02 fires bals
winter 2012/13 ——— ISSN 1867–6510 DE EUR 14 / CH CHF 25 / UK £ 16 / US $ 26 / Others EUR 16
ngised kifarg & eifargopyT
www.slanted.de –– Typografie & grafik design
Your Slanted team
detnals
slanted 20 –– slab serif
Slab!
slanted Typografie & grafik design
20 slab serif
Projects p.3 Fonts p.48 Essays p.107 Interviews p.120 Index p.145 Reviews p.157 Imprint p.162
detnal
Projects p.3 Fonts p.48 Essays p.107ngised kifarg & eifargopy Interviews p.12002 Index p.145 f i r e s b a l s Reviews p.157 Imprint p.162
Slanted 20 — Projects
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Yellow People Are Boring, William Pope.L, P 145
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Black People Are Taut, Blue People Are Fungent, Orange People Are A Book With Write Pages Writ On Them!!!!!, William Pope.L, P 145
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I AM THE CREATION OF YOUR IMAGINATION, Morag Myerscough, P 145 Going Gone Gorilla, Tom Lane & Ged Palmer, P 145
Alleluja !
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Prismatic paint type, Bang Bang holoalphabetic sentence & food diversity, Philippe Nicolas, P 145
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The Comedy Carpet, Blackpool, Gordon Young & Why Not Associates, P 146
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The Comedy Carpet, Blackpool, Gordon Young & Why Not Associates, P 146
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Das Böse kommt auf leisen Sohlen, Sarah Matuszewski, P 146
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Das Böse kommt auf leisen Sohlen, Sarah Matuszewski, P 146
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Drama Magazine, Sergio Alves & Angela Ribeiro, P 146 Museum | Hebrew Slab Serif Typeface, Eran Bacharach & Bee Creations, P 146
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Adventice 01 – An Issue About Architecture and Nature, Florine Bonaventure & Jennifer Niederhauser Schlup, P 146
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College Bomber, Ove Numrich, Jan Kapitän, Sebastian Bareis, P 146
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College Bomber, Ove Numrich, Jan Kapitän, Sebastian Bareis, P 146
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Palindrome Series 2012: Saippuakivikauppias, Danny Warner, P 146
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Caecilia poster, Tobias Küsters & Tobias Schneider, P 147 Palindrome Series 2012: Saippuakivikauppias, Danny Warner, P 146
CORBIS / UPI / Bettmann COME ON, COME ALL!
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CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
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CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
“Ho for Klondike!” Klondike Goldrush — Group of men posed on their boats on Lake Bennett. Undated. Prospectors Heading to the Gold Fields — Photographed by John C.H. Grabill, 1889. Five Chilkat porters pose with a miner and two oxen on the Dyea Trail, located at the head of the Chilkoot Trail, Alaska Territory, US, 1897.
Klondike prospector panning for gold. Undated.
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CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
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CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
Tackling a mountain in search of gold in the Klondike, Alaska, US, ca. 1898.
Goldminer panning in Northern California, US, ca. 1890.
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CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
Gold Miners — Ah Wige and Toohey, Chinese miners who lived on a branch of Ovens river in Harrietville, US. Undated.
Slanted 20 — Fonts & Type Labels
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Foltyn, Johannes Lang, P 147
Slab serif Type faces
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ORE SAN FRANCISO
GOLD RUSH
SaCRamenTO
ers 49 DREDGING DReam
NU GGET MOTHeRLODe Slanted 20 — Fonts & Type Labels
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Spade, Patrick Griffin, P 147
exquisit Brix slaB regular
Der Kaiser von Kalifornien
Oregon Brix slaB extralight italic
Brix slaB Black
Mother Shipton Nugget Brix slaB regular condensed italic
Rabbit Creek Klondike Goldrush — Alaska, Aleutian Island, US. Undated.
Brix slaB Bold
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Brix Slab, Hannes von Döhren & Livius Dietzel, P 148 CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
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Kondolar, Ekaluck Peanpanawate, P 148
FF Karbid Slab, Verena Gerlach, P 148
CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
Gold Prospectors Near the Chilkoot Summit — Prospectors pause near the Chilkoot Summit during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896–1898. Border of Canada and Alaska, US, October 7, 1897. Photographed by LaRoche.
Prospectors on Trail — A group of ladden prospectors on a trail in the Yukon Territory during the Klondike Gold Rush, 1897.
ORE 1884 Gold Legendary The California Gold Rush began at Sutter’s Mill, near Coloma.
Clearwater River Pike
Klondike George Washington Carmack & the fourty-niners
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Madawaska, Ray Larabie, P 148 CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
Klondike Gold Rush Scene — Klondike Goldrush. View of Chilkoot Pass, scales and summit, British Columbia, CA, 1898. Slanted 20 — Fonts & Type Labels / Photo Story
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CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145 Heron Serif, Cyrus Highsmith, P 148
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Gold, Michael hagemann, P 149 Museo Slab, Jos Buivenga, P 149 Suomi Slab SERIF, Tomi Haaparanta, P 149 Bandera Pro, Andrij Shevchenko, P 149
METALL
GOLD AUFBRUCH & GOLDFIeBer*
“ReeD’S GOLD MINe 1803”
qUeensland
№3
SCHATZSUCHe {MothEr Shipton NUggEt}
BLACk HILLS
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Stanzer, Igor Labudovic, P 149
Don-a-wok, Chilkoot Chief and Chief Isaac — Don-a-wok, the Chief of Chilkoot and Chief Isaac pose outside of their mountain pass home with a child. Some Tlingit Native Americans who lived near the trails passing through their territory charged exploring newcomers to pack their belongings for them. The sign over the door reads Issac, Chief of Chilkoot. Packing a specialty, 1897.
Pilgrim’s Rest Ευγενή μέταλλα Magnificence Underground Калифорнии South Dakota Goldgräberin
Slanted 20 — Fonts & Type Labels / Photo Story
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FF Unit Slab, Erik Spiekermann, Christian Schwartz & Kris Sowersby, P 150
CoMe on, Come all!, Corbis / UPI / Bettmann, P 145
Typolyrics Harald Geisler, Victor Balko, Sara Westermann
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Song: Fire in Cairo Band: The Cure Font: Clarendon Font Design: Robert Besley, 1845 Label: Fann Street / Linotype
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Fire in Cairo, Harald Geisler, P 153
fontnames illustrated Alexander Egger, Anne Vagt, Jan Schwochow, Lukas Feireiss, KOA Das Neue wächst am Rande! Alles verändert sich; Schriften, Moden, Zeitgeist. Als sich vor etwas mehr als einer Dekade die Illustration neu erfand, war noch nicht absehbar, wieweit sie kommen würde. Mittlerweile bereichert sie klassische Literatur, hippste Werbung, Grafikdesign und Streetart. Immer öfter ist sie sogar in Galerien anzutreffen. Sie vermischt sich mit Fotografie und Typo, mit Bewegung und Raum. So entstehen ständig neue Formen und Blickwinkel.
Für diese Ausgabe der Rubrik Fontnames Illustrated habe ich deshalb einige Künstler aus angrenzenden Bereichen eingeladen. Unter anderem einen Buchgestalter, einen Maler, Plastiker und Streetartisten, einen Infografiker und sogar einen (sic!) Kurator. Viel Spaß an diesen ganz bewusst anderen Perspektiven, wünscht Raban Ruddigkeit
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Raban Ruddigkeit, P 154
Fontname: Telemark Font Design: Juri Zaech, 2011 Label: Juri Zaech
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Telemark, Alexander Egger, P 154
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Old Mac Donald, Lukas Feireiss, P 154
Fontname: Old Mac Donald NF Font Design: Nick Curtis, 2011 Label: Nick’s Fonts
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Fontname: Wurlitzer Pro Font Design: Steve Jackaman, Ashley Muir, 2010 Label: Red Rooster Collection
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Wurlitzer Pro, KOA, P 155
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In a Window of Prestes Maia 911 Building, Julio BitteNcourt, P 155
In a Window of Prestes maia 911 building Julio Bit encourt
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In a Window of Prestes Maia 911 Building, Julio BitteNcourt, P 155
FH Aachen FB Gestaltung Boxgraben 100 52064 Aachen KLASSE KARTAK_SLANTED.pdf
T +49.02 41.60 09.5 15 10 info@design.fh-aachen.de www.design.fh-aachen.de 1
07.10.12
19:58
PETRANIAN
Yes, the Mysterious Type is Really Your Type, So Try Dezcom’s Type
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Essays & Reports, Interviews, Index, Reviews and Imprint
Mathieu Lommen ist Kurator für Grafische Gestaltung und Typografie an der Universtätsbibliothek Amsterdam und hat dort im Rahmen der Sondersammlung Zugriff auf über 70 Meter Schriftproben sowie Orginalzeichnungen und -entwürfe. Darüber hinaus publiziert er über Typografie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts und gibt uns in seinem Essay einen Einblick in die Geschichte deutscher Egyptienne-Schriften.
