BUT IS IT ART?
Marius Roosendaal
Albrecht
Typography
Albrecht stems from traditional black letter calligraphic techniques. While holding true to the rigid and sharp nature of the gothic script, the letters are structured on a grid system built up out of a small set of elements, creating a consistent texture throughout. Albrecht Durer’s had a similar modular approach of the gothic alphabet in his 1522 Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt.
Hackathon Poster Series
Mercedes Bazan designed the Hackathon Poster Series. This project consists of a series of posters created for the #6 Hackathon at Stripe. The designer combined striking primary colors and illustrations in this selection, to achieve a modern and playful look and feel. As a result, the final work is a beautiful set of posters that together make up a very interesting visual design system.
Normal Festival
Branding for Nrmal Festival 2017 in Mexico City.
Design by Mauro Bonillo
Art direction in collaboration with Disciplina.
LogoArchive returns with Issue 5 – Technique. The technical limitations of the mid-century—the need for a steady hand and a precise mind for mechanical reproduction—demanded that an exceptional level of care and creativity be given over to shape and space, association and perception. These considerations created a rich corporate and consumer form language and range of graphic techniques. These have been partly marginalised, usurped by modern print and display technologies. They do remain as useful reference points in which to help create a symbol today, one that is enduring, works well in a black or white, can be used with vibrant inks, seductive materials and eye-catching finishes, as well as being displayed in motion on ever more diverse screens types.
LogoArchive Issue 5 focuses on eleven simple techniques, naming them, exemplifying them and offering short commentaries. It serves as an archival and pedagogical document, offering an alternative take on the ubiquitous logo tips article. In this way it looks at things another way around. This alternate viewpoint manifests itself materially in the dual modes of reading the zine, either portrait and symbol first or landscape and text first. By using both a portrait and landscape format, the zine encourages its readers to embrace the full materiality of what began as a digital Instagram project, to view the symbols documented in different ways and to see how the form language of the symbol is diminished or enhanced.
Issue 5 will be printed by WithPrint on G.F Smith Colorplan Ebony 135gsm with multiple passes of white ink on an HP Indigo press. It features 3x 4pp Colorplan Vellum White inserts printed with black and threaded between the pages of the booklet. These are bound with black staples.
Design: Richard Baird / LogoArchive
Publisher: BP&O
Size: 148x210mm
Booklet:
Pages: 10pp + Cover
Paper: Colorplan Ebony 135gsm
Finish: HP Indigo White x5
Insert:
Pages: 12pp
Colour: Colorplan Vellum White 135gsm
Finish: Black
Binding: Black Staples
A—Z of The Designers Republic™ — AZTDR™
Author: Ian Anderson
Editor: Mark Sinclair
Design: Spin
Limited Edition of 2500
Led by founder and born rebel, Ian Anderson, The Designers Republic™ has shaped graphic communication over the past 30 years through rule-defying music work, provocative self-initiated projects and a fierce commitment to conceptual thinking over style. Now, for the first time in book form, Anderson explores the studio’s output, and its influence on a generation of graphic designers.
AZTDR™ spans over three decades of work – from the studio’s earliest designs for the FON label in the mid-1980s and sleeves for Age of Chance, Chakk and Cabaret Voltaire, right up to its recent projects for The Cinematic Orchestra, Led Bib and the Gulbenkian Foundation. Alongside classic self-initiated TDR™ projects, the 512-page book features an A to Z of everything from campaigns for Evolution Print, Coca-Cola and Nike, through to the studio’s celebrated designs for video games such as Wipeout and Formula Fusion.
TDR™’s special relationship with print is explored through its celebrated contributions to IDEA and Emigre magazines and its 3D>2D book, alongside its work for Manchester School of Art, Gatecrasher, NY Sushi and the studio’s array of music clients. Here, TDR™’s work with Autechre is examined via ten key releases – covering some 34 pages – while the studio’s involvement with Pop Will Eat Itself focuses on some 28 different singles and albums.
There are also expansive sections devoted to TDR™’s designs for Aphex Twin, Moloko, Sun Electric and The Orb, alongside sleeve designs for R&S Records, New Atlantis, a range of Berlin-based labels and, of course, Warp Records.
AZTDR™ includes 250 different album and single covers; 140 prints, posters and flyers; over 130 images of TDR™ print-based and editorial projects; 23 DR Angryman variants; five Coke bottles; four badges; one Swatch watch; a T-shirt, a mug and much, much more.
In Anderson’s words: “September 2019 — 33.3 years after The Designers Republic was declared in SoYo (North of Nowhere), 25 years after a TDR™ book was first discussed and ten years after the fall and rise of The Designers Republic Phase One. As good a time as any for Unit Editions’ AZTDR™. It’s not everything but it’s everything you need to know (for now). You could call it Volume One if it helps. It’s not a monograph, it’s our idea of what ideas look like — a mix(ed) up of what you want to see, and what we want you to see, refereed by Tony, Adrian and Mark at Unit. Hopefully it’s a book about why we do what we do featuring the usual suspects and a few suspect devices. Critics might call it an overview — we call it a mission statement.”
The book also features an extensive and candid in-conversation between Anderson and Unit Editions’ Mark Sinclair. Here, TDR’s founder discusses his pre-design background in the music industry, the genesis of the TDR™ studio and its meteoric rise – encompassing its approach, provocations and relationships with clients – through to its collapse in 2009 and subsequent rebirth.
AZTDR™ is the book they said would never happen. But thanks to 1324 Kickstarter backers, it’s here at last.
Size: 280 x 240mm
Pages: 512 pages
Format: Hardback
Printing: Fluorescent yellow cover with foiled type, three special colour wrap, CMYK + one special colour throughout
Binding: Otabound
Typeface: Suisse Int’l
Printer: Verona Libri
Where Design is Found
Exhibition of Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art
2019