janfeb2019 by Commarts

COMMUNICATION ARTS TYPOGRAPHY ANNUAL 9

Kiliii Yuyan Stina Persson Pearlfisher Austin Advertising Exhibit

January/February 2019 Twenty-Four Dollars commarts.com

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 6

COMMUNICATION ARTS ��

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FEATURES

TYPOGRAPHY ANNUAL

28 Stina Persson

71 79 85 86 94 105 106 111 115 123 136 140 143 147 149

by Amy Ng Raw beauty blooms under this Stockholm-based illustrator’s steady hands.

36 Pearlfisher

by Garrick Webster A global design firm headquartered in London is helping both challenger and iconic brands future-proof.

COVER Geograph typeface, p. 123;

Walbaum typeface, p. 124.

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44 Kiliii Yuyan

by Dzana Tsomondo This Seattle-based photographer steers the narrative for Indigenous peoples into new waters.

52 Austin Advertising

by Julie Prendiville Roux In a Texas haven for creativity and business, three indie shops are making music of their own.

62 Exhibit

The latest and best in visual communication from here and abroad.

Posters Brochures Advertising Packaging Identity Books Periodicals Digital Media Environmental Typeface Design Calligraphy/Hand Lettering Motion Miscellaneous Unpublished Student Work

FRESH Editor/Designer Patrick Coyne Executive Editor Jean A. Coyne Managing Editor Esther Oh

166

Jannike Stelling This Berlin-based photographer balances shapes and colors in airy mise-en-scènes.

168

Cornelia Li In Toronto, an illustrator coaxes telling details from her atmospheric vignettes.

170

XXIX A duo in New York City proves that a well-designed studio begets thinking beyond the brief.

Associate Editor Michelle Yee Editor At Large Anne Telford Art Director/Designer Joni Rivas Production Director Lauren Coyne

COLUMNS 10

Advertising As more brands jump on the purpose bandwagon, Ernie Schenck calls for the authentic truth.

Environment Eric Benson leads us out of the forest and into the world of alternative-fiber paper.

Design Culture Wendy Richmond reflects on the power of making art rooted in grief.

Insights In a Q&A, designer Jessica Bellamy shares how she’s mobilizing information at the grassroots level.

Design/Production Associate Isabel Bagsik

Creativity Janelle Bitker discovers how designers are packing experience into the subscription box.

Typography Susan Hodara speaks to designers, artists and developers using type in virtual environments.

Production Assistant/Customer Service Representative Khader Yanni Competition Coordinator/ Administrative Assistant Rachel Whitaker Archivist Nancy Clark Lewis Software Engineer Srividhya Gopalakrishnan Technology Administrator Michael Hoyt Advertising/Circulation Director Dirk Moeller

DEPARTMENTS 5 8 22 172 174 178

Contributing Editors Sam McMillan Wendy Richmond Ernie Schenck

Contributors/Directory Editor’s Column Favorites Book Reviews Index to Typography Annual 9 Overheard

Volume 60, Number 6 commarts.com COMMUNICATION arts (ISSN 0010-3519) is published six times a year (January/February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/October, November/ December) by Coyne & Blanchard, Inc., 110 Constitution Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025-1107. Periodicals Postage Paid at Menlo Park, CA, and at additional mailing offices.

Copyright 2019 by Coyne & Blanchard, Inc. All pieces reproduced in this issue are under prior copyright by the creators or by the contractual arrangements with their clients. Nothing shown may be reproduced in any form without obtaining the permission of the creators and any other person or company who may have copyright ownership. SUBScRIBER SERVICES: Subscription: 1 year, $53; in Canada, $70; all other countries, $110. All payments in US dollars, Canadian GST: 127848620.

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CONTRIBUTORS

DIRECTORY

Features

Featured in this issue

In 2008, Amy Ng founded Pikaland, an online resource for freelance illustrators that sparks thoughts on creativity, illustration and entrepreneurship. Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, she guest lectures at the One Academy of Communication Design and teaches her own six-week class, Work/Art/Play, via pikaland.com. Her profile of Stockholm-based illustrator Stina Persson in this issue reveals an artist unafraid to embrace imperfection in her work. Julie Prendiville Roux, cofounder of Los Angeles–based creative agency Handmade Productions (handmadeca.com), has been writing for Communication Arts since 1987. In this issue, Prendiville Roux visits Austin to profile the advertising powerhouses Door Number 3, Greatest Common Factory and Proof Advertising. Dzana Tsomondo (dzanatsomondo@gmail.com) is a freelance writer living and working in New York City. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, from Photo District News to Cool’eh Magazine. In this issue, Tsomondo profiles Kiliii Yuyan, a Seattle-based Indigenous photographer shining a spotlight on the crucial relationship between Indigenous communities and the land. Garrick Webster (imageandtext.co.uk) is a United Kingdom–based journalist, editor and writer who has been working in the creative industry for the last 20 years. In 2011, he curated Memories, a book in support of the UK cancer charity Maggie’s Centres. In this issue, he discovers that sustainability will drive the future of Londonbased design firm Pearlfisher’s branding and packaging work.

Columns

Eric Benson is an associate professor and chair of the graphic design program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research and teaching at Illinois is fueled by his sustainable design 501(c)(3) nonprofit Re-nourish (re-nourish .org), which laid the foundation to create the Fresh Press Agri-Fiber Paper Lab. In this issue’s Environment column, Benson looks to the paper industry’s past to discover its future. Janelle Bitker is a writer based in Oakland, California. A former editor for alt-weekly newspapers, she’s been published in Eater, Playboy, the San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets. In the Creativity column, Bitker uncovers how designers are helping brands stand out in the crowded subscription service space. Susan Hodara (susanhodara.com) is a journalist, memoirist and teacher. She covers the arts for the New York Times, Harvard Magazine and other publications. In this issue’s Typography column, Hodara reports on the challenges of moving type into the realms of VR, AR and MR.

Door Number 3 dn3austin.com Greatest Common Factory gcfactory.com Pearlfisher pearlfisher.com Stina Persson stinapersson.com Proof Advertising proof-advertising.com Kiliii Yuyan kiliii.com

Exhibit Anagrama anagrama.com BooneOakley booneoakley.com f°am Studio foam.studio hat-trick design hat-trickdesign.co.uk Mother motherlondon.com One Black Bear oneblackbear.com Pentagram pentagram.com Preacher preacher.co Sagmeister & Walsh sagmeisterwalsh.com Studio Blvd studio-blvd.com

Fresh Cornelia Li corneliali.com Jannike Stelling jannikestelling.com XXIX xxix.co

Advertiser’s Index Commarts Daily Creative Hotlist Fontstand Frere-Jones Type Hoefler & Co. Production Type Stocksy

Call for Entries Photography 2019

Wendy Richmond (wendyrichmond.com) is a visual artist, a writer and an educator whose work explores public privacy, personal technology and creativity. Her latest book is Art Without Compromise* (Allworth Press). In the Design Culture column, Richmond seeks to better understand how artists translate loss into tangible expression.

Submitting Work

Ernie Schenck (ernieschenck.myportfolio.com) is a freelance writer and a creative director. He is an Emmy finalist, a three-time Kelly nominee, and an award winner at Cannes, the Clios, D&AD, the FWAs and the One Show. In this issue’s Advertising column, Schenck separates authentic truth from the brand purpose bandwagon.

commarts.com/write-us No responsibility will be assumed for unsolicited editorial contributions.

Book Reviews

Denise Bosler (bosler.com) is an award-winning graphic designer, an illustrator, an author and a professor of communication design at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Allan Haley is a storyteller and a consultant with expertise in type. He was director of words and letters at Monotype for fifteen years and has six books and hundreds of articles to his credit. He is a past president of the Type Directors Club.