Mathieu Lommen
Form folgt Architektur Deutsche EgyptienneSchriften des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts und ihre Schriftproben
In den 20er und 30er Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts entwickelte sich die Neue Typografie (auch Elementare Typografie). Dieses Pendant zum Neuen Bauen stand für Funktionalität, Maschinisierung, Normie rung (DIN) und die Anwendung der Fotografie (Typofoto). Selbstver ständlich erforderte eine neuartige Typografie neuartige Druckschriften. Außer den Serifenlosen erlebte die Egyptienne ein Revival, vor allem in der Werbung. Beide Schriftarten waren im zweiten Jahrzehnt des 19. Jahrhunderts erstmals in (englischen) Schriftproben zu sehen gewesen. Anhand der Schriftprobensammlung der Universität von Amsterdam wird hier das “Branding” der neuen deutschen Egyptiennes skizziert. Jan Tschichold, der einflussreichste Vertreter der Neuen Typo grafie, brachte es 1925 wie folgt auf den Punkt: »Elementare Schriftform ist die Groteskschrift aller Variationen: mager, halbfett, fett, schmal bis breit.« Deutschland war das Zentrum dieser typografischen Erneu erung, und verschiedene deutsche Schriftgießereien veröffentlichten neue serifenlose Linearantiquas. Diese wichen stark von den damals gängigen Entwürfen wie Akzidenz-Grotesk und Venus ab. 1926 präsentierte Ludwig & Mayer in Frankfurt am Main als erste Gießerei eine solche geometrische Serifenlose, die von Jakob Erbar gezeichnet worden war. Eine besondere Schriftprobe von etwa 1930 begründet den Entwurf folgendermaßen: »die neuen bauformen sind nicht mehr architektur im alten sinne: konstruktion plus fassade. das neue kleid ist nicht mehr kostüm. die neue schrift ist keine kalligraphie. häuser, kleider, schriften werden in ihrer form durch die einfachsten elemente bestimmt.« Mit der Erbar-Grotesk wollte Ludwig & Mayer Anschluss an die Maschinenästhetik der Moderne finden. Dieser Wunsch zeigte sich auch in der Kataloggestaltung des bekannten Walter Cyliax, mit Spiralheftung und einem Umschlag in Graumetallic. Am Bauhaus, das übrigens auch eine absolute Kleinschreibung wie in obigem Zitat propagierte, wurde ebenfalls mit geometrischen Schriftformen experimentiert. Kurz nach der Erbar-Grotesk erschien bei der in Frankfurt ansässigen Bauerschen Gießerei die eng verwandte Futura (1927) von Paul Renner, wobei jedoch die Erbar-Grotesk und andere ähnliche Serifenlose jener Jahre vermutlich auf Renners bereits Anfang 1925 veröffentlichtem Konzept basierten. Die Kabel (Gebr. Klingspor, 1927) von Rudolf Koch wurde zwar als eine auf einem Raster entwickelte Schrift präsentiert, war in Wirklichkeit aber nicht so neutral. Die Frankfurter Schriftgießerei D. Stempel fertigte 1928 gleich zwei neue geometrische Serifenlose: die bis heute populäre Neuzeit-Grotesk und die Elegant-Grotesk. In der Einführung zur Schriftprobe Elegant Grotesk wird wiederum eine Verbindung mit der modernen Architektur hergestellt: »Wie die neue Bauweise einen gleichen gemeinsamen Grundzug offenbart, so kann auch die auf allen möglichen Beschriftungsgebieten angewandte modernisierte Grotesk als allge meine Zeiterscheinung angesehen werden.« Stempel muss in jenen Jahren gute Geschäfte gemacht haben, denn die zehn Zentimeter dicke Hauptprobe (ca. 1.200 Seiten), die 1925 aus Anlass des 30-jährigen Firmenjubiläums erschien, ist nur mit dem American specimen book of type styles von 1912 (ca. 1.300 Seiten) zu vergleichen, der umfang reichsten Schriftprobe, welche die American Type Founders Company jemals veröffentlicht hatte. Es scheint ein recht nahe liegender Schritt, aber dennoch machte Stempel ihn zuerst, nämlich die Vorstellung einer Futura-Doppelgän gerin mit rechtwinkligen Serifen (im Jahr 1929): Die Memphis war die erste von einer Reihe geometrischer Egyptiennes, die noch weniger Dick / Dünn-Variation als ihre Vorgängerinnen aus dem 19. Jahrhundert aufweisen und in der Strichstärke optisch einheitlich scheinen. Dieses Formprinzip sollte den Anwendungsbereich der Schriften übrigens beträchtlich einschränken. Die nach der altägyptischen Stadt Memphis benannte Schrift war ein Entwurf des Stempel-Mitarbeiters Rudolf Wolf. Eine frühe Probe lancierte die Schrift wiederum mit einem Hin weis auf die moderne Architektur: »In ihrem Aufbau und Stil der Formenwelt der Technik und des neuen Bauens verwandt, bietet diese Schrift der modernen Typographie gesteigerte Ausdrucks-Möglich keiten.« Es waren, was nicht ungebräuchlich war, Alternativzeichen vorhanden. Man hatte die Broschüre in der hauseigenen Druckerei gesetzt, gedruckt und vermutlich auch geheftet. Eine prestigeträchtige Publikation mit dem Titel Die Memphis in der Welt-Praxis (1933?) ließ zahlreiche konkrete Anwendungsbeispiele aus der internationalen Werbebranche sehen: »Diese Veröffentlichung ist ein Erfolgsbericht, eine Schaustellung der Verbreitung und Auswirkung des MemphisGedankens.« Die Schrift wurde in der Zeit zwischen 1929–43 zu einer umfangreichen Familie ausgebaut. Die Memphis-Buchschrift wurde 1932 gleichzeitig für die Linotype-Setzmaschine adaptiert. Natürlich blieb die Konkurrenz nicht untätig. Schon 1930 erschien die Beton bei der Bauerschen Gießerei, die inzwischen an der Erweiterung der beliebten Futura weiterarbeitete. Die fette Beton war ein
Slant e d 2 0 — Essay s & R e p o rts
Mathieu Lommen, P 155
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Memphis. Stempel, 1930 (?). A4. Gestaltung der Probe: Herbert Thannhaeuser. Sondersammlungen UvA.
Die Memphis in der Welt-Praxis. Stempel, 1933 (?). A4. Sondersammlungen UvA.
Beton: ein Bauelement für moderne Typografie. Bauersche Gießerei, 1930 (?). 27 cm. Sondersammlungen UvA.
S l a n t e d 2 0 — Essay s & R e p o rt s
Mathieu L ommen, P 155
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10 × 10
Jos Buivenga Jeremy Dooley Michael Hagemann Daniel Hernández Cyrus Highsmith Jonathan Hill Ray Larabie Nina Stössinger Ryoichi Tsunekawa Jim Wasco
We asked 10 questions to 10 type designers from all over the world. Read an interview with 100 answers from 10 different points of views.
1. In early 19th century the genre of serifenbetonte LinearAntiqua emerged, broadly known as Egyptienne, Slab Serif, Serif or Mécanes Square outside German classification. What do you have in mind when thinking of this epoch? Jos Buivenga First thing that I think of is the Industrial Revolution and the need for typefaces that could deliver a message with a punch so (mass)products would sell better. Jeremy Dooley The 19th century is often associated with the Industrial Revolution, grit and dirt, technological achievements and sociological change. Perhaps my best exemplar of this was a slab serif designed in concert with Robbie de Villiers for the city of Chattanooga, which is primarily known as a railroad city. A lot of inspirations went into this font, history, current design vernacular, and conceptually where the type needed to go. My early sketches were very industrial, and given Chattanooga’s history it was almost a no brainer for Chatype end up as a slab serif font, although my co-designer took it conceptually in a technological direction. Michael Hageman The first thing I think of is the human condition of that time period, mankind has always had a never ending thirst or desire for more knowledge which drives us to improve ourselves, as faster printing techniques were invented the dawning of the information age was beginning. As magazines and periodicals became more popular standard book type made the pages appear too flat, so what we know today as dimensional contrast in page layout and design was something the people of the 1800s had to learn through experience. In the theory of dimensional contrast something comes forward, something recedes and something remains neutral, when Egyptienne was introduced it was the perfect design in lettering to bring headlines on the page forward so they get noticed and read first. Daniel Hernández Mainly in technology development matter, a paradigm shift in how to use and design fonts, adapting to social and historical changes of that time. Larger characters, designed for new areas, even thicker serifs for small sizes. A new way to approach the market from a typographic
Slanted 20 — Interviews
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style, appropriate it and make it evolve. Something similar happens today with the increase in demand of web fonts, although at a more global level, and not focusing on a particular style. Cyrus Highsmith Factories with giant smoke stacks turning the sky black with soot. Jonathan Hill Prior to actually designing my first slab serif typeface my imagination would go back to the disused factory’s in my home town of Sheffield. The worn out cobbled streets, the crumbling factory walls and the broken iron gate with a forgotten name embossed out of a heavy weight slab serif. My thoughts today are more towards reading the Guardian newspaper on a Saturday morning and admiring the use of a great modern day slab serif. Ray Larabie Serifs always varied in thickness so it’s only natural to take that thickness to extremes. I find the classification silly as you can’t prove the lineage of the idea of using thicker serifs. Serif thickness is a charac teristic which all font designers experiment with ... like a cartoonist experimenting with bigger heads and bigger hands. Nina Stössinger Romanticism; the Congress of Vienna; the deaths of Goethe and Beethoven; industrialization: machinery, factories, cities beginning to grow. Advertising becoming loud. Posters. Newspapers. Big display type, often used in adventurous pairings. A bit later, revolutions across Europe. The dawn of modern society, in a way. Ryoichi Tsunekawa Speaking of 19th century, it was the epoch that Imperialism and Industrialism accelerated after the revolution of the previous century. I think it is natural that the eye-catching or high-impact design, advertisements gained power rather than historical and classical. Jim Wasco The early 19th Century of history has had a major influence on my own art and music. The Egyptian / Antiqua types Clarendon and Egiziano, conceived around this time, are some of my favorite designs. This is also the time of Picturesque and Impressionistic music. I appreciate com posers like Wagner, Debussy, and Erik Satie to name a few. Early in the 20th Century came the Usonian society and the birth of jazz – two great forces of inspiration in my work. Egyptian square serif typefaces became popular such as the Memphis (Stempel), Rockwell (Monotype) and Stymie (ATF) designs. These were the predecessors to the modern slab serif faces like the Lubalin Graph design of 1974. 2. What are the reasons for designing a slab serif? Jos Buivenga I guess that really depends. My reason for designing Museo Slab was that I thought that it could be a valuable addition to the other Museos. Jeremy Dooley I’m very interested in making complete type systems. It is all about giving designers more choices. The more complete a family is, the more choice the designer is able to have in making selections. Slab serifs are very trendy. Reacting to the marketplace and what designers are looking for is another reason why I am designing a number of slab serifs. Society plays into this as well. In the United States, there is still a belief that serifed copy is easier to read. Of course, this is less prominent in Germany and Europe. Studies have shown that this is not the case with the most recent generation, who as in Europe are used to seeing a lot of sans serif type and they are able to maintain high reading speeds. Michael Hageman To allow the page designer to adjust the dimensional contrast of the page by bringing headlines forward with a bold slab serif font while paragraph text remains neutral or is lighter in contrast compared to the whole page. Daniel Hernández The main reason for designing a slab serif typeface, is to make a personal interpretation, from Latin America, from its history, which is far removed from the history of the countries with typographic tradition, with great teachers who support them, with many books and specialized schools. It is to build a font from what you’ve collected from here and there, from emerging, contemporary masters, from a tradition with no more than 20 years of experience mostly. Cyrus Highsmith When I designed Dispatch in late 90’s, there weren’t many new slab serifs. I saw a chance to add something to the typographic ecosystem. Recently, they have become almost required as a secondary headline face in magazines and newspapers.
