Unit Editions

OOHAAHTDR™

27 March 2020 in Books Comment

OOHAAHTDR™
Ian Anderson
Design by TDR™

Produced for the AZTDR™ Kickstarter (250 copies now available)

OOHAAHTDR™ (‘What we’re doing when we’re not doing what you think we’re doing’) is a companion edition to AZTDR™ and contains new, reworked and previously unseen TDR™ artwork, alongside several texts by Ian Anderson and essays by Rick Poynor and David Thompson.

Originally produced for backers of the AZTDR™ Kickstarter campaign as an additional volume of TDR™ rarities and visual explorations, a limited number of copies of OOHAAHTDR™ are now available to buy.

Designed by TDR™ and authored by Anderson, the book also includes over 50 pages of posts culled from the archives of the long-defunct neo.DR newsgroup (Jan 1997—Feb 2001).

As Anderson writes in the User’s Guide to OOHAAHTDR™: “If this is a book, then it’s an exercise book pulled together in exactly one week, by three people, as an exercise, in the spirit of what Terry (i-D) Jones calls ‘Instant Design’; built as a response to Unit Editions’ AZTDR™, from the fallout that (definitely a) book’s un-archiving/collating process, from the physical, photocopied, lost and found, and the unmade to the lo-res, half-remembered fragments floating in our ether, bouncing back off other people.”

Size: 210 x 280mm
Pages: 196
Format: Softback
Design: TDR™
Printing: Black only with a four-colour cover
Binding: Perfect bound
Typeface: Decima Mono
Printer: Verona Libri
ISBN: 978-1-9164573-5-5

Unit Editions

A-Z of The Designers Republic™

22 September 2019 in Design Comment

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

Unit Editions

What is Universal Everything?

6 July 2019 in Books Comment

What is Universal Everything?
Editors: Adrian Shaughnessy, Tony Brook
Essays: Adrian Shaughnessy, Antonia Lee
Design: Spin

Limited Edition of 2000 – unique ‘tipped-in’ image on each cover

Matt Pyke, founder and creative director of Universal Everything, calls his studio a “digital art and design collective”. And after 15 years of revolutionary work in the digital realm, UE has its first book – What is Universal Everything?

Working closely with Pyke, the Spin design team of Tony Brook and Claudia Klat have designed a book that successfully brings Universal Everything’s vivid on-screen work to the printed page. The book is printed using a unique salmon pink fluoro colour that has been specially created and mixed for the project.

What is Universal Everything? examines 24 of the studio’s most exciting projects, from work for clients such as Microsoft, Hyundai and MTV, through to projects for Radiohead and the Science Museum in London. For each piece of work, Pyke collaborates with a pool of international creative talent from his base in Sheffield in the north of England.

The book also focuses on several of UE’s self-initiated projects that keep the studio pushing forward. These speculative explorations, says Pyke, are concerned with “trying to invent the future before we get there”.

The book also includes two essays and extensive interviews throughout, 90 pages of Pyke’s hand-drawn sketches, as well as detailed listings of the studio’s numerous sources of inspiration – from music to literature; from places to food.

In keeping with the book’s high production values, nearly all the work featured in the book has been re-rendered at high res, allowing the full majesty of Universal Everything’s screen-based work to be captured on the printed page.

Furthermore, every cover of What is Universal Everything? is unique: a different tipped-in image graces the cover of each edition. As Pyke notes: “We developed software to generate random combinations of shapes, colours and sizes with collision detection. Thousands of unique graphic compositions have been generated…. Everyone will own a one-off.”

About UE

“The company creates gorgeous visual spectacles on screen that, while they will never be attained in physical reality, reinterpret the nuances of natural human motion and seem to have a soul, a heartbeat, and the breath of life.”
The Creators Project, Vice

“Universal Everything proves how effective a flexible, collaboration-based agency model can be to deliver awe-inspiring projects on a global scale.”
Creative Bloq

“The studio’s desire to uncover new forms and aesthetic ideas produces profound experiences; often blurring the line between the art world and the commercial world of brands… as digital artists, their output is ahead of the rest.”
Highsnobiety

“Artists love to portray technology as the villain, as a force for evil that makes short work of our humanity… Matt Pyke isn’t one of them. The artist – who, it should be noted, works out of a log cabin in Sheffield, England – is an unabashed techno-optimist.”
Fast Company

Size: 240mm × 338mm
Pages: 384 (plus 4pp cover)
Format: Hardback, black foil-blocked type on cover
Printing: Litho
Colours: CYK + one special
Special colour: Salmon fluoro (THSX0339 Unit Ed. – Universal Fluoro Red
Inks: Toyo Ink LED-UV
Cover image: 2,000 unique tipped-in images; high gloss lamination
Colours: CYK + one special
Typeface(s): GT Cinetype by Grilli type
Printer: GöteborgsTryckeriet, Mölndal
ISBN: 978-1-9164573-3-1

Unit Editions

What is Universal Everything? — Available for Pre-order

29 March 2019 in Books Comment

What is Universal Everything?