17 19, 25 21 C4 C2 C3 6

commarts.com/submissions

Writer’s Guidelines Corrections In the 2018 November/December issue, on page 169, Domingo Angelini should have been listed as one of the writers on the Gap-What Love Can Do project. On page 78, Adam Thur should have been listed as art director/creative director, Rica Eckersley as writer/creative director and Lance Martin as chief creative officer on the Canadian Real Estate Association noise-cancelling poster. Communication Arts | commarts.com

DISCOVER AN EXCLUSIVE DISCOVER AN EXCLUSIVE COLLECTION OF STOCK COLLECTION OF STOCK PHOTOS + FOOTAGE PHOTOS + FOOTAGE

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EDITOR’S COLUMN

Patrick Coyne

e were pleased to see significant international participation in this year’s typography competition. Work from 22 countries is included amongst this

year’s winners. Other significant trends include the strong showing of logos, wordmarks and identity programs compared to the last several years. Also, student work selections were up substantially.

“I was surprised at how good some of the student entries were,” says juror Nick Sherman. “In many cases, they surpassed the average quality we were seeing in the professional work. I was also surprised by both the volume and overall quality of the identity designs. Of all the categories, those entries probably had the highest quality-to-quantity ratio.” “There was a lot of variety in the [identity] work, and it felt confident and informed in a way that was refreshing,” juror Bethany Heck says. I asked the judges what visual trends became apparent during

“I was surprised by the number of late-’90s-inspired pieces,” says Heck. “The Carsonesque aesthetic was more prominent than current trends, like the punk brutalism that’s dominated many design circles for a few years. What’s newer isn’t necessarily better, but there’s no excuse to not be consuming a broad range of global design at this point in history. There’s so much to be inspired by, and I hate to think people are shutting themselves off from the possibility of learning from newer generations of designers.” “One of the most satisfying things to see from all the entries was actually a move away from some of the most common trends of past years,” Sherman says. “The wave of people using geometric sans serifs in safe-but-boring compositions seems to have finally passed its peak. And though the ‘hip traditional’ aesthetic was definitely

Photographs by Steve Castillo

the judging.

“Many entries seemed to be reusing old ideas and styles, like faux Victorian, hipster/retro, naïve/handmade and objects as letters,” juror Mark Simonson says. “This was a bit disappointing, but not too surprising since clients are probably not looking to take risks. On the other hand, when an idea is well executed, it can transcend cliché.”

Typography Annual 2019

present, it didn’t seem to dominate the landscape as much as it has in recent years.” I asked the jurors what technical developments will change the way we use typography in the future. “I think typography trends will be increasingly influenced by digital mediums,” says Simonson. “A good example is the recent introduction of OpenType variable fonts. The format was primarily driven by technical needs of the web, but it opens the door to a lot of interesting design opportunities for type designers.” “The biggest shift I see in the landscape of typography, and design in general, is a move away from composing fixed/static layouts and more toward defining rules and limitations to create a variety of compositions,” Sherman says. “The work of typography will increasingly be about codifying design logic instead of repeatedly implementing that logic one piece at a time.” Lastly, I asked the jury about the challenges facing the next generation of type designers. “When the traditional job of lettering artist became obsolete with the advent of cheap typesetting, we lost a lot of the richness and flexibility of lettering in design,” says Simonson. “But the accessibility of type design is bringing richness and flexibility back to an even greater extent. I think the challenge for young type designers is discovering these new opportunities.” “Perhaps the biggest challenge for typeface designers in coming years will be the increasing number of other typeface designers,” Sherman

BETHANY HECK is the head of design at

says. “New education programs for type design are popping up all around the world, and tools for type design are increasingly accessible. As such, the number of people working in the field is growing rapidly without a corresponding increase in demand for work. This makes it harder to stand out in the crowd as a young type designer, and harder to make a living as competitive pricing intensifies.” “I think the democratization of design and typeface creation software has led to a broader and more diversified set of voices creating typefaces, and that will compound as it is used by a broader set of designers with more unique experiences to convey in their work,” says Heck. “Many of the gates that previously existed to keep out people from certain backgrounds are falling away, and I feel more and more designers are being inspired by designers like David Rudnick and Eric Hu to take control of their own typographic vision. I’m excited to see what comes from this new generation of type designers and typographers.” While a minimum of two out of three votes was required for inclusion in this year’s Typography Annual, just under half of the selected projects received a unanimous vote. Judges were also not permitted to vote on projects in which they were directly involved. I would like to extend our appreciation to our jurors for their conscientious efforts and to Kamal Mansour, linguistic typographer at Monotype, who graciously assisted our jurors by providing insights on the legibility and appropriateness of non-Latin typeface entries. ca

NICK SHERMAN is a typographer,

MARK SIMONSON is

Medium and the proprietor of the Font Review Journal, where she strives to discourse around typeface

web designer, typeface designer, typographic consultant and teacher. He is a cofounder and designer

an independent type designer working out of his home in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Since the mid-’70s, he worked variously as

design and usage. She is also the creator of the Eephus League baseball scorebooks. She endeavors to create powerful visual

of Fonts In Use, an online archive of typography, and v-fonts.com, a resource for finding and trying variable fonts.

a graphic designer, magazine art director, illustrator and lettering artist. He released his first fonts in the mid-’90s, eventually

experiences with strong typographic elements, and her work spans traditional printing techniques, responsive web design and digital application work. She’s worked with the likes of EA Sports, ESPN, IBM, Microsoft and Vox Media. Her work has

A graduate of the Type@Cooper typeface design program, Sherman also works on Cooper Union’s Typographics design festival. He is a member of the Adobe Typography Customer Advisory Board, as well as the artistic board for the Hamilton Wood Type

switching to type design full-time in 2005. He has made fonts for clients such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Microsoft, Sega and Target, but he mostly creates fonts for the general market. He is probably best known for the typeface Proxima Nova. When he’s

appeared in New York magazine, The New Yorker, Print, Smashing Magazine, Wired, and several other international publications

& Printing Museum, and has served on the board of directors for the Type Directors Club. Previously, Sherman worked at Font

not making fonts, he likes watching movies, playing or listening to music, reading, writing, learning new things, drawing

and art exhibitions.

Bureau, Webtype and MyFonts.

cartoons, and building scale models.

Communication Arts | commarts.com

ADVERTISING

Ernie Schenck

The Truth Is Out There. Kind Of. “Truth isn’t truth” —Rudy Giuliani

ow many times have we heard it. The genesis of a great idea begins with an authentic truth, an insight so perfect, so firmly rooted in who and what we are as a species, it is undeniable and inarguable. Some of the greatest advertising ever created has emerged as a result of an ability to ferret out that truth, hitch a saddle to it and ride it to glory. Recently, I asked creatives on Facebook to tell me what agencies, brands and campaigns have most successfully managed to pull this off. There were many. Here’s what some of them had to say.

“In 1977, Nike and John Brown & Partners, a little-known agency in Seattle, set the course for a brand behavior that demonstrated that what you believe in and how you say it have to ring true,” wrote John Doyle. “A print ad titled There Is No Finish Line aligned itself with the human spirit—the euphoric nature of running.” Long before “Just Do It,” long before Wieden+Kennedy, this one simple ad spoke to a truth that would one day live on as “Just Do It.” It does to this day.

how the anger over being manipulated was more powerful than the fear of cancer.” The authentic truth. It’s absolute. It’s unshakeable. Its power to propel us as creatives mighty beyond measure. But there is another truth. It is feeble. It is disingenuous. And it is something we’ve rarely seen before. The kind of truth that’s fleeting. Fabricated. Cloaked in insincerity. And if we’re not careful, it can lure us onto a bandwagon that at best is uncomfortable and at worst can suck the spirit out of us. Call it the inauthentic truth. We all want to ally ourselves with brands that have hitched their star to a purpose. Who doesn’t want that? Who wouldn’t want to work on a Patagonia, a Ben & Jerry’s, a Dove—brands that found their true north long ago, way before purpose became trendier than a retro flip phone or a pair of Louis Vuitton workout pants. But what about the brands that are late to the party, that feel compelled to stand for something more than just a great car or a phenomenal running shoe or the smartphone to end all smartphones for no other reason than it’s what the market expects right now. I don’t need to spell it out for you. You know who they are. The poseurs. The opportunists. The ones that are willing to embrace any cause, any movement, any social activism if it means getting themselves a place at the table.