Jonathan Hill The reason I began to design a slab serif was initially out of self development, being a self taught type designer it was a great way to further expand my skills and knowledge. As the project developed I became aware of certain groups and individuals put off by the slab serif style which as a result altered the direction of my design. It was fairly simple that the key reason would be to engage a new breed of user and make the design of the slab serif more relevant to today’s market place. Ray Larabie While slabs are always in fashion, specific types of slabs go in and out of style. If you track the popularity of Lubalin Graph, there were certain times where it was hot and times when it was not. New slab serif fonts, need to be designed to reflect the zeitgeist. Nina Stössinger It’s still a genre of great potential. Technically, compared to more delicately-featured text faces, the robustness of slab serifs makes them suitable for a wide range of tasks and contexts. Aesthetically, the stability, robustness and dependability that slab serifs tend to radiate – without necessarily sacrificing friendliness – make them relevant and useful voices in design. And I believe there still is quite a bit of lessexplored ground in this genre. Ryoichi Tsunekawa When researching old catalogues published in the 19th century, slab serifs have attractive and fascinating power. The enchantment is worthy to be designed or to have a revival in the 21st century – even today. I’m one of the designers who are obsessed with the magic of slab serifs. Jim Wasco My most recent slab serif, the Neue Aachen Pro family, was based on the original Aachen Bold weight designed in 1969 by Colin Brignall for Letraset. Aachen was so popular, and used so much, that I thought I would be doing the world a good service by designing a large family of weights to go along with it. What the world needed was more Aachen. Another slab serif design was the custom typeface for Gatorade I did a few years ago. This design was all built around their single slab letter G logo. It’s a thrill to see my Gatorade typefaces all the time in stores and sporting events on television where they advertise the drink. 3. What is important to consider when designing a slab serif? Jos Buivenga For me it was important that Museo Slab didn’t feel constructed, because it started as Museo Sans with slab serifs added. Also I wanted Museo’s friendliness to be present in he slab which made me change certain design decisions. Jeremy Dooley Slabs get optically dense very quickly. You need to make sure that in your planning phase that you have enough space to stick in your serifs, especially if your design is a multiple master. Michael Hageman There is a zone to consider for the horizontal stroke thickness compared to the vertical stroke thickness, examining the most popular selling slab serif fonts you will find that the horizontal strokes are 85 % to 93 % the thickness of the vertical stroke. I would consider this zone or working range to be more pleasing in appearance to the font buyer or user. Daniel Hernández I think it is essential to distinguish the use of the typeface, either a display font or text one, or even both. Because that way, we can make important decisions, such as height in relation to the ascending, width and thickness of serif, if finishing type will be Antique or Geometric, whether the italics will be real or slanted, etc. Cyrus Highsmith The spacing is very important. With slab serifs, the different white gaps between the serif are very visible part of the design. Jonathan Hill Keep things simple, the aesthetic nature of the slab serif can be complex so it’s important not to over elaborate it’s form. Use subtle changes in shape to create a strong, refined and balanced design. Ray Larabie The way other shapes interact with serifs is critical, especially in heavier weights. With thin slab serifs, it’s not really that much different from designing a regular serif font. When you get to the heavier weights, all kinds of problems appear. When you put a heavy slab capital H next to a capital O, some negative space problems can’t be solved except by changing the thickness or width of the slab serifs. That’s why it’s important to let the spacing, determine the initial dimensions of the serifs. Another example is the way a fat slab serif can end up causing unwanted
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I used the methods of the architect to make typography
Daniel Hernández Mainly through my website hernandeztype.com and latinotype.com the company site. Although undoubtedly the greatest promotion I’ve had is through the MyFonts newsletter, reaching millions of designers. Cyrus Highsmith Mostly, I try to let the work promote itself. Jonathan Hill The work is mainly promoted on the internet through my own websites such as The Northern Block and various other font distributors including MyFonts, Monotype & Linotype etc., More recently I’ve started to use various blogs and social media websites including StumbleUpon, Tumbler and Facebook but the greatest source of interest has been created from the site Behance.net. To see my latest typefaces please visit behance.net/JonathanHill. Ray Larabie I mention new font releases on Twitter. Nina Stössinger Mostly online (own website and via social media); my typeface actually has its own microsite and Twitter account. Also with regard to my typeface, I must say FontFont has been a great and active partner to work with, also in the field of promotion and marketing. Ryoichi Tsunekawa I do not promote very much – are there some people who would like to promote my work? Jim Wasco The company I work for, Monotype Imaging, promotes their type designers on their websites. We also hold workshops and give talks at type and design related conferences. At TypeCon Seattle, I organized a hand lettering workshop and in New York I did a collaborative talk with Si Daniels from Microsoft about Making Fonts for Software Companies. At The Type Directors Club in New York and a recent How Design conference in Boston, I did a talk on the making of Elegy and Aachen designs. 10. From what do you make your living? Jos Buivenga Type design. Jeremy Dooley I am a fulltime typeface designer. Michael Hageman I currently earn a living at typographic design. Daniel Hernández Designing, producing and marketing typography. Cyrus Highsmith Drawing typefaces, teaching, and making art. Jonathan Hill I’ve been creating typefaces for six years balanced with the commitments of my commercial freelance design work. This year I became the creative director of The Northern Block type foundry with the idea to work solely on producing new typefaces and developing employment opportunities for future type designers in the UK. Ray Larabie I design fonts for a living. Nina Stössinger I run my own graphic design agency; type design has just recently begun to be a somewhat relevant part of my business, but mostly it’s the likes of logos, books, posters, flyers, and the occasional website that pay my bills. Ryoichi Tsunekawa Basically, my typefaces make me survive. Jim Wasco My job is working as a Senior Type Designer at Monotype Imaging in San Mateo, California. I am proud to be involved with a company committed to fonts and technologies that help the world communicate.
Vormgevers, SMA, 1968.
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Wim Crouwel
Wim Crouwel is an icon of graphic design – born in 1928 in Groningen, the Netherlands, he is now living in the capital city of Amsterdam. Regarded as one of the leading designers of the twentieth century, Crouwel embraced a new modernity to produce typographic designs that captured the essence of the emerging computer and space age of the early 1960s. Peter Brugger and Philipp Louven, both graphic designers, met Wim Crouwel in his house in September 2012 and conducted this wonderful interview for Slanted.
Peter Brugger & Philipp Louven: You were born at the end of the 20s – what an exciting time. How did you grow up? Wim Crouwel: Well, I was not aware of the excitement of the time when I was born, but my father was a lithographer from the printing business and also an amateur painter; my mother was German and we had a nice youth. I have one brother and one sister; we grew up in a very warm family. My father was happy being a lithographer; so he went quite well through the depressing time of the 30s. All these things came in later as a kind of influence on my development as a designer. My real memories set in during the war. I was twelve-years-old when the war started and seventeen when the war was over. This was a very important period; a depressing time but still interesting. Later on, when I became a designer, the end of the 20s became most influential on my whole development. I wasn’t aware when I was young, but it started just after the war that I got interested in these things. In the beginning you studied Fine Arts at the Academy Minerva in Groningen. Afterwards you took evening classes in typography at what we now know as the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Why did you become a graphic designer instead of an artist? That’s another long story but I can explain it to you. Our academy was a very art-directed school. We learned oil painting, watercolor painting, etching, lithography and sculpture. There was no typography, no photography, no design – nothing at all. So I thought I would become a painter. I did painting – landscape more or less – more abstract land scapes until about 1953. And then, with an exhibition in my birthplace Groningen, I finished that. I said no. In the meantime I discovered typography. When I left the art school, I moved immediately to Amsterdam expecting a better future there than in the north of Holland. I visited two well-known designers, Otto Treumann and Dick Elffers, the latter brought me in contact with a company specialized in exhibition design, which was looking for a designer. I was a bit worried because I had never done exhibitions before. But that was no problem for them, since I could help executing the work of Dick Elffers. That was a fantastic offer in a period where it was difficult to get a job. So I entered that company and I was helped a lot by the director. Within a year I had a kind of crash course in stand and exhibition design. Among others we worked on a traveling exhibition where displays were staged on two ships that were intended to bring the American way of industrialization closer to the Dutch to help the country after the war. The design was by Swiss designers and an Italian architect. They all came over to Amsterdam, so suddenly – within a year – I was surrounded by Swiss and Italian designers who I communicated with; they had a great influence on me. I discovered that I didn’t know anything about typography, that’s why I decided to go to the evening classes of the Rietveld Academy to learn typography. Entering that company made me quit painting and go on with design. There was another thing that made me interested in architecture. My art school in Groningen was in a very modernist building, built in 1923 by the same architect who built the famous Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam. A steel, glass and concrete structure. It was a fantastic school and, while studying there, I was very much influenced by this building I loved so much. I read a lot of magazines on architecture and design. Slowly during these years, while going to the evening classes, I became a designer. An artist as a person who self-actualizes himself in the works and a graphic designer who works most of the time for commissioned projects are two persons with two different attitudes. You worked mostly for museums in the art and cultural sector. Wasn’t it sometimes hard to bring these two views together while working – for example – for an artist exhibition? I didn’t feel any problem with that. I became a designer and didn’t want to be an artist anymore. I always made a strong division between artists and designers; the artist having a commitment to himself, having to put himself to work and having no direct client. It is a very lonely job being an artist. I wanted to be a designer, who needs a commission. I cannot work without a commission. That’s the main difference between the two. I feel very well within this commissioned direction. A large part of my work is for cultural institutions. But on the other hand, during the whole period of Total Design, starting in 1963, we did a lot of very straight-forward commercial work for larger companies, corporate identities and these things. I felt well doing both because it was a nice balance between the real hard commercial work and the cultural work having a lot of freedom. We had lots of commissions because it was a high-time in economics. Always when it comes to Wim Crouwel it comes to the term Modernism. What does it mean to you? Modernism came first of all through my time at art school and when I discovered the design world and started reading about design and