Available for pre-order now.

Editors: Adrian Shaughnessy, Tony Brook
Essays: Adrian Shaughnessy, Antonia Lee
Design: Spin

Edition of 2000 – unique ‘tipped-in’ image on each cover

About UE

“Universal Everything proves how effective a flexible, collaboration-based agency model can be to deliver awe-inspiring projects on a global scale.”
Creative Bloq

Unit Editions

Karlssonwilker On America

21 September 2018 in Books Comment

Karlssonwilker On America
Authors/designers: Karlssonwilker
Editor: Mark Sinclair

Edition of 1000

New York-based design studio Karlssonwilker take on ‘America’ in the debut issue of ON, Unit’s new print platform where designers examine a single subject.

For ON #1, Karlssonwilker examine their adopted home of America in their own inimitable style. As outsiders who have been working in the US for 18 years, Jan Wilker and Hjalti Karlsson – German and Icelandic, respectively – offer up “a compilation of our thoughts and observations on our surroundings and encounters throughout our years in New York”.

The result is a heady mixture of graphics, illustration and photography; charts, diagrams, (definitely not fake) facts and wry observations, centred around an extensive Q&A between Wilker and Unit’s Adrian Shaughnessy.

From thoughts on “design as entertainment” to discussing the challenges of running a design studio in the city that never sleeps, the interview sees Wilker recount his first, eventful 24-hours in New York City in 1999 and frames the studio’s recent move to Ridgewood, Queens after 16 years in Manhattan.

“Over time, we have been slowly digested, and the edges of our hesitation and European arrogance softened away, to be replaced by something American that we now treat as if it had always been part of us.” Karlssonwilker

The ON series

A new range of Unit titles that gives designers the chance to explore unusual and unexpected subjects. Intended as a lo-fi, carte blanche platform, ON will see a wide range of designers and art directors investigating topics that excite and inspire them.

Specifications

Conceived, written and designed by Karlssonwilker
Size: A4
Pages: 52
Colour: Mono Binding: Staple Bound
ISBN: 978-1-9164573-2-4

Unit Editions

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design

31 August 2018 in Books Comment

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design

Authors: Alexandra Sankova and Olga Druzhinina
Editor: Mark Sinclair
Design: Spin

Edition of 2000

We are delighted to announce that VNIITE – Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design is now available to pre-order. Written by the Moscow Design Museum’s Alexandra Sankova and Olga Druzhinina, the book tells the previously untold story of the VNIITE – the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics.

Formed in Soviet Russia in 1962, by the design visionary Yuri Soloviev, this vast network contained Moscow’s most progressive designers. The ‘Vniitians’, as they were called, designed for the future and developed new theories and approaches to design in the USSR.

But more than ﬁfty years later, the organisation is all but forgotten. It’s hard to fathom how such an institution, dedicated to the promotion of utopian design, in theory and in practice, and the improvement of design standards within the Soviet Union, could have faded so far from view. After the disintegration of the USSR, the VNIITE and its library of images and prototypes were presumed lost.

Until now, that is. Thanks to the efforts of the Moscow Design Museum – and the discovery of the personal archives of some of the VNIITE designers – the story of this remarkable organisation is being pieced back together.

Alongside images of sketches, models and prototypes, the book also includes a selection of covers of one of the USSR’s hidden gems of graphic design – the VNIITE’s monthly journal, Technical Aesthetics. Showcased together for the first time, these covers chart Soviet graphic trends from the 1960s to the early 1990s.

In the pages of this book you can see some of the more compelling examples of utopian Soviet design. As the designer Paula Scher notes, the work offers a balance between ‘the communist desire for a perfectly-designed world against the real world of human competitiveness and inequality’.

Size: 240mm×170mm
Pages: 224
Print: Four colour litho
Cover: Foiled
ISBN: 978-1-9164573-0-0

Unit Editions