The authentic truth. It’s absolute. It’s unshakeable. Its power to propel us as creatives mighty beyond measure. But there is another truth. More than a few pointed to Goodby Silverstein & Partners and its brilliant Got Milk? campaign. “When the California Milk Processor Board finally accepted that selling milk on its health benefits wasn’t nearly as compelling as its perception as a natural partner for foods like cookies, cake and whatever else, that single human truth sold a lot of milk,” wrote Guy Bommarito. And speaking of truth, few campaigns have managed to uncover a more powerful human insight as Truth. The collective genius of Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Arnold Worldwide, the campaign threw decades of scare tactics under the bus in favor of something new—the fact that tobacco companies had been lying to us for generations, making fools of us. David Baldwin of Raleigh, North Carolina–based agency Baldwin& put it like this: “Truth moved antismoking advertising from ‘It’s bad for you’ to ‘You’re being lied to by the man.’ It was brilliant.” And this from Mark Musto: “Funny 10

Typography Annual 2019

The question for each of us as creatives is: What happens if instead of the Patagonias of the world, you find yourself working for one of the poseurs? What if most days, it feels like you’re the only one still looking for the authentic truth, when sadly there is nothing of the sort to be found? It would be so easy to jump on that bandwagon with all the other pretenders. It’s your career, after all. It’s not your fault you work on a brand hell-bent on trying to make itself out to be something it’s not. You put your head down. You do the best work you can. Never mind that up to a year ago, your client wouldn’t have cared about taking a stand against racism or global warming, but it does now to win customer loyalty. Not your fault. Not your fault. Not your fault. And yet. ca

DESIGN CULTURE

Wendy Richmond

Good Grief

hroughout my life, from adolescence to adulthood, my mom would say to me, “You are so lucky. You own your art.”

This was a layered observation. On one level, she meant that I was lucky to have a passion that consistently held my attention, like drawing every day after school. She also meant that I owned a visceral way of encountering the world, like turning onto a street full of bright yellow taxicabs and feeling the shock of their color. My mom was actually referring to my “artistic practice,” a term neither of us knew back then. Over the years, my practice has become deeper: a source of enjoyment, learning and stern selfinterrogation. I’ve also found that my artistic practice provides a foundation when I encounter life’s painful realities—in particular, losing people I love. Artists have always dealt with the subject of death and its tributaries of grief. It is perhaps the most ubiquitous topic in art history, with famous representations of mourning ranging from allegorical and religious, to metaphorical, autobiographical and conceptual. Consider Douris’s Eos and Memnon vase painting, Michelangelo’s Pietà, Robert Mapplethorpe’s Self Portrait and Motoi Yamamoto’s installation Return to the Sea: Saltworks. As an artist, you use your practice to translate loss into something new. Your life undergoes a major shift, and you call upon your familiar knowledge: the themes of your past work, your materials and vocabulary, your sensibility and aesthetic. Making art while grieving is a continuation of your artistic practice, with a unique contradiction: the tension between the sweet immersion of creating and the simultaneous pull of sorrow. To better understand my own process, I wanted to know how other artists use their practice to convert their experience of loss into tangible expression. I had seen the work of Brooklyn-based artist Nene Humphrey, whose profound performances and installations dealing with mourning moved me long before I had experienced a traumatic loss myself. I asked her to join me for coffee at a favorite neighborhood café. Humphrey’s expansive, evolving project Circling the Center is the very definition of multimedia. She includes drawing, sculpture, video, poetry, music and performance. This was not always the case. Back in 2005, as a long-term (and current) artist-in-residence at New York University’s LeDoux Lab, Humphrey had been making drawings

based on imagery of the brain’s amygdala, an almond-shaped mass with thousands of neurons that help process emotions. A year after she began this work, her husband died unexpectedly of cancer. As she searched for ways to articulate her grief, she happened upon the Victorian art of mourning braiding, and was struck by the visual and psychological similarities between the braiding and her drawings. Her artistic practice soon underwent a transformation in depth and breadth. As we talked, Humphrey explained the organic ways in which she sought and allowed radical changes to her art making. “The death of my husband allowed me to get into my work as I never have before,” she said. “I still have the core of what I do as an artist. But I never would have taken that many chances. I was so willing to fail—almost not thinking—not rationally plotting it out.” Humphrey felt the need to make the work richer. “I started to collaborate,” she said, “because I didn’t know how to do certain things, like video and sound. I was being open to what can happen. [In my previous work,] I had made all the decisions. I had never really collaborated, but now I had willingness.” I asked Humphrey about the contradiction of grieving while making art: the feeling of deep sadness juxtaposed with the creative fulfillment of discovering the right expression for the work. She replied, “You’re using the experience; your experience is going into the work.” Then she told me this story: “When Benny was dying, there was his different breathing, and I went into the room with my tape recorder and recorded it, and then put the recorder away on a shelf. Later, I was talking with my collaborator Roberto [Roberto Carlos Lange, a musician and sound designer] about patterns and I said, ‘I have this tape.’ There was a moment when I thought, ‘Am I going to tell Roberto about the tape?’ But I had to. And he took that sound and used it.” “It’s so beautiful,” she added, “this rhythmic breathing. I wanted it in there.” We can’t predict how difficult times will affect or alter our lives. But as artists, we can call upon our well-honed artistic practice—this thing we are lucky enough to own—to allow grief to reside in our creative work. ca © 2019 W. Richmond

Communication Arts | commarts.com

CREATIVITY

Janelle Bitker

Thinking Inside the Subscription Box

Base Design developed the brand strategy, identity, website design and unpacking experience for Kidbox, a subscription service for kids’ fashion. This image of a girl peeking into a Kidbox (left) suggests the fun and anticipation of receiving a Kidbox in the mail. Along with clothes, a box also includes fun stickers, crayons and toys (right), evoking the mission of the company: unpacking happiness.

here’s an automatic sense of excitement upon spying a new cardboard box by your doorstep. That’s part of why subscription boxes have exploded in popularity within the past few years. Subscribers sign up to receive a box delivered to their home on a quarterly, monthly or sometimes weekly basis, and inside that box is a treasure trove of goods selected by experts or personalized to the subscriber’s taste. Also known as curation subscription services, some of the most successful companies include Blue Apron, the meal-kit delivery box; Birchbox, the provider of beauty products; Stitch Fix, a personal shopping service; and NatureBox, which feeds the masses with healthy snacks. Major retailers have entered this digital marketplace as well, including Sephora, Target and Walmart. Before subscription boxes, there were similar product-of-the-month clubs, but those weren’t so tailored to specific desires. The recent wave of curated boxes is indicative of the preference for bespoke experiences. And the market is huge: a 2018 study by marketing analytics company Hitwise estimates that 18.5 million people in the United States are subscription box shoppers, who could be subscribing to anything from niche boxes full of nerdy figurines to survivalist products to housewares imported from Japan. According to that same study, the market has grown by a whopping 890 percent since 2014. So, how are designers approaching this space?

“What I think is particular about the subscription service model is the limited interactions,” says Min Lew, creative director at Base 12

Typography Annual 2019

Design in New York. “Retentions with the brand season after season become really important. The onboarding process, the unboxing experience and what the brand allows you to do have to be especially more gratifying and engaging.” By their nature, curation subscription services thrive off of the element of surprise. Subscribers often have no idea what they’re going to get, so the experience is wrapped up in anticipation and a grand unveiling. Designers are capitalizing on that idea as they work with these businesses. One company with a particularly elaborate and interactive so-called “unboxing experience” is Kidbox, a subscription service that provides a personalized selection of kids’ clothing. Lew handled the design and identity work for Kidbox, including the unboxing plans. “We intuitively and instinctively knew that was an emotional moment,” she says. “Of course it needs to come in a box, but how do we own that experience so that it’s memorable for the kid and also the parent? … We wanted [the box] to have a second life beyond [being] the vessel that carries the clothing.” The boxes are decked out with black-and-white outlined words and images, and when kids open the boxes, they find an explosion of bright colors and patterns, as well as stickers and crayons. It’s immediately clear that the box is meant to be personalized and colored. “That box becomes your box,” Lew says. “You start to create this emotional engagement and anticipation for the next box. It’s never only about the clothing. We’re building multiple layers of engagement points.”