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Bauhaus architecture. I was absolutely influenced by the pureness, the utility and the clearness of the whole period of Modernism. The story of the Bauhaus very much influenced me from the beginning, and I read all the books by Jan Tschichold and all these people. Not that I wanted to repeat what they did but it was the whole idea, the whole free thinking, the experimental way and especially the straightforwardness of Modernism that coined my work. Did you have any people at the beginning of you career, that you admired or were especially influenced by? Let’s say did you have heroes or a hero? I definitely had heroes during my period in that company between ’52 and ’54, the two years that I worked there. I did a job on a large exhibition here in Amsterdam on the river Rhine. It showed all the cities along the Rhine. In this exhibition I met people from Basel, from the beginning of the Rhine and all the various cities along the Rhine to Holland. Karl Gerstner worked for the Basel stand. Like in my case, it was also his first job to work for an exhibition. So that was my first example next to the two Swiss designers, Ernst Scheidegger and Gérard Ifert, and the Italian architect Lanfranco Bombelli. They were my early teachers I esteemed very highly. But the real hero came with Müller-Brockmann. I met him in 1957 when I became a member of the AGI. His posters for the Tonhalle were examples for me for the up coming stream of the abstract art, and the influence of the abstract art on poster design. Considering all these people and these friendships, I must say that Müller-Brockmann had the largest influence on me. I admired his work so much. In the mid 50s you became known for your work for the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven and later on for your work for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Both museums were run under the same director, Edy de Wilde. How important was this relationship to you? That was very important. I must say, he was my most beloved client. I have been working for him for 30 years. In 1955 I became a teacher at the art school in s’Hertogenbosch in the south of Holland. The director there was Jan Van Haren, he was a friend of Edy de Wilde, who was the young director of the Van Abbe Museum and who needed a designer for his posters and catalogues. Van Haren introduced me to Edy de Wilde and in ’56 I started to work for him. Working for him was very interesting; he never discussed my proposals. I showed him my sketches and proposals and he always agreed. But when the works were printed he started with his criticism. He was always critical afterwards. Being criticized afterwards helped me a lot when doing the next work for him. When Edy de Wilde became the director of the Stedelijk Museum in ’64 he asked me to come with him and I worked with him until 1985. What are the main differences between the designs you did for the Van Abbe Museum and the designs you did for the Stedelijk? There are many differences. My Van Abbe period was a fantastic period for my development as a designer. I had a lot of freedom and met all these artists and they all had their influence again. It was my idea to translate the content of the artist’s exhibition into my view on it, into a specially designed word. I thought that the public, if they see a kind of logotype of the exhibition, they would remember and then visit the exhibition. But in the same time I had to find out my way of doing the typography of the catalogues and I tried this first of all with sans serif typefaces because of my love for the Swiss typographic direction. I absolutely like the straight-forward sans serif typefaces but one couldn’t have them all in Holland. You could get the Gill, the Monotype Grotesk and some others but for instance not the Akzidenz Grotesk. I tried all of these types. I tried catalogues with the Gill. I tried catalogues with the Monotype Grotesk. In my opinion they were all replacements of the Akzidenz Grotesk. So every time I was experimenting with another typeface, another composition, shifting the type on the page until you have a clear solution. When working for the Stedelijk Museum it was my aim to create identifiable work for them, it had to be clear that the work came from exactly this museum. Therefore I needed a corporate identity that was strong and visible at first sight. I decided to use one typeface and stopped experimenting because in the meantime the Helvetica and the Univers were available. In my opinion the Univers is more straight-forward and it has the whole range of possibilities from narrow to wide and from thin to bold in a beautiful arrangement. This was the modern typeface that I needed. It was the first typeface with the x-height on the same level in all weights. I could do various possibilities in typography with only one typeface. Secondly, I decided to use a grid, highly influenced by Müller-Brockmann, of course. I did not use a grid in the Van Abbe Museum period, all the time I invented the catalogue again. For the
Stedelijk I used the same grid for posters and catalogues. With that I could make three columns, two columns, five columns and I could absolutely do everything I wanted. I worked in another way than Willem Sandberg who was the famous museum director before De Wilde and also the museum’s graphic designer. He designed differently than me and he made very recognizable catalogues, very human, nice with paper and color. But I wanted to distinguish myself from Sandberg and his design. As a young designer in that period I wanted to tell my own story. It was a kind of step forward from the Van Abbe Museum and against Sandberg. I have been working for the museum for twenty years and that was sometimes very difficult because I loved my point of view. I could do various catalogues and posters but there were moments when I thought I would like to get rid of the grid, rid of the typeface because I got sometimes mad about it. But it was always the fight between aestheticism and straight-forward design. I often did a design and I thought afterwards it could have been better if I had followed my eye and not followed that grid. But I kept going on until the end. Your designs are strongly influenced by architecture beside graphic design itself. With using different grid systems the very constructive approach of architecture seems to be applied on graphic design. Why have you decided to become a graphic designer and not an architect? It happened, I went to art school and not into architecture. The whole idea of architecture came when I was in that exhibition company working with 3-dimensional things. My love for architecture started really at that moment and also with my love for the art school’s building in Groningen. The older I get, the more I think, if I could start all over again I would be an architect. Fortunately my son became an architect and he built the new Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, so I am very proud of that. It is the museum where he sort of grew up in and which I have been a designer for. It is a kind of family affair. Do you see yourself as the “typographic architect” many people call you? Yes, I feel more or less as a typographic architect. The strange thing is that Piet Zwart, the famous designer from the 20s and the 30s, called himself a typotect and that’s a great name. Of course I couldn’t use it myself. Anyhow I used the methods of the architect to make typography. In ’63 you founded Total Design with Benno Wissing, Friso Kramer and the Schwarz brothers. Why and how did you start TD? The Schwarz brothers were both in the company of their father. Both of them worked in foreign countries and came back to Holland and then that company was sold. So they were without a job. We all had one friend – Benno Premsala – who was a very famous designer in Holland. In a discussion between the Schwarz brothers and Benno Premsela, they told him that they wanted to do something in the cultural field. So Benno brought the Schwarz brothers together with Kramer, Wissing and me and suggested we should start a collaboration. And we decided that Paul Schwarz, the older brother, did the general management and Dick Schwarz was the financial man. Kramer, Wissing and me led the three different design teams within the same design company. That’s what we learned from Fletcher / Forbes / Gill design studio and when we started in ’63 we visited England, first of all we visited F.H.K. Henrion, the famous designer who I also knew from the AGI. We asked Henrion about the reasons why a lot of English and international companies go to England to have their corporate identity designed and not to Holland, such as the Dutch company KLM, which also chose Henrion. He stated that large institutions like to work with institutions because the work has to go on and this is often not possible in a small studio, if one gets ill, for example, the whole working process stops. Then we went to Fletcher / Forbes / Gill, who just started their studio and they told us about their plans of having a group with three different teams. They were three very different personalities with different ideas and their own teams. Later on Pentagram came out of that. So we adapted Henrion’s ideas combined with Fletcher/Forbes/Gill’s approach on TD. That was a great success. We were the first large office in Holland. We all came in with one or two assistants at that time. So we started with twelve people and grew to thirty people. In the ’60s we got all the commissions we wanted. They all came to us, it was fantastic. Over the years you and your colleagues from TD had a big influence on the Dutch design in general. How has it come to this? Was there one project during this time that was outstanding for you? If yes, please tell us about it. Outstanding for me was the work for the Stedelijk Museum together with my team, I had two assistants in my team. As I said before, during all these years the Stedelijk with its director De Wilde was my most important client. But as TD we got, for instance, the SHV, that is a large,
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internationally operating company in Holland. They did shipping, petrol, coal and super markets, an enormous company. They came to us for a corporate identity with all these subdivisions. That was really the biggest client we had. It was right from the beginning and all the years, about 25–30 years, we did all the work for them. They were very important. Actually they were clients of Benno Wissing, each team had its own clients and together we made TD very big. Indeed, we had a great influence in Holland, in the whole field of design. Sometimes there was a lot of criticism because we had the nicest clients ,we did for instance also the national post office. Because of that people were jealous, of course. So there was criticism. Fortunately, this came to an end during the ’70s because more offices were founded in Holland and there was competition. And competition is very healthy. In ’67 you designed the typeface the New Alphabet. At that time the western society experienced a big social and cultural change. Was this work in a way your contribution to make the world a little better? What was the idea behind the New Alphabet? Well, first of all as a designer you always think you make the world better. It was a crazy idea but we thought the world could not do without us. The New Alphabet was a result of my interest in the modern techniques and developments. Belonging to modernism the interest in technique and the technical solutions was always there. With my father I visited around 1965 the Drupa in Germany. In that exhibition I saw the first digital type setter, the Hell-Digiset from the Hell company in Kiel, it was fascinating. They showed for instance an output of the Garamond in a digitized form. What I discovered was that it looked like the Garamond but it was a modified Garamond. When you saw the small typefaces in comparison to the bigger faces there was an enormous difference between them especially in the round shapes. The straight lines were always straight lines but as soon as it was getting around for the larger sizes you had more dots available and for the smaller sizes you just had a limited number of dots available. That made me think, “If this is our future and the most modern technique we have to deal with for at least 20 years, then it is worthwhile designing a typeface that’s suits the machine instead of the machine suiting the typeface.” After that I received a lot of criticism from colleagues who told me that the machine should follow the typeface and not the other way around. I said, “Yes, but we have to do with this technique for many years, so why not try it?” I made my proposals only with straight lines and diagonals with always the same dot structure and published the New Alphabet in a book and as soon it came out more criticism came from people. Gerard Unger, who was my assistant in Total Design at that period, proposed to me to make it a readable typeface following my lines. And he did this readable typeface in more or less my way of thinking and it was printed in a second booklet. It was an interesting period because it was so new. Beside much criticism there was also a lot of admiration. I was invited all over the world to give lectures around 1967 when the Alphabet came out. It was a period that I was so much influenced by this whole idea of digitizing that all my designs of the Stedelijk Museum were always done with digitized images. That is why in 1968 I also made the poster Vormgevers, my most well-known poster for the Stedelijk Museum, a poster for a design exhibition. In my view this was design about design, and I wanted to show my way of how I do design. There I made my grid for the first time visible and constructed a digitized type within this grid. If we have a closer look at the concept of the New Alphabet it is a very significant typeface design in a period in which big changes in technology took place. But still it was kind of visionary at that time. Is there any concept or typeface design that plays a similar role and is outstanding in representing this era which is so much dominated by rapid changes in technology? I would say Univers because it was also absolutely new. The whole concept was so new and the idea thinking about typefaces to my opinion was really a shock when it came out in 1957. Also other proposed typefaces in that period of digitizing like typefaces for bank checks for example, they all had a great influence. There were several experiments in that period as an answer to the new electronic equipment. Around ’74 you designed a typeface for an Olivetti typewriter. Tell us a bit about this task and also what happened later to this typeface which is nowadays well-known as Gridnik?
