Fonts p.25 Essays p.92 Interviews p.120 Index p.143 Reviews p.157 Imprint p.162


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.