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CREATIVITY

Subscription boxes (left) and postcards (right) for coffee subscription service Modern Recreation. Blok Design, design firm.

And, while not every single box is unique, Lew designed multiple themes and patterns so kids can look forward to a fresh experience next time. Beyond the box, Lew focused on the idea of Kidbox as a fun activity and opportunity for familial bonding. It starts with the child filling out a personal style quiz and ends with the family picking out a charity to donate a new clothing item to if the kid loves the clothes enough to keep the whole box. “It relies heavily on the emotional engagement between the parent and the child,” she says. With coffee subscription service Modern Recreation, Vanessa Eckstein, principal at Toronto-based studio Blok Design, landed on the notion of the subscription as a journey—subscribers are going on an adventure with the company to find the most unique roasters around the world. “You basically trust their judgement and expertise and go on this journey of being surprised,” Eckstein says. “Most of our design played on these elements—the joyfulness, their passion.” Eckstein created one basic design and structure for the packaging and then used unique stickers to playfully express where the coffee comes from without explicitly naming the location. For example, one sticker shows important cultural destinations from the coffee’s origin. Another outlines the longitude and latitude. Eckstein took inspiration from old bus tickets from Argentina—another example of a journey—for the stickers’ design, which features multiple fonts to signify the company’s irreverent nature. The photography echoes this thought process. The website features large, black-and-white images of seemingly random people living life. There’s a neorealist, documentary feel to them, and indeed, the scenes were very much real: the couples were real-life couples, wearing their own clothing and no makeup. “This is not just a shot but a narrative; every image had to document real people in real situations,” Eckstein says. With subscription boxes, designers need to create a rich visual vocabulary due to the different ways people experience them: the website, including an online store, and in person through the physical packaging. But the branding and identity work involved isn’t any different than with other companies, designers say. “Our 14

Typography Annual 2019

task was to create an identity and packaging system that’d stand out from the crowded market. The purchase model didn’t really matter,” says Natasha Jen, a partner at Pentagram’s New York office, via email. Jen recently rebranded Teabox, a company that offers subscriptions for monthly curated boxes of teas. If there are common challenges across subscription boxes, they are technical or logistical. Jen points to the user experience of the website needing to be easy to navigate, with a simple check-out process. Plus, the consistent shipping means that the packaging needs to be more careful and considered so the prized goods don’t accidentally get crushed. Eli Horn, creative partner at Montréal-based studio Fivethousand Fingers, thoroughly considered packaging when designing for specialty coffee subscription service Collected Coffee. The key issue was scale. Collected Coffee started out very small, but the company wanted high-quality paper and packaging to signify the quality of the coffee. “Because they’re doing small runs every month, it’s quite a challenge to take it to the printer and get them to print something typically reserved for large-run printing,” Horn says. He researched whether buying a label printer would be a wise move but found them to be prohibitively expensive and limiting when it comes to paper choices. It took a lot of time to find the right printer and paper at the right price. Another wrinkle: The coffee and roaster change every month, so ideally, the design and packaging would change each time, too. This wasn’t feasible with the printing process, so instead, Fivethousand Fingers created a single design and focused on enabling Collected Coffee to share a lot of specific information about each coffee to create differentiation. That emphasis on information also played into the design. Horn took inspiration from literary journals and financial journal typography—“things that people read and trust as sources of information,” he says—and used textured, matte paper that “felt serious.” He used a simple color palette of blue and white

Fivethousand Fingers worked with specialty coffee subscription service Collected Coffee to create its branding and packaging. Print materials include a folded booklet (top left) that enables subscribers to learn the story behind the coffee, and how to brew it. The first product (top right) in Collected Coffee’s ongoing series pairing single-origin coffee with renowned roasters from around the globe; designed by Fivethousand Fingers. This packaging for Teabox (bottom), a brand offering tea subscriptions, is part of the identity redesign by Pentagram. Special touches—like foil-stamped stencil lettering, and custom textured patterns in a clear gloss varnish—elevate the packaging.

at a time when most coffee companies were using warm colors and earth tones, as well as an elegant serif font. “We wanted it to feel investigated, like this was a source of expertise,” he says. “White and blue block was a way to make it feel intelligent and almost literary in a sense.” Otherwise, designers ran into challenges that were specific to the companies. For Lew, it was appealing to Kidbox’s wide audience— parents, and children aged two to fourteen—and she addressed it through a diverse range of colors and patterns. For Horn, it was figuring out how to convince people to subscribe to Collected Coffee

as opposed to picking up a more affordable bag of beans from a local café—in other words, “how to make it special enough that they wanted to receive it,” he says. The answer was through high-end packaging and relaying the stories of the coffee producers. Designers emphasize that design alone can’t create trust with consumers—the subscription box has to be strong on its own. But carefully considered design and art elements can enhance trust. “We don’t build [trust]; we reflect it,” Eckstein says. “We try to reflect these people and these values and the philosophy behind the company with the photography and the story we are telling.” ca Communication Arts | commarts.com

ENVIRONMENT

Eric Benson

The Future of Paper From Clothing to Corn

Neenah Cotton Papers are made from cotton linters, a byproduct of the cotton industry that is recognized as recovered fiber by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

“Little has changed in paper making over the past 50 to 100 years, but a lot has changed in our natural world. Forests once abundant are now degraded or replaced with monoculture plantations— placing stress on our climate, species and disrupting the precipitation cycle. A lot has changed in our societies as well, with a loss in market tolerance for papers made of 800-year-old trees or biodiverse landscapes. To quote Thomas Edison: ‘To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.’ The future of paper is in our imagination. Paper and packaging that is designed for reuse, made from agricultural waste and old clothes, as we recover the world of forests we’ve lost.” —Josée Breton, communications director at environmental nonprofit Canopy

hat is the future of paper? This is a question that has been asked for decades, going back to the 1975 Business Week article “The Office of the Future.” It was predicted that personal computers would boost productivity (true except for your mornings spent on social media), save money and help the environment (outside, of course, creating e-waste) by eventually eliminating paper from the workplace. This, of course, never developed, and instead, in 2016, global paper usage increased to 413 million metric tons, which is about 50 percent more consumption since 1980. Paper is clearly an integral part of our daily lives. As designers, we use it in our printed works, sketchbooks and work documents. As citizens, we use it every time we eat out, shop, travel, read and everything else in between. But how much do we know about where our paper comes from and how it is made? Like many graphic designers, I didn’t learn about paper as a material in school. I found out about paper weight, brightness, sheet size

Typography Annual 2019

and coated versus matte in my first print design job out of college. Even then, I didn’t understand how paper was made, where it was sourced, and its impact on us and our planet. It took reading the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in 2002 for me to truly see the forest for the trees. I learned that paper first started to be industrially manufactured from trees in the 1840s and has grown in production and consumption globally until present day. McDonough and Braungart describe trees in their Cradle to Cradle book as such an important resource in nature that it is “not a fitting resource to use in producing so humble and transient a substance as paper.” Scientists at Duke and Oregon State universities found, like McDonough and Braungart suggested, that trees are better left in the ground to “further mitigate the increases in atmospheric CO₂ that result from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation.” So, I wondered then: What was used to make paper before trees? And why did papermakers switch during the Industrial Revolution? To answer these questions, I spoke with Quinn Morgan Ferris, the senior conservator for special collections at the University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign. She told me that “the earliest papers were made from cotton and linen rags, which produced a strong, supple paper that aged well—hence the number of incunabula and other early printed books that have survived in pristine condition. Before wood pulp became the prominent source, there were arguments for using other readily available materials for industrialized papermaking, such as straw. Matthias Koops, a British papermaker, authored a historical survey on alternate materials and printed it on a golden paper made of straw. That wood-pulp paper won out as the preferred raw material was likely a result of the abundance and economy of trees at the time.”

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ENVIRONMENT

The cover (left) and an interior spread (middle) from the Fall 2013 issue of Corporate Knights magazine, which was printed on paper made from 60 percent wheat straw. Margaret Atwood worked with environmental group Canopy and publisher McClelland & Stewart to print a limited special edition of her 2011 book In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (right) on paper made from straw and recycled content.