I got a commission from Olivetti to do a typeface for their new typewriter together with Müller-Brockmann and two other designers. We all had to do a special typeface for a restricted electric typewriter with more than one width, not mono-width. When we finished this it was accepted and then they quit the electric typewriter and introduced a new electronic typewriter where they could use all the typefaces they wanted. So I got my typeface back and I used it for the Dutch post stamps and I never used it anymore afterwards. Since it was not available I had to do it all by hand. The digitizing was done by The Foundry in the late ’90s. I didn’t use it for thirty years to the end of the ’90s and then suddenly I met David Quay who was teaching in Germany and often came to Amsterdam. He made a proposal to digitize my New Alphabet. They introduced various typefaces from the ’20s that they re-edited and digitized and he wanted to add mine to their list of classic typefaces. I agreed and a little later he asked me to do the same with the Olivetti typeface for various weights. For a larger part the work has been done by David and we discussed typeface by typeface and how it should be done because I didn’t know the programs for typeface design. But that was David’s daily business and later on he also proposed to do also the typeface from the Vormgevers poster. Some of these typefaces I only made one word of and he had to develop the whole alphabet. By now we just released another one from a catalogue from the ’50s that also had just one word on the cover. I did never expect that there is so much interest in these typefaces now. These typefaces are so typical for that particular time but maybe this is it what people are interested in. They became more or less timeless in a way. I personally can see from my posters and their atmosphere exactly when they were done and for me there is a connection to things that happened in that period. The Vormgevers poster and the work for the Art Directors Club Netherlands were designed in a relation to what I discovered in that time. That one for the Art Director Club was done since the barcoding was invented and that’s why I used all these lines. So it was always something that made me do what I did, and it was connected to a certain period. The fact that I was always very much interested in technical new inventions is maybe part of my way of thinking about Modernism, something that makes me tick all the time. Mostly all alphabets and letters you drew are based on a grid. Why is it like this? Did you ever have plans to draw an alphabet without using a grid? Never. I would get completely lost if I did that. The problem is that even with exhibitions and with all the things I do, I always need a grid. I always use gridded paper to do my sketches. I look for the basic structure, the basic type of grid that you need for a certain job. For example for the Rietveld book, I look at the material, I look at the sizes of the material, I read the story. It had to do with headings, it had to do with the number of pictures against the page size, against the text on the pages. All that brings together the structure of the book. It follows a more or less logical path but also your aesthetic feeling plays an important role. My basic plan is the structure and then I start filling in the structure. I couldn’t work in another way, not even in my exhibitions. If I do an exhibition on paintings for instance I see the room, the galleries of the museum, the sizes of the walls of which I make drawings. I consider the height of the visitors viewpoint, the heightline of the objects. Should it be on the middle line. If it is for instance an exhibition on landscaping then I look at the horizons, should they be all on the same line. If it is on portraits should the eyes then all be on the same height? There is always something that makes you bring in a certain structure for your plan. That’s why I use sometimes very regular structures, sometimes very irregular structures. In TD we invented more or less structures. You see it in the works I made for the Stedelijk Museum but also for other companies. We always printed them on large volumes and we had a whole bookshelf full of gridded paper. That was of course the trick, or let’s say the dangerous part of it, that you too easily look into your shelf full of printed grids. You’d better not do it that way, but surely sometimes you couldn’t resist. In the mid ’80s you became the director of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. How did you shift from the work as a graphic designer to the work as a museum director. Wasn’t it a big change? What was your main role there? It was an enormous and very unexpected change. I was professor in Delft in the University for Industrial Design. I was a part-time professor from 1972 to 1978 and then I went back for two years to TD full-time – it was half-time in TD and half-time in university. In the ’80s they asked me to become a full professor and I said to myself, “Ok, I have done so much in TD, let’s finish that and go for full time to Delft.” And the industrial design department there was growing and
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the “cloud” we use today for access to digital information, that is the photographic “body” of the future Ken Johnston
Ken Johnston is the Director of Historical Photography for Corbis and responsible for all the beautiful photographs we were able to present in the current and past issues of Slanted magazine. Lars Harmsen conducted an interview with Ken Johnston in October 2012 to get to know more about these unique archives.
Lars Harmsen: Ken, how did it come, that you started working for Corbis, owned by Bill Gates? Ken Johnston: I began working at the Bettmann Archive in 1985, back when it was on 57th Street in Manhattan. It was my first real job after art school and it turned out to be a good place for me, to be surrounded by millions of images, but in the context of commerce not art. Bettmann had recently opened a downtown branch which handled all the news archive material from United Press International, and there was this sense of unseen images being rediscovered out of that collection all the time. Uptown Bettmann would get some interesting walk-in clients (I remember working with John Cage, John Updike and ... Fred Gwynne, an actor who played a character named Herman Munster on 1960’s TV), and it still had a slightly scholarly feel to it even if everything was for sale. Downtown was a whole different attitude – there was an oldschool cigar-chomping UPI newsroom guy working the newswire plus a mix of city kids manning the files and the darkroom. It wasn’t too corporate and there wasn’t a ton of money. The mix between the tiewearing uptowners and the black-jeaned downtowners made for peculiar, occasionally fruitful social mash-ups. It was a microcosm of New York and I learned a lot. Corbis purchased Bettmann in 1995 and began the long haul of digitizing and preserving the collection. The purchase of Bettmann flung Corbis head first into commerce. Prior to this it was primarily about research and development for computer “content”, gathering images and text for various projects including CD-ROMs. Bettmann must have looked like chaos at first, but over the years and with the purchase of a few other agencies it all started to make sense. You are now director of historical photography. What is your work about today? What are your goals? I work with many fabulous photographers and collections where the photos are more than a generation old. We’ve found that 20-years marks the point where the shift from “current” to historical is the most obvious, in terms of what clients expect. On the photographer side I work with people like Steve Schapiro and archives including Conde Nast that send in images on request or as they locate work in the collections. And I also work with the massive archive that Corbis owns most of it from Bettmann. We keep the millions of Bettmann prints and negatives in a 10,000 square foot cold-storage unit in Pennsylvania, and I go down there a few times a year. I like the archive itself as much as the photos in it, the way it looks and smells and even feels – the hundreds of cabinets, the old mimeographed captions, the glass plate negatives, etc. (see images 1, 2) I miss the archive when I’m not around it – I’ve worked with it over half my life. Do you remember “rare finds?” The archive is interesting in that regard – it does not yield famous finds easily. This is primarily because the archive has always existed in a business context, a positive exploitative realm where the best stuff constantly circulated. So the famous images like Rosa Parks on the bus or Einstein and his tongue or the men lunching on the beam, you don’t often come across images equivalent to these at random – they were culled out decades ago. But that’s really something I like about the archive ... it is filled with literally millions of routine images of not-sofamous people and events but which every day become more and more fantastic as their reference points in current reality go away. So I might pull a picture of some now unknown publicity seeker standing on a street somewhere and the clothes, the street and the very character of the film itself might as well be a million years old, it is so removed and ancient. But these images, these details inform the whole. That’s my romantic / esoteric reply anyway – I should also say that Corbis daily retrieves relevant images from the archive, ones that clients need. But I didn’t answer your question. I’d say one of the most interesting images I “discovered” – one that apparently had not been looked at since it was taken in the 1930s – was of the bloody hand of a dead New York gangster holding an ace of spades (see image 3). I leave the interpretation to somebody else, though ... How did the founder of the Bettmann Archive, Otto Bettmann, get all those images from? How did it start? Otto Bettmann was a librarian, a collector and a businessman. He was born in Leipzig in 1903 (he died in Florida in 1998). After getting a degree in cultural studies and art in 1927 he worked at a few libraries around Germany, including the Prussian State Art Library in Berlin. While working, he came up with a clever method of cataloging images, creating little file cards that included a photo thumbnail of the image, metadata and keywords. This is very interesting because that’s a lot like what a place like Corbis do now in the virtual realm. So Bettmann was very forward-looking in his methods. In the 1930s in Germany he tried to start his own image licensing company but was blocked from doing so
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because he was Jewish. He was able to pack up his images (and cards) in a couple of steamer trunks and move to New York. The story goes the Nazi border guards saw the trunks full of pictures, said he must be some sort of nut, and let him go through. The Bettmann Archive became the first commercial historical picture archive once it was established in New York. It very quickly became self-sufficient and eventually profitable. His first clients included the magazines LIFE and Look and the Book-of-the-Month Club. Bettmann was a sharp marketer and was friends with many top New York graphic designers. The original Bettmann Portable Archive, published in 1967, is a beautiful example of mid-sixties info-graphic design and a cleverly “disguised” catalog of wares. It presents a sort of low-key psychedelic time travel: it looks like both 1867 and 1967 at the same time. I should clarify that many of the images we now associate with Bettmann actually come from the United Press International archives, which were folded in under the Bettmann brand name in 1985. UPI was for most of the 20th century the #2 newswire service behind the Associated Press. It was a worldwide conglomeration of newsmen, including photographers, chasing stories as they occurred. Otto was a collector, deliberately and painstakingly accumulating the history of the world in images through bookish, scholarly research. UPI photographers were in comparison men of immediate action, chasing leads passed to them by the head office or scouting on their own. But Otto and the UPI newsmen were ultimately doing the same thing: documenting the world. So it turned out to be a fortuitous combination. Why did the Archive moved form NY to Pennsylvania? You were part of that page of history. How did it happen? It’s a long story ... in the 1980s it was very apparent that the UPI film portion of the Bettmann Archive was self-destructing, and we had to do something drastic to save it. The plastic negatives in the archive – about 4.5 million objects – were literally turning to vinegar. Vinegar Syndrome as it is called is common in old collections of negatives, a sort of spreading “infection” where acetate plastic molecules burst into vinegar molecules which then land on other acetate molecules and cause them to burst. Ours was a very bad case according to a number of preservation experts we brought in. The only simple “cure” is to slow the molecular activity in the negatives by bringing the temperature down around them. So we needed a cold storage facility, and fast. We tried rather diligently to find, even build, something in NYC but it was much too complicated and very, very expensive. Henry Wilhelm, cold-storage expert par excellent knew of and recommended the Iron Mountain facility in western Pennsylvania. It had everything we needed, so in 2001 we carefully packed everything up and moved it. The facility is in a former limestone mine and there are 3 full-time staffers working directly with the collection plus a number of New York researchers putting through requests. And the mine itself alongside the archive is a rather sublime place if you like that sort of thing. What is today so special about the Bettmann Archive, compared to other archives? I would say “that it exists at all” because it was not uncommon for commercial archives to just be thrown away, or portions of them destroyed when, say, the pictures in them were deemed old news or when for example an insurance agent determined the physical weight of the collection was a liability. When you open some of the cabinets containing the older UPI stuff you can see cigarette burns across the tops of the negative envelopes where some ancient employee left their smoldering cigarette while they looked for a picture – the whole thing could have gone up in smoke decades ago. Otto Bettmann took care of his stuff, no question, and it’s really with UPI where the tragedy could have been. This is not to suggest that the UPI people didn’t care – in fact every single UPI person I’ve ever spoken to from back then has been very passionate about the photographs and the archive. What I mean is, rather, that short-sighted business decisions could have been made by, I don’t know, some isolated accountant somewhere in the organization who determined they could save costs by eliminating the rent on the storage loft where the archive was held ... and splash, the whole thing gets dumped into the East River. So we are lucky that never happened. And lucky it went to Corbis because there was the will to seriously invest in its care at a level only museums and such ever could before. The scale of it is unique as far as American news archives go, it’s depth and breadth. I believe it is the largest, most intact news archive left in the United States. And it of course contains an outrageous variety of images. In this Slanted issue we present some early advertising posters. How did those advertising posters and flyers came into the Corbis collection?