Fast forward from thousands of years ago in China, where paper was invented, to today, where we now recognize the immediate need to end natural-forest degradation and deforestation to combat climate change. A better step forward for the paper industry would indeed be going back to its roots.

From forests to farms Currently, in the global market, around 13 million metric tons of pulp come from (mostly agricultural) alternatives to wood. The marketplace offers papers made from agricultural products like sugarcane bagasse, bamboo, banana leaf, coffee husks, eucalyptus, hemp, kenaf (like the jute plant) and wheat straw. While the use of fibers like coffee, banana leaf and sugarcane bagasse might make sense to a paper company in South America, in the United States, to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, wheat straw from the country’s heartland is a more strategic and sustainable investment. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the US wheat-planted area for 2018 was estimated at 47.8 million acres. Turning the “waste” straw into pulp—instead of plowing it into the ground, letting it decompose, burning it or selling it for such uses as animal bedding—can open up a new revenue stream for US farmers while helping to meet the country’s paper needs. Seeing this potential, Kimberly-Clark Professional launched a line of paper towel and bathroom tissue products in 2015 that are made with 20 percent plant-based fiber, such as wheat straw and bamboo. Kimberly-Clark is not alone in this venture. Columbia Pulp is in the process of building a pulp mill on 449 acres in Columbia County, Washington, which the company describes as being “one of the densest wheat farming regions in North America.” By 2019, Columbia Pulp hopes to begin the mill’s operation, helping to increase the overall production of wheat-straw paper products and, at the same time, using “less chemicals, energy and water than conventional pulping.” Kimberly-Clark demonstrated that wheat straw has a smaller environmental footprint than tree fiber in a 2018 life-cycle analysis (LCA) externally reviewed by a panel of experts from the World 18

Typography Annual 2019

Wildlife Fund, Canopy and sustainability consulting firm Quantis. The LCA does point out that the use of pesticides and fertilizers is a concern associated with wheat straw. However, farming studies in the Midwest have found ways to reduce or eliminate the need for fertilizers on fields by growing cover crops, like rye, in the winter to add nitrogen to the soil for spring. Utilizing this strategy could make wheat straw and other agricultural fibers an even better environmentally friendly alternative to trees for paper and paper products. On top of agri-fiber waste, old clothing is another possible solution for the future of paper. This idea is not a new one. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, spent cotton rags and clothing were picked up by rag collectors to turn into paper. Fast forward to today, where the Environmental Protection Agency reports that the average US citizen throws away 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles annually. The Council for Textile Recycling projects that in 2019, the United States will generate 35.4 billion pounds of post-consumer textile waste. It makes sense, then, that the paper industry could capture the textiles headed to our landfills to satisfy our growing paper needs. And because cotton is a very resource-intensive crop in regards to water, pesticides and fertilizers, the reuse of postconsumer textiles for paper is better than increasing the production of cotton to produce virgin-fiber papers.

The future of paper is now Scott Boylston, a sustainable designer and an educator at the Savannah College of Art and Design, looks at the future of paper through the lens of variety. He told me that the future of paper is “a diversity of solutions,” which he describes as “the best solution overall.” Indeed, this is correct. Similar to global energy production, we need a portfolio of resources to meet our future paper needs. We also need to learn about and explore paper ourselves. (Know your audience and know your material!) I learned the art of making paper by hand in 2012 when I started the agricultural fiber lab Fresh Press at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I teach and research. And for years prior to 2012, I evangelized agricultural fibers

as a more environmentally friendly alternative to tree fibers as I lectured about sustainable design through my nonprofit, Re-nourish. The feedback was always: “We agree with you, but where can we find these papers?” When I looked online and called contacts at paper companies, I also found these papers were few and far between. So, I decided to start making them myself, and over the past six years have made, studied and tested different agricultural fibers— corn, soy, rye, tomato, prairie grasses and more—in engineering labs, hoping to find viable fibers other than only wheat straw. In this same time frame, more alternative and sustainable paper companies have come online to increase the options for the graphic design community (see sidebar). I’ve learned through this switch from designer using paper to designer making paper that our natural resources are valuable, and, therefore, agricultural fibers are definitely part of the future of paper. However, they are not here to stay—yet. The design community must embrace them in its print projects to increase market share and lower the cost of the specialty papers currently available. In the meantime, as we plan and await a paper revolution—or if your client or studio isn’t open to agri-fiber yet—we can choose 100-percent recycled or post-consumer tree-fiber paper. It is a good alternative to virgin-fiber tree paper as it uses less energy and water to manufacture and produces less waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Good isn’t great, but good is better. You can also decide to cut back on your paper use altogether. The 1970s mantra of “reduce, reuse, recycle” started with reduce for a reason. Reducing creates less waste and has less negative impacts on the planet. Paper must turn back to its roots so we can continue to design and print in harmony with nature. You can be a part of this transition by learning more about agri-fiber papers and choosing them in your next project. Onward! ca

Although these specialty papers are more challenging to locate and, depending on the print budget, possibly too expensive to afford, they will continue to grow in popularity as the market finds the need for nontree paper options to help mitigate the effects of global warming on us and our planet.

The Canopy EcoPaper Database (epd.canopyplanet.org) is a free online resource where you can find agri-fiber and alternative-fiber papers, filtering by material, geographic region, environmental certification and recycled content. From my experience, these alternative-fiber papers handle print jobs just as well as their tree-fiber paper counterparts. My nonprofit, Re-nourish, has a paper, printing and ink worksheet (re-nourish.org/ paper-printing-ink-tips) to help designers choose paper in a more responsible way. Designers can also purchase agri-fiber papers from my agri-fiber paper lab, Fresh Press (freshpress.studio).

Communication Arts | commarts.com

INSIGHTS Jessica Bellamy Data Storytelling

Jessica Bellamy looks for the story in the data. Her background in design helps her distill dense, eye-glazing information into memorable visuals, and her passion as a design justice advocate helps her sidestep the pitfalls of inaccurate representation and tepid calls to action. Through GRIDS: The Grassroots Information Design Studio, the design boutique she founded in 2015, she creates information graphics with—rather than for—nonprofits and community groups. She’s sowing the seeds of stimulus across the country. In workshops that cover topics like data equity and how to navigate relationships with nonprofits, Bellamy empowers others to invest in socially responsible design. Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale University are some of the locations where she’s facilitated Graphic Ally Hackathons. In this immersive workshop, participants try their hand at creating an infographic —a deep dive into learning how to “mobilize information at the grassroots level.” Dissatisfied with the story that is, Bellamy is putting information in the hands of the people in order to work towards a better ending. —Esther Oh What drew you to information graphics and data visualization? I’ve been an avid reader of research studies, news publications and social literature for most of my adult life, so I’m no stranger to dry, long reports and articles. Too often, compelling data or information gets buried in lengthy wording, eclipsed by field-specific jargon, or hidden behind a passive bar graph or pie chart. Data cannot move or mobilize when it’s weighed down by superfluous or mundane content. Nearly ten years ago, my belief in the power of data and my literary pet peeves drove me to start bridging the communication gap between data resources and the people who are most disenfranchised by that data’s concealment. “Access to information” had become my mantra early on in my design career, so, naturally, I focused on cultivating my information design skills. I was drawn to information design because of its ability to supersede communication barriers. When data is visualized, it can communicate across language divides, energize stagnant content, create new opportunities for instant comprehension, renegotiate perceptions and so much more. 20

Typography Annual 2019

You hold workshops to teach people how to design infographics that inspire policy change. What led you to start giving these workshops? Our current political climate proves that numbers from accredited institutions aren’t enough to encourage responsible or progressive policy reform. Numbers need narrative, calls to action, assertive language, a thorough communication strategy and an overall tone that advocates to break through to the intended viewer. It is more important than ever that creatives are equipped with strategies for effective data storytelling that are well-grounded in conscious and responsible design principles. Do you think the role of design in politics has changed in recent years? Absolutely. “Fake news” has created a need for infographics to be more direct and advocacy facing. Data visuals from research institutions will still be objective, but the days of objective infographics are over. Service-based institutions across the country rely on data to secure government funding for crucial social programs and environmental initiatives. Passive reports will not sustain those funding streams, nor will they help rally support from communities. Infographics that end with passive conclusions to data sets diminish the weight and reality of the results of that data. For example, those results could

be the dealmaker for the establishment of a needed affordable housing program over another individual-serving development project.

that actively work against disenfranchised and vulnerable populations in America.

Creative director Tea Uglow said in 2018 that information is multidimensional because reality is 3-D. Today, we cannot afford to forget the many dimensions of data and that it’s vulnerable to both misrepresentation as well as underrepresentation.

Have you ever made the decision to not use certain data? I’ve decided to not use certain data points in specific infographics because they were from faulty studies, aggravated selective perception, misrepresented the topic or were insensitive to the communities that the graphic was meant to serve.

What have you learned about how human emotion can influence how we perceive data? Human emotion can influence how we perceive data, but more specifically, the true influencer is our perception of our experiences. Selective perception is the term that comes to mind. For example, All in the Family was a TV show that was written with the intent to mock the bigoted, ignorant citizens in America. The fictional character Archie Bunker was a potbellied layabout who openly discriminated against minorities and marginalized people. The show was an opportunity to create satire from the trauma of white male ignorant bliss. It was wildly popular among people who got the joke as well as people who felt that he spoke to their personal views. All in all, selective perception was why the show was so successful. I believe that selective perception absolutely governs how people take in data. It’s impossible to divorce a viewer from their personal frame of reference.

What data set would you love to work with? I would love to work with opportunity cost data. Opportunity cost data are the economic arguments for equity, accountability, inclusion, diversity, flexibility, authentic collaboration and more. I believe that this sector of information could help change the minds of fiscal conservatives who have minimal implicit bias against marginalized people. I want to be a part of that revolution.

Is all data fair game? No. If you are truly a data scientist who authentically cares about society, then you are mindful of how misrepresented data points exacerbate stereotypes and proliferate systemic issues

What does design activism look like to you today? It’s hopeful. The creatives I’ve met are not only seeking to design with purpose, but also want to enact accountability measures and inclusive collaboration in their work. Good intentions are never enough, and we’re starting to see a wave of designers who understand that. How do you stay inspired? I’m in love with the playful spaces that are created when everyone’s needs are met and we are all seen and lovingly challenged to grow. I’m incredibly fortunate to have colleagues and friends who ground me and set me to the task of bringing my bravest aspirations to reality. I try very hard to be just as much of a brave safe-space maker as they are. It’s hard to lose creativity when you have the privilege to play in warm and mobilizing spaces. ca

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Five Typographers Share Their Treasured Finds EBEN SORKIN

Sorkin Type Shelburne Falls, MA

Shifting view: There is a huge rise in typefaces that are throwing sand into the type industry’s ideas about what makes a typeface good or refined. This new rebelliousness against established ideas about quality is something I have found myself spending a lot of time mulling over. On the one hand, a great deal of it is dismissible, but some of it asks worthwhile questions about the previous orthodoxy and offers interesting alternatives. Guilty pleasure: I have a weak spot for absurdity in comedy. I like The Mighty Boosh and Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy. I realize that my taste for this stuff isn’t very widely shared. Mind-blowing type: Viktoriya Grabowska has an unreleased sans that I found thought provoking. It seems to get the balance right and offers new ways to go forward. It is charming on its own terms, but it also opens up possibilities. I look forward to it going public! I also love Salvaje Display, which can be found at Montréal-based type foundry Coppers and Brasses’ site. Such a compelling design!

Typography Annual 2019

INDRA KUPFERSCHMID

Kupferschrift Bonn and Saarbrücken, Germany

Promising creative tool: The Affinity Publisher program, although I am still a happy QuarkXPress user. Other than that, CSS is easier and more flexible to use for typesetting today than any of the traditional desktop publishing applications. I am not very web design savvy, but I know a fair amount of CSS to control type in a way I want. Emerging talents: I am in awe of the lettering work by Gen Ramírez! Fabienne Lentes is also someone I expect to see a lot of exciting work from in the future, and I like the experimental typographic print work by Dingpress. In addition, I like the typefaces the Future Fonts platform is putting out; I am a frequent customer on there. Stress relief: I have a little trampoline in my office. Sometimes, during bad-weather afternoons when I fear that I will snooze at my computer, I put on a fun old song and jump around for three to five minutes.

OLGA VASIK

LYNNE YUN

KHAJAG APELIAN

Chelyabinsk, Russia

Monotype Brooklyn, NY

Debakir Beirut, Lebanon

Favorite social platform: I’m the biggest fan of Dribbble; it actually kickstarted my career as a freelance designer. I like to post shots and get feedback while I’m working on something, rather than post completed projects with tons of renders and photographs. I also love the Dribbble community. It’s not huge, but there are a lot of creative people whose work I admire.

Fantastic read: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson is a hilarious and fantastic read. He talks about finding the courage to accept our vulnerabilities as what they are. I couldn’t help but think about how insecure creatives can get in this digital era, when every piece of design is scrutinized on social media. This book can help us feel more satisfied with our work.

Splurge-worthy investment: A top-notch industrial espresso machine.

Productivity tool: LeechBlock helps me fight online distractions during a busy day. Inspirational read: Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design by Dorr Bothwell and Marlys Mayfield. Understanding relationships between black and white is crucial for all letterers and type designers. This book teaches you a poetic perception of the negative space between letters, and the book contains some helpful exercises on form and counterform with abstract shapes. End-of-day reward: An evening skate session or hanging out with friends. I like doing sports after a long day of intellectual work; it’s really nice to switch activities to free your mind. I feel so much happier when I’m doing daily physical activities.

Valuable resources: I try to catch the Typographics and TypeCon conferences every year. From the onstage talks to the informal conversations during happy hour, it’s a great way to hear about the developments that people are excited about. Type@Cooper and the Type Directors Club also provide video recordings of their events. Growing trend: I’ve noticed a rise in the number of visual designers who utilize coding. The scale could be as small as writing scripts for an existing program like Adobe InDesign or as large as creating a data visualization tool from scratch. A handful of design software, such as the former Adobe Creative Suite, is the primary method for creating design, and the interfaces for these programs influence how we create typography.

Underappreciated tech: DecoType’s Advanced Composition Engine (ACE). Since the Arabic script has always suffered from Latin-centric technologies, DecoType’s ACE was conceived and tailored for Arabic script. Unfortunately, a lot of politics keeps ACE inaccessible and underappreciated. Comprehensive tome: Dr. Titus Nemeth’s Arabic Type-Making in the Machine Age: The Influence of Technology on the Form of Arabic Type, 1908–1993. It’s impressive how Titus eloquently narrates the evolution of Arabic type under the influence of changing technologies. The development of Arabic type—and its evolution from metal to pixels—has not been documented before, and this book provides the first comprehensive report of this history. Creative fuel: I find a lot of inspiration in magazines and newspapers printed in the ’60s and ’70s from Lebanon and Egypt. When it comes to Armenian type, I love going through the old type specimens of Fred Afrikian and Henrik Mnatsakanyan or walking through the secondhand book aisle at the Vernissage market in Yerevan, Armenia.

Communication Arts | commarts.com

TYPOGRAPHY

Susan Hodara

A 3-D Incunabula of Type

An AR bar menu at ARTECHOUSE, a Washington DC space dedicated to art and technology, shows visitors their drink options on their phones through the ARTECHOUSE app. Kiel Mutschelknaus, designer; Riki Kim, design director; ARTECHOUSE, interactive developer/programmer.

hese days, patrons ordering cocktails at Artechouse, a digital art exhibition center-slash-bar in Washington DC, choose from a menu that floats in space. Lists of ingredients scroll beneath beverage offerings, visible only to guests peering into their smartphones while using Artechouse’s free app. Although the drinks are real, the menu is virtual—an augmented reality carte du jour that hovers between visitors’ mobile devices and the world around them. Artechouse’s menu was created by Kiel Mutschelknaus, a 33-yearold graphic designer and faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art. As a work of text-based augmented reality, it highlights the seductive opportunities and the unique challenges faced by designers placing typography in three-dimensional realms.