Most are things Otto collected over the years. Otto’s desire was to locate any and all images on a subject he was interested in, be it a photo, an illustration or an advertisement. It’s one thing I’ve noticed about Otto’s approach, and you see it elsewhere coming out of Germany in the 20s and 30s where there’s the idea that to describe a subject you should look at all the evidence so to speak, at both the so called high and low aspects of culture. So Otto would surround subjects with images. I also think Otto just liked old ads and he emulated them to some extent in his own graphic projects like the Portable Archive. It makes sense he would like ads using images – that was his business. Is it possible to get originals? Corbis doesn’t sell these directly to consumers at the moment. A few personal questions: A picture is more than a thousand words? Only until the next one comes along. Then they crawl back into themselves, waiting for new eyes. What kind of theme you like particularly? I work with so many images of so many types, taken at all different levels of control and intention, from highly-finessed studio shots to on-therun journalism. And every type of photo film, translated to pixels. My job consists of selecting images based on what I think somebody else will want to see, for the market, so I have to look at images broadly. It is hard to say just one theme … My personal tastes – not necessarily what I rely on when I select for Corbis – that’s difficult! Images I find myself looking at longer than others ... usually have a lot of detail ... I was recently looking at a section of a photo from the 1930s of a man with a mop, at the trace of figure eights left by the wet mop on the plank floor, the atmosphere of the room. Somewhere in my silly painter’s heart I want every grain or pixel asserting the duty it’s charged with, of representing something, of telling me about it. But just saying this leaves out whole other types of work I admire, images with a great amount of trickery in them, bad information, self-asserting pixels. So I cannot settle on a theme ... Which photographer you love for which pictures? Oh, they are all good; it is just a matter of context. I like the Sugimoto theaters, the detail and that their subject is about literalizing the depiction of time that all photos are. And that they end in light. I am also very intrigued by what used to be called “stock” photography, images made for the middling-end of the commercial market by outfits like Philippe Gendreau (see image 4) or H. Armstrong Roberts. Among other things they represent a sort of “genre” painting of the 20th century. It’s a kind of coarsely functional photography that continues to flood the world today under new, more complicated guises. Photography in a hundred years will … Analog photography has a body, so to speak, the original piece of film. Digital photography lives as data only, in computer memory storage. With analog film we have access to a material object that contains traces of the mechanical and social machine that produced an image. I look at negatives to ascertain how old they are, if they are originals or copies, or if they have been altered after the initial exposure. The actual object informs the image it holds. The body of a digital photo is in this regard actually more limited, it’s traces harder to track down. The future will be cloudier as the actual digital data is scattered around servers – the “cloud” we use today for access to digital information, that is the photographic “body” of the future. As for images themselves, I can’t discern any “wishes” in current photography that might be fulfilled in the future in terms of style or subject. I mean, wish in the sense that, say, the iPhone is a fulfilled wish from the Dick Tracy-era, or from Guillaume Apollinaire (in a story like Le Roi-Lune). I don’t think photographic subject matter will change, in the same sense that what you see today in photographs is essentially what was already in photography 100 years before now: portraits, landscape, etc. – people seem to want to see these things captured. There is an obvious wish for more veracity in representation, (but to get there takes more and more untruth). So I can see photography right now wanting to be 3-dimensional, to be touchable, to be literally encompassing, and that will happen. And we hope there are some new Modernists to break it down, to tweak with its reality, to expose it’s “body.”
Slanted 20 — Interviews
Ken Johnston, P 145
141
The rich, full-bodied style of Clarendon Text Pro (2007) takes its primary inspiration from the classic mid-19th century English slabs originally seen in the work of Figgins and Besley. The italics take their cue from the very first attempt at a true italic companion to the roman Clarendon, Novarese’s 1955 Egizio typeface. This design works for display just like the classic ones did, but its main raison d’être, through revised proportions and re-conceptualized shapes, is its functionality as a serious immersive reading text face. Patrick Griffin worked in film production for 16 years, then decided to follow his lifelong passion for typography, and co-founded Canada Type in 2004. Since then his work has produced bestselling typefaces and helped the branding and products of companies like Apple, Disney, the BBC, the New York Times, and events like the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. He is also a typog raphy and type design teacher and a regular contributor of typography-related articles to design publications around the globe.
p 53 Font: Brix Slab HVD Fonts, Berlin (DE) hvdfonts.com
Hannes von Döhren & Livius Dietzel Brix Slab and Brix Slab Condensed are an extended family consisting of 24 fonts. It was designed by Hannes von Döhren & Livius Dietzel in 2011. Brix Slab is a robust slab serif family with subtle details. It’s optimized for longer texts and highly readable in small sizes. Brix Slab is intended to be used in applications like magazines, newspapers and digital devices. It also works great as a corporate typeface. 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. Born in 1979, Livius Dietzel studied Visual Communication at the University of the Arts in Berlin as well as in London and Barcelona. In 2008, he graduated in Fons Hickmann’s Design Class. Beside his work at MetaDesign, he works as an art director and type designer. Livius has received honours like the reddot, the iF Award and the Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the Type Directors Club New York. Together with Hannes von Döhren he designed the typefaces Brix Slab, Livory and FF Basic Gothic.
p 54 Font: Kondolar Cadson Demak, Bangkok (TH) cadsondemak.com
contemporary artists. Verena has lectured in type design, typography and graphic design at designakademie berlin, htw Berlin, btk Berlin, and gives lectures and workshops about typeand graphic design all over the globe.
p 55 / p 120–124 Font: Madawaska Typodermic Fonts Inc., Nagoya (JP) typodermicfonts.com Ekaluck Peanpanawate ekaluck.com Kondolar (2010) is an impact slab serif font with a simple geometric skeleton, straight sides and gently curved horizontals. That squarish silhouette combines very well with the short, sturdy serifs and well mixed of symmetrical and asymmetrical forms. Some letters like K, Q, R each has special ligature that can make interest ing texture and melodic rhythm when using and suitable for both text, display and web font. After graduating with BFA from Bangkok University and MFA from Chulalongkorn University, Ekaluck started working as an independent graphic designer and became a type designer because of his true passion for typography. Ekaluck also worked as an instructor for many design schools and universities in Thailand. He joined Cadson Demak foundry as a type director in 2006 and designed many custom fonts of leading Thai companies and magazines.
p 54 Font: FF Karbid Slab FontFont, Berlin (DE) fontfont.com
Interview: 10 × 10
Ray Larabie about.me/raylarabie Madawaska (2008) doesn’t have any specific historical models. It was designed to be a slab serif with non-specific historical flavor. It was never intended to have any kind of semiserif aspect. I made the lowercase somewhat condensed compared to the capitals and found that full serifs made the letter-forms look congested. Rather than resorting to the traditional optical tricks to lose weight, I removed serifs wherever it seemed balanced. Madawaska bears some relation to an earlier gonzo-historical sans serif called Divulge. Typodermic Fonts Inc. is a Japanese font company based in the city of Nagoya. President and designer Ray Larabie is a Canadian living in Japan. He’s been making fonts since 1996 and continues to release new fonts. His wife, Chikako assists with font development and marketing.
p 56 / P 120–124 Font: Heron Serif Font Bureau, Boston MA (US) fontbureau.com Verena Gerlach fraugerlach.de FF Karbid (1999) was originally inspired by a German storefront lettering from the 1930s. Using it as a starting point, I then disseminate its spirit into a family of well-behaved but energetic text faces. In 2011, the typeface has been redesigned an extended: it has now ten basic styles plus Text, Slab and Display versions. Eventually, the new slab version joined the family. It has a sober, journalistic character, inspired by 1920s’ magazines typography (like Memphis, etc.). The strong serifs give the typeface a proper standing and significance. It has more contrast than the sans serif version, to keep legibility and balance. Verena Gerlach was born in Berlin and studied Visual Communication at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee. Shortly after finishing art school in 1998, she founded her own studio (fraugerlach) for graphic design, type design and typography. Beside all kind of typographic print works and typedesign, Verena also art directed several video clips and worked on the typographic production for international
Sl a nt e d 2 0 — I n d e x
People and Projects
148
Interview: 10 × 10
Cyrus Highsmith fontbureau.com/people/cyrushighsmith Steadfast and no-nonsense, Heron (2012) is always ready to go to work. It began with a Joe Heroun commission for Men’s Health inspired by industrial, machine-made letters. Unlike other type with mechanical influences, Heron is a refined, versatile family, capable of doing the job in both headlines and small text. Heron Sans and Serif are born of hard iron and steel, but galvanized with Cyrus Highsmith’s warmth and energy.