The concept harks back to the 1990s, when renowned designer Muriel Cooper and her colleagues at MIT Media Lab explored what they called Information Landscapes, interactive screen-based planes of digital typography that swooped and rotated in three dimensions and suggested innovative ways of presenting information. What’s different today are the technologies: faster computer processors, higher-resolution displays, new developer tools like Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore, and, perhaps most notably, a mobile device in nearly everyone’s hands. One result is the accelerated evolution of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR). “It’s the Lumières’ train moment again,” says Ben Rubin, director of the Center for Data Arts at the New School in Manhattan. He’s referring to the moment in 1896 when Auguste and Louis Lumière projected footage of a train arriving at La Ciotat station, both 24

Typography Annual 2019

terrifying and delighting audiences and launching the medium of film. “It took decades for [film] to be realized technically, with sound and eventually color,” Rubin, 54, says. “But it also took decades to figure out what it is. How does it work? How do we perceive it? How do we use it?” For designers, developers and artists delving into the still-emergent fields of AR, VR and MR, the same questions are vital today.

What about typography? When designing the Artechouse menu, Mutschelknaus selected IBM Plex Sans and IBM Plex Mono, which he describes as “clean and stripped down.” He opted for white because, he says, “I knew the bar would be dark, and even if the bartender wore a bright shirt or a light got turned on, the legibility would still be there.” Legibility is inherently thorny in AR, VR and MR, where backgrounds, lighting conditions, and user perspectives and interactions are unpredictable. In three dimensions, typeface styles, sizes, weights and placement behave differently from their equivalents in printand web-based design. What happens when users move closer to or farther from the text? What if they walk behind it and it’s backwards? What if the background interferes with the type in front of it? What about parallax, depth and layered focus? What about text that moves? “People are just beginning to dig into these problems,” says Dan Rhatigan, senior manager of Adobe Type. “We are in the very early days of exploring what’s possible.” Rhatigan’s team is working with new dynamic typeface technologies, like variable fonts and OpenType-SVG, that offer potential

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An image (left) made using the AR app Weird Type, by Zach Lieberman and Molmol Kuo, which enables users to draw typography in 3-D space using an iOS device. Sharleen Chen’s MFA thesis All Mixed Up investigates how conventions of traditional graphic design, specifically in relation to the poster format, can evolve in a mixed-reality environment. This particular segment of the piece (right) examines how composition and meaning can change depending on the viewer’s position and perspective. Sharleen Chen, creative director/designer.

advantages in virtual environments. Meanwhile, he says, existing sans serif typefaces with clear shapes and open interior spaces, such as Myriad, Helvetica or Frutiger, are solid choices in threedimensional settings. The foremost objective remains legibility. “Because if whatever you’ve set in the typeface degrades before someone can read it,” Rhatigan says, “you’ve lost the battle.” That battle inspired Zach Lieberman and his wife, Molmol Kuo, to create the AR app Weird Type. “The question that intrigued us,” Lieberman, 41, says, “was: What does it mean to write messages and put them in the air?” Lieberman, a Brooklyn-based designer who is a cofounder of the School for Poetic Computation, describes himself as “an artist who writes code to create artwork.” With Weird Type, users can input words that hang in the real world, then choreograph them by selecting from seven modes that respond to touch and motion. In Ribbon, for example, they can “paint” a swirling strip of words; in Stamp, they can duplicate phrases, one atop the next. Lieberman says his app is a way to investigate AR’s grammar, the yet-to-be-established conventions of what works and what doesn’t in the medium. “What if you create so much virtual content that you mask the real world?” he says. “And what about legibility? The type is flat, but it’s moving in three dimensions, and there are angles where it becomes illegible.” Sharleen Chen, a designer in Los Angeles, tackled type-based grammar in MR while a student at California Institute of the Arts. Her 2017 MFA thesis, All Mixed Up, reconsiders the precepts of poster design by bringing five design principles into three dimensions. In “Perspective,” for instance, the word perspective morphs into the word matters as the viewer shifts position. “Interactivity” examines how a user can interact with and alter a poster’s design. “Mimicry” shows how nature, specifically wind and water, can be mimicked in MR. “Mixed reality is most interesting when the digital object blends seamlessly into the real world,” Chen, 31, says. “This means our 26

Typography Annual 2019

digital design can be susceptible to real-life elements, such as lighting and weather. Can and should type be readable on a dark, rainy day? Does the same type look the same on a sunny day?” New York City–based typeface designer CJ Dunn addressed these questions and others when he designed his newest typeface, Louvette, and created what might be the first AR type specimen app, Louvette AR. “I wanted to see how my fonts would look in AR and what kinds of issues would present themselves,” he says. “We as type designers should be thinking about where the type will be used and how people are going to be reading, especially in emerging technologies.” Louvette is a high-contrast display typeface that has sharp serifs and a range of hairline sizes, “so you can use it small with optimal hairlines and big with optimal hairlines,” Dunn, 37, says. Although he did not design Louvette specifically for AR, the typeface, he says, “addresses a typographic problem related to ‘perceived size,’ which we experience in AR differently from in print or on the web.” His app demonstrates how this would be handled in AR. “As you walk toward the letters in space, the hairlines get thinner,” Dunn says. “When you get very close, you see the thinnest hairlines for the largest sizes—or, I should say, the largest perceived sizes. As you walk away from the letters, the hairlines get thicker so they don’t disappear.” In the app, pairs of English words—one roman, one italic—form a circle suspended in space, and, slowly, each word changes, a letter at a time. The type is in shades of orange—Dunn’s solution to a variable background. “Having a strong hue is one way to stand out when you don’t know what the background will be,” he says. Another way to maintain legibility against a fluctuating background is to treat the typography as a graphic component separate from the virtual space. That’s what the New York Times has done in most of its augmented and virtual reality stories. The Times entered the VR arena in 2015, when it released its NYT VR app and delivered more than a million Google Cardboards to print subscribers so they could watch its VR film “The Displaced.”

“We’re still reporting the facts,” Lian Chang, the Times’ product design director, multimedia, says, “but now, instead of just a photograph, you’re getting scale, texture and depth.”

In 2018, the paper introduced its first AR experience on the general New York Times app, featuring four athletes competing in the Pyeongchang Olympics. Dozens more AR and VR projects have been completed since.

Chang, 41, distinguishes type treated as information from what he calls “ergodic type,” where, he says, “the user experience is inextricable from the storytelling.” With ergodic type, the type itself is part of the message being communicated. Examples can be seen in visual poetry, like that of E. E. Cummings, and in augmented reality artwork by Tamiko Thiel, 61, a media artist in Munich who has worked in VR since 1994 and AR since 2010. Some of her works use letterforms as part of the composition. For two AR projects, Transformation: Lehel and El Barrio Is Home!, Thiel collected handwritten reflections from local residents about their neighborhoods, then converted the notes into gold lettering that was visible to viewers using a free app at each site. In both, the intimacy of individual handwriting—legible or not—invoked the power of community. Works like Thiel’s speak to the expanding expressiveness of these mediums and continue the vein of typographic explorations that Cooper and her colleagues were conducting in the ’90s. “We were experimenters,” says David Small, who, as a doctoral student at MIT, worked closely with Cooper at the Media Lab. Today, he is a designer based in Martha’s Vineyard and the founder of Small Design Firm.

As for text, words are used primarily as informational aids. In “The Displaced,” subtitles are duplicated on opposite sides of the scene to increase the likelihood that viewers looking around in 360 degrees will find them. In the Olympics article, pop-up explanatory captions are triggered by the viewer’s position relative to the athlete. To ensure contrast, the type, usually white, may have a drop shadow or appear on a dark field.