In 1997 Cyrus Highsmith graduated with honors from Rhode Island School of Design and joined the Font Bureau. As Senior Designer, he concentrates on development of new type series. As faculty member at RISD, he teaches type design in the department of Graphic Design. He lectures and gives workshops across the United States, Mexico and Europe. Eye Magazine called Highsmith “one of the truly original new voices in American type design.”
p 57 / P 120–124 Font: GOLD FontMesa, Naperville IL (USA) fontmesa.com Interview: 10 × 10
to see a Museo Slab (2008) that logically completed the suite. The sturdy slab serifs com bine well with the family’s friendly geometry, resulting in a readable, versatile typeface. Jos Buivenga is very passionate about different things like painting, trying to make the best espresso and listening to music but nothing challenges and rewards him more than designing type. If he would ever strand on a deserted island he would still draw alphabets in the sand even if there was no one else to see it. He is the founder of the Dutch one-man exljbris Font Foundry through which he releases and offers his typefaces. For 15 years, his online friends and fans could follow the development of his typefaces and download the results at no cost. In 2008, while still working as an art director at an advertising agency, he released his first commercial typeface Museo with several weights offered for free. That strategy paid off and Museo became a huge bestseller. A few typefaces and one bankrupt employer later, he now calls himself a full time type designer.
p 57 Michael Hagemann The Gold font family (2011) started out as a multi-weight version of the Bruce type foundry Gold Rush font with the shadow lines removed however after release the font didn’t favor well with the customers. I put an additional four months work into the design redrawing it into a font that people would like, which included, a large set of over eight hundred alternate letters that give the font user the ability to create a more custom look to their page design. Before designing type fonts I worked in my family’s swimming pool construction company, in the winter months I was a commercial photographer in the Chicago area and also produced photos for Automobili Lamborghini where I built a temporary photo studio at the Lamborghini factory in Italia along with photographers Richard Galvan and Ugo Seattone. I’m a self taught type designer and became interested in type design as a hobby, I continued my studies and later turned type fonts into a business.
p 57 / P 120–124 Font: Museo Slab exljbris Font Foundry, Neede (NL) exljbris.nl Interview: 10 × 10
Font: Suomi Slab Serif Suomi Type Foundry, Helsinki (FI) type.fi
Tomi Haaparanta type.fi I made Suomi Slab Serif (2009), when a friend of mine complained that all typewriter types are rounded, and especially American Typewriter has an almost too slick an appearance. Suomi Slab Serif has the glyph shapes similar to typewriting, but the serifs, terminals and connections are crisp and sharp. Tomi Haaparanta was born in Finland in 1967. He has studied Graphic Design at the University of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, and also at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, where he discovered type design during a short course held by Phil Baines. He still holds a grudge against Baines for that. Tomi Haaparanta has been making typefaces for the past twenty years. He has considerable experience working as an Art Director for several agencies. Tomi has also worked as a type designer in HEL, where he designed typefaces for many Finnish and international clients.
Jos Buivenga The Museo super family started out as a semiserif and branched out into the sans-serif genre with a clean sans. When I was working on Museo Sans I also did first tests with slab serifs. After the sans was finished I started working on the slab and when that was ready I was happy Sl a nt e d 20 — Index
People and Projects
1 49
p 57 Font: Bandera Pro AndrijType, Berdyansk (UA) myfonts.com/foundry/AndrijType
Andrij Shevchenko andrij.com.ua This square serif typeface (2011) is a real work-horse. It is a modern tool for text design: extremely legible, pan-european multilingual (Latin, Greek and Cyrillic), well shaped. It catches attention in headlines of posters and magazines or makes reading comfortable in plain texts. Bandera is Spanish for “flag.” And Bandera is a symbol of Ukrainian fighting for freedom for many years. The typeface was chosen by MyFonts as Text Family of January 2012 and selected as “Best Of” at Ukrainian National design contest in September 2012. Andrij Shevchenko was born and still lives in Berdyansk on the Azov seaside. He worked as a programmer, designer, calligrapher and then started to design fonts. He’s very interested in the Cyrillic past and hopes in a great Cyrillic future. He always loved to exhibit, to discuss and to teach at Ukrainian typography festivals. One year ago his Oksana super-family won the 1st prize from an Ukrainian type contest. Interview at myfonts.com/newsletters/cc/201202.html.
p 58 Font: Stanzer FaceType, Vienna (AT) facetype.org
Igor Labudovic typehouse.at Stanzer (2012) first started as part of our diploma 2010 (it was called Stanley at that time). The basic idea behind this typeface is that it is fully stencil usable, and, unlike other stencil fonts, does not require any bridges (except for the O and Q). Almost every letter can be sprayed without inserting planks. However, Stanzer also offers the display weight Block, which is only suitable for print or online usage. Igor Labudovic is an Austrian graphic & type designer. He studied graphic- and communi cation design at the Graphische in Vienna. During the final year at school, he started his typeface Brilliant, which he later published trough the type foundry FaceType. Continuing with the masterclass at the Graphische, he worked on several projects and his second typeface Vendetta. Besides school, he worked as an intern at bauer concept & design.
Favorite Publications by Orell Füssli, Krauthammer, Zürich (CH)
Orell Füssli, Kramhof Abteilung Krauthammer Filialleitung: Elke Curschmann Abteilungsleitung Krauthammer: Mirjam Kühnis Füsslistrasse 4 8001 Zürich Schweiz T +41 (0) 848849848 books.ch orders@books.ch Montag bis Freitag 9–20 Uhr Samstag 9–18 Uhr Orell Füssli Krauthammer ist eine Spezialabteilung innerhalb der größten Buchhandlung in der Stadt Zürich. Hier eröffnet sich dem Kunden die ganze Welt der schönen Bücher und Zugriff auf das aktuelle Sortiment der Themenbereiche Architektur, Design, Fotografie, Kunst, Mode und Interior Design.
Questionnaire Denken Sie, dass Magazine und Bücher immer noch den gleichen Stellenwert als Informations medium innehaben wie vor zehn Jahren oder sind Bücher heut zutage vor allem Kunstobjekte? Das Informationsangebot sowie die permanente Verfügbarkeit von Information ist heute weitaus größer als vor einem Jahrzehnt. Der Stellenwert traditioneller Printmedien verändert sich insofern, als diesen eine zunehmende Diversifikation digital publizierter Medien ergänzend oder konkur renzierend gegenübersteht. Im gleichen Maß wie die Digitalisierung entmaterialisiert, wächst aber das Bedürfnis beim Konsumenten nach der haptischen, sinnlichen Rezeption, die das exzellent gestal tete Kunstbuch oder das DesignMagazin als Objekt bietet. Für diese Annahme spricht die tatsächliche Angebotsvielfalt von SubkulturMagazinen, wie etwa Fantastic Man, Apartamento oder 032c sowie die jährlich steigende Verlagsproduktion von visuellen Büchern. Was denken Sie, sind die Gründe dafür, dass die unabhängige Kleinstverlagsszene wächst und wächst? Technische und / oder kulturelle Gründe? Ursächlich sind wohl beide Aspekte. Technisch betrachtet war es nie einfacher als heute publizistisch zu agieren. Social-Media-Netzwerke mit der Transparenz des Internets erleichtern dem Verleger den Markt zutritt und den Kontakt mit der anvisierten Zielgruppe direkt und schnell. Spannend wird es dann, wenn wir als gut informierte Buchhändler eine selektive Auswahl dieser beson deren Publikationen ergänzend anbieten können, damit das Erlebnis des Entdeckens den Besuch unser er Buchhandlung immer wieder zur Freude macht. Wie hat sich der Buchhandel in den letzen Jahren gewandelt / angepasst? Wie sieht dessen Zukunft aus? Wir erleben gegenwärtig den Beginn einer digitalen Revolution, deren Ende nicht absehbar ist. Doch ganz gleich, ob der Konsument die Printausgabe einer Publikation oder dessen iPad-optimiertes Pendant wählt: Er wird auch in Zukunft bereit sein, einen angemes sen Preis zu zahlen, wenn gut redigierte, mediengerechte Inhalte diesen rechtfertigen. Meine Erwartung ist eine zunehmende Differenzierung des Marktes hinsichtlich digitaler Medienformate gegenüber den teils exklusiven, hochpreisigen Verlags produkten, die traditionell hand werklich auf hohem Niveau konzipiert und vertrieben werden. Dass wir als Buchhändler auch künftig partizi pieren, wird eine spannende Aufgabe unserer täglichen Arbeit bleiben.
INDIA FANTASTIQUE Thames and Hudson, London (UK) thamesandhudson.com
DRAWN BY INSTINCT Gingko Press, Berkeley CA (US) gingkopress.com
25 Jahre währt die Alliance der beiden indischen Couturiers Abu Jani und Sandeep Khosla. Eine aufwändig gestaltete Ausgabe in zwei Bänden im stylisch verzierten Schuber zelebriert diese künstlerische Zusammenarbeit. Ein Teilband zeigt spektakulär inszenierte Mode fotografie und führt märchenhaft anmutende Haute Couture vor. Auf handwerklich höchstem Niveau gefertigt, werden die traditionell ornamentbestickten Roben und Kleider, die farblich intensiv leuch tenden Textilien zur Garderobe für die internationale High Society und die Celebrities des Bollywood Glamours. Der zweite Teilband präsentiert exklusive Interieurs, die eine Verbindung von Luxus und authentischem Ethno-Look zu eigen haben. Ein einzigartiger Stil – eine einzigartige Buchausgabe. 616 S., 32 × 25 cm, farbig, 2 Bände im Schuber, Leinen, 2012.
Mit der Präzision einer wissenschaft lichen Zeichnerin illustriert die in San Francisco arbeitende Künstlerin Tiffany Bozic. Was die Grafik ein zigartig macht, ist die Kombination von Naturstudien bizarrer, exotischer Flora und Fauna mit surreal meta phorischer Symbolik. Geburt, Leben und Vergänglichkeit sind die – zum Teil autobiografisch – inspirierten Themen, welche in den naturhisto rischen Zeichnungen von Ernst Haeckel ein Vorbild haben. Das Buch mit rotem Leineneinband beinhaltet ein Interview, einen Werkstattbericht sowie auf über 180 Seiten eine Auswahl expressiver Gemälde, Zeichnungen und Skizzen. Eine Entdeckung für Grafik-Enthusiasten. 192 S., 25 × 33 cm, farbige Illustrationen, Hardcover, Leinen mit Schutzumschlag, 2012.
ON THIS EARTH, A SHADOW FALLS Abrams, New York (US) abramsbooks.com Eine in helles Leinen gebundene Erstausgabe im großen Format vereint zwei herausragende fotografische Arbeiten des Kaliforniers Nick Brandt: On This Earth (2005) und A Shadow Falls (2009). Ausdrucksstarke, kontrastreiche Aufnahmen in schwarz- weiß, hervorragend reproduziert, portraitieren ostafrikanische Wildtiere und zeigen deren Schönheit, Anmut aber auch bedrohte Existenz. Begleitet werden die Bilder durch Essays von Jane Goodall, Vicki Goldberg und Nick Brandt. 192 S., 34 × 38 cm, s / w Fotografie, Hardcover, Leinen, 2012.
Die Fragen beantwortete Börries Hessler, Buchhändler bei Orell Füssli, Abteilung Krauthammer.
Slanted 20 — Reviews
158
AN VOGELHÄUSERN MANGELT ES JEDOCH NICHT Patrick Frey Verlag, Zürich (CH) editionpatrickfrey.ch Der Schweizer Grafiker und Illustrator Luca Schenardi verleiht seiner Beobachtung der dezimierten Population einheimischer Vogelarten einen überraschenden bild- und textreichen, künstlerischen Ausdruck. Grundlage für dieses Künstlerbuch sind wissenschaftliche ornithologische Statistiken, die der Illustrator mittels Collagen, Zeichnungen oder kolorierten Fotos nach subjektivem Empfinden kombiniert, folglich assoziiert mit dem Wandel unserer industrialisierten Gesellschaft und dem Verschwinden naturnaher Lebensräume. So entsteht in Gemeinschaft mit kanalisierter Wut, intelligenter Ironie, Bild- und Sprachwitz eine Lesart von kritischer Auseinandersetzung mit der überaus schizophrenen Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Umwelt. 300 S., 24 × 28 cm, farbige Illustrationen, Hardcover mit Schutz umschlag, 2012.
Selected Book Reviews slanted.de/themen/books Der Typografiestreit der Moderne. Max Bill kontra Jan Tschichold Niggli, Sulgen (CH) niggli.ch
Logo Life BIS Publishers, Amsterdam (NL) bispublishers.nl Logo Life von Ron van der Vlugt beschäftigt sich mit 100 verschiedenen Marken und deren Logos, von der ersten bis zur aktuellsten Version.
Das Buch, von Hans Rudolf Bosshard verfasst, zeigt den typografischen Schlagabtausch zwischen den beiden großen Typografen. Blickfang 2012 / 2013 Norman Beckmann Verlag & Design, Hamburg (DE) nbvd.de
Letman – The Artwork and Lettering of Job Wouters Gestalten Verlag, Berlin (DE) gestalten.com
225 Fotografen auf 704 Seiten in einem 5 Kilogramm schweren Buch. Das ist die neuste Ausgabe von Blickfang 2012 / 2013, Deutschlands beste Fotografen.
Der Niederländer Job Wouters aka Letman setzt in diesem Buch durch die Verbindung von Illustration und Handschrift neue Maßstäbe. Gute Gestaltung Good Design 12 Deutscher Designer Club e.V., Frankfurt am Main (DE) ddc.de
Logo R.I.P BIS Publishers, Amsterdam (NL) logorip.com Logo R.I.P von den Stone Twins ist ein Klassiker und nun in einer über arbeiteten Version erschienen. Das Buch erinnert an weltbekannte Logos, die durch ein Redesign abdanken durften.
Die aktuell herausgegebene Dokumentation präsentiert die vom DDC im Wettbewerb Gute Gestaltung 12 prämierten Arbeiten. Alexander Gnädinger – 100 Girls On Polaroid seltmann+söhne, Lüdenscheid (DE) seltmannundsoehne.de
Kriwet Bibliographie 1-401 Stefan Schuelke Fine Books, Köln (DE) schuelke-finebooks.com
Das Buch ist mit den letzten Resten des schwarzen Kartons der original Polaroidfilmkasetten eingebunden und zeigt 100 Fotografien von Frauen in Polaroidbildern.
Dieses liebevoll recherchierte und gestaltete Buch erfasst zum ersten Mal alle Publikationen und Tonträger des Künstlers Ferdinand Kriwet. Gestaltet von Tino Graß. Forever – The new Tattoo Gestalten Verlag, Berlin (DE) gestalten.com
The Magic of Things – Die Magie der Dinge Lars Müller Publishers, Zürich (CH) lars-mueller-publishers.com
In Forever – The New Tattoo werden Künstler sowie die gesamte, aufstrebende UndergroundTattooszene ausführlich betrachtet und vorgestellt.
Ein neuer Band der Poster Collection ist erschienen und rückt mit dem Sachplakat, eine besondere Kategorie des Produktplakats, ins Rampenlicht.
Art Handling in Oblivion Rob van Leijsen, Genf (CH) arthandlinginoblivion.com
“Things America said ...” Cake Publishing, Mainz (DE) cakepublishing.com
Rob van Leijsens Masterarbeit an der Haute École d’Art et de Design in Genf. Ein Katalog, der Kunstsamm lungen zeigt, die während des Krieges geplündert wurden.
“Things America said ...” ist eine Publikation über politische Reden, den Irak-Krieg, George Bush und Barack Obama, von Robin Scholz.
Too long to tweet Julia Sysmäläinen, Berlin (DE) juliasys.com
Niels Shoe Meulman: Painter From Here To Fame, Berlin (DE) fromheretofame.com
Die Publikation enthält eine Mischung aus humorvollen und nachdenklich geschriebenen Texten, die alle etwas mit Berlin zu tun haben. Gesetzt in der FF Mister K.
Das zweite Buch von Niels SHOE Meulman, Painter, zeigt Fotografien von seinen Arbeiten an Wänden, Zügen, Dächern und anderen Objek ten, verteilt über die ganze Welt.
Slanted 20 — Reviews
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Imprint
Production
Fonts
Distribution
Printing
Cover Compacta, 1963 Fred Lambert Linotype / linotype.com
National Distribution Julia Kahl T +49 (0) 721 824858-50 julia.kahl@slanted.de
Text Visual section / Index: Neue Aachen, 2012 Jim Wasco Linotype / linotype.com
Stations and airports IPS Pressevertrieb GmbH www.ips-d.de
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
Visual section: Rama Slab, 2011 Ryoichi Tsunekawa Dharma Type / dharmatype.com
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 #20 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, Jannick Teoh Photo editor Michael Schmidt Design Julia Kahl, Jannick Teoh 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 The publisher assumes no responsi bility for the accuracy of all infor mation. 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 necessarily represent the opinion of the publisher or the editor. Copyright Slanted, Karlsruhe, 2012 All rights reserved.
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
Essays & Reports: Glypha, 1977 Adrian Frutiger Linotype / linotype.com Interviews: Marlene, 2008 / 2009 Nikola Djurek Typonine / typonine.com Reviews: Caponi Slab, to be announced Paul Barnes & Christian Schwartz Commercial Type / commercialtype.com
Cover Invercote G, 300 g / sqm base + Metalprint coating 29 g / sqm
Thanks
Igepa Papiergroßhandel GmbH Mallaustraße 48 68219 Mannheim Germany T +49 (0) 621 87502-0 F +49 (0) 621 87502-80 info@igepagroup.com www.igepa.de
Thanks a lot to all contributors and supporters of this issue. Special thanks to Ken Johnston, Julio Bittencourt, Raban Ruddigkeit, Mathieu Lommen, Angela Voulangas & Doug Clouse, Ian Lynam, Maurice van Brast, Frank Wiedemann, Wim Crouwel, Peter Brugger & Philipp Louven, Morag Myerscough and Jan Middendorp. A big thank-you to all type designers and foundries who provided their fonts for this particular issue. Thanks also to Ahmed Badran (Iggesund), Andreas Weidner (Igepa), Axel Schmiedtke (Arjo Wiggins) and Sylvia Lerch (SYLVIA LERCH Material & Produktion) for their paper support, Joachim Schweigert, Gerhard Schwöbel and the team of E&B engelhardt und bauer for their efforts and for the perfect printing!
Inside Soporset premium Offset, 120 g / sqm Omnigloss, 115 g / sqm Circle Offset, 80 g / sqm Soporset premium Offset is distributed by Igepa. Circle Offset is a product of Arjo Wiggins Graphic, exklusivly distributed by Igepa. SYLVIA LERCH Material & Produktion Rosenheimer Straße 139 81671 Munich Germany T +49 (0) 89 4520680-0 F +49 (0) 89 4520680-55 info@sylvialerch.de www.sylvialerch.de
International distribution Export Press SAS www.exportpress.com Distribution Switzerland Niggli Verlag, www.niggli.ch ISBN 978-3-7212-0856-6 Distrubution US Ubiquity Distributors, Inc., www.ubiquitymags.com Subscriptions www.slanted.de/abo Single Copies Slanted Shop www.slanted.de/shop Stores www.slanted.de/allgemein/stores Amazon Marketplace www.amazon.de www.amazon.com Advertising 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 Selection of DESIGN Awards for publications by SLANTEd ADC of Europe 2010, 2008 ADC Germany 2012, 2011, 2010, 2008, 2007 Annual Multimedia 2008, 2013 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 Werkbund Label, 2012
Front- and endsheet Century Pearl Xmas Red, 90 g / sqm Centura Pearl is manufactured by Slater Harrison in the UK, and distri buted in Germany by Sylvia Lerch Material & Produktion. Centura Pearl is a brilliant range of coated paper and card, with no metal content in its coatings, which makes the products environmentally friendly. They can be printed offset (use hard-set inks), screen and laser, and ink jet if care is taken with drying. They are also ideal for foil blocking. With their innovative coating technology,to the eye, the paper appears neutral in color but when it is exposed to the light, interesting things happen. If you would like a sample of the product, please contact: sales@slater-harrison.co.uk, T +44 (0) 1625 578906 or SYLVIA LERCH Material & Produktion (info above).
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www.slanted.de –– Typografie & grafik design
Your Slanted team
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Projects p.3 Fonts p.48 Essays p.107 Interviews p.120 Index p.145 Reviews p.157 Imprint p.162