Louvette AR, an AR type specimen app, in use at Ala Moana Beach Park in Honolulu, Hawaii (top). Louvette AR enables users to explore the Louvette typeface family in the world around them. CJ Dunn, designer; Andrew Johnson, developer; CJ Type, client. A screenshot from the AR installation El Barrio Is Home! (bottom), by Tamiko Thiel. Residents of El Barrio (East Harlem, New York City) were asked to write—in their own handwriting—what made El Barrio feel like home for them. These statements were transformed by Thiel into golden augments that would surround viewers when they scanned the facade of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI)’s new headquarters with the Blippar app. CCCADI commissioned the artwork for the project Mi Querido Barrio, an AR tour of El Barrio that highlights the neighborhood’s historic significance and its present-day struggles to persevere.

Small, 53, speaks of the “incunabula,” which he defines as the 50-year period between the printing of the Gutenberg Bible and the turn of the 16th century: “the first 50 years of movable type,” he says.

In describing the New York Times’ editorial vision for its AR content, Graham Roberts, the paper’s director of immersive platforms storytelling, illuminated three of the medium’s key offerings.

“Initially, people tried to make printed books look like illuminated manuscripts,” he says, “with elaborate initial capitals in different colors. Then, within 50 years, they realized, hey, the printing press can do all sorts of stuff. Let’s forget about the past and figure out what works.”

Scale: “Placing an object in front of you in the context of your environment conveys its scale way better than a photograph,” Roberts says.

People haven’t yet forgotten the past when it comes to augmented, virtual and mixed realities. They may be reluctant to download a necessary app or permit access to their cameras. They may be discouraged by low resolution and technical glitches, or by the cost of expensive headsets. Furthermore, they have to adapt to a new way of grasping information and seeing the world. Small believes we are in a present-day incunabula, where reading has already shifted from paper to screens. “Why,” he asks, “should we continue to ape printing conventions when we can move type around in three dimensions?” ca

Size: Now that mobile is the Times’ largest consumer platform, screen size can be frustrating. “The surface of the device is so small compared to print, where we could do giant two-page spreads,” Roberts says. “With AR, we can make graphics big again. On your phone, you can place a four-foot-tall diagram on your table. You’re looking through the same small screen, but it feels as if you are looking at something much larger.” Interaction: AR provides more-human, less-abstract means of interaction. “If you want to see something in your house up close, you don’t reach out and start pinching your fingers,” Roberts says. “You walk up to it. You walk around it. You lean into it. You do the same with AR. It brings visual information into a mode of interaction that is usually reserved for the physical world.”

Communication Arts | commarts.com

STINA PERSSON IT’S ONLY PAPER

BY AMY NG

first noticed Stina Persson’s illustrations many years ago among the pages of a women’s magazine. Those small spots of watercolor illustrations were done for a horoscope column, and they stood out among immaculate photos of beautiful people for their dreamy, organic and vibrant quality. “I’d have to figure out new ways of conveying them each time,” Persson says with a laugh. While she’s since moved on to bigger projects and a varied roster of clients—recently, she collaborated with fashion brand Artpiece to create silk kaftans—it’s this love of exploration and play that keeps her work fresh. Though her specialty is watercolor and ink, each of her illustrations imparts her fluid, relaxed signature style, whether it’s composed of cut paper, abstract art or handwritten text. Her love of looseness coupled with her organic process is precisely the reason why her work looks perfectly imperfect. “I think I’m good with liquid stuff,” she says. “I was never good at the intricate stuff, the detailed bits. I’m not one to pencil in tiny dots or fashion an eyebrow first.” While her work may seem effortless, she professes to have a love/ hate relationship with watercolor because the medium can easily carry connotations of being corny and New Agey. “I always strive for beauty. But I don’t want it to be perfect or cute,” she says. When she wields her brushes, her focus is on giving her subjects power and the veritable edge that

her work has become known for. Her work immediately springs to mind when I think of images of women rendered in ink and watercolor with an ethereal quality, yet oozing with attitude. “I always want something to show through their eyes,” she says, “As though I’ve painted a real person— not just a fashion illustration.” Persson, 46, was born in Lund, in southern Sweden. Her parents were sociology professors (her father died 20 years ago), and she has five siblings. With limited access to TV, the great outdoors became her main source of entertainment. She recalls constantly whining to her mother that there was nothing to do, hence the need for her to create her own toys, inventing games and entire worlds. She and her siblings even went as far as making their own schoolbooks. “I guess I did have a lot of things to do; I just needed to get over that threshold of thinking I didn’t,” she says. Persson continued her creative trajectory by enrolling in an art school in Perugia, Italy, feeling her way through introductory art courses to see if the field was something that she wanted to pursue. She wound up in Florence next, where she studied fashion. “I wasn’t sure if that’s what I wanted to do, but I went there because I heard it was a really good school,” she says. She found to her dismay that fashion is a kind of science, one rooted in technical details that she has neither the heart nor patience for.

Right: “The League of Extraordinary Women was an exhibition with an adjacent pop-up bar in Berlin, Germany. A group of artists curated by digital magazine sisterMAG interpreted ‘Mademoiselle Lillet.’ Lillet, a classic French aperitif with a long history, has become popular as it’s light and citrusy. Even though we had to include the name Lillet, it was more about giving an air and feel of the brand. I created this urban lady and collaged handpainted type, which gave the image an iconic and retro feel. As always, I loved mixing the modern with the old school, the soft shapes with the hard edges.” Lillet/Thea Neubauer, sisterMAG, clients. 28

Typography Annual 2019

STINA PERSSON

“I was awful. With fashion, every measurement has to be exact, and I was not very precise,” she says. But while her experience in patternmaking was dismal, her skill and interest in the field’s subset—fashion illustration—blossomed. An art teacher at the fashion school who saw how Persson excelled at fashion illustration encouraged her to go to New York to study illustration at Pratt Institute. And so, in 1995, she did. Persson completed her studies in two years. “I was scared when I graduated. I was told that illustration was a really difficult field to get into, so I thought I should be an artist instead. But that was so much harder!” she says. Unsure of what she wanted to do, she painted large-scale portraits and waited tables at a restaurant, completing freelance illustration assignments from Swedish magazines in her spare time. “I got really good at waiting tables too!” she says. Everything changed for Persson after 9/11. The restaurant she was working at closed down because of its vicinity to ground zero. With the world spinning and changing around her, Persson decided that she could no longer continue living her life the way she had been. Finally committed to pursuing illustration seriously, she decided that she needed an agent. Thankfully for her, she had been productive even when she waited tables, and had amassed a portfolio that was ready to be shown. “I was brazen—I called up different agencies and told them that they needed to see me!” she says with a laugh. It was then that she landed on KOKO Art Agency, a New York City–based agency that still represents her today.

“Her portfolio stood out amongst many candidates we were considering to represent. Not only was she versatile in every medium, but [we saw that] she had the ability to work with any client in any field, from high fashion to pharmaceutical companies to even government agencies,” says Koko Nakano, president of KOKO Art Agency. Their relationship has been a constant throughout the years as Persson has expanded her clientele (she almost exclusively worked with Swedish clients prior) and raised three boys (now aged fifteen, thirteen and eleven) in Stockholm, Sweden. She professes that having an agent made a huge difference as Nakano has helped her gain exposure, and navigated the business side of things, like negotiating and making contracts. “It’s rare for people to have such a long relationship in the illustration business, but we’re evolving along with the business too, and that’s very important,” says Persson. With more than fifteen years of experience under her belt, Persson has fine-tuned her process. She starts by asking clients to send over images of her work that caught their eye so she can tailor her work to their expectations. With recurring clients, she already understands their aesthetics and preferences, so she’s able to solve the brief intuitively. She also guides clients by pointing out what works for illustration rather than photography. She says that the former is nuanced, subtle and less literal—especially when one is working with colors, tones and atmospheres to express a concept. In the past, her portfolio was made up of work that incorporated a lot more digital editing, but she’s since tried harder to get the look right on paper with more analog tools: bamboo brushes, india ink and Dr. Ph. Martin’s transparent dyes. “Previously, I would make sketches, but I realized it was too tedious. When you’re translating sketches to ink and watercolor, the changes are too dramatic and unpredictable,” says

Right: Personal work. “This is a typical ‘what happens if’ piece. I love to mix different liquid paints and see what happens. It’s like chemistry. Here, I poured thick acrylic paints onto a still-wet watercolor piece.” “This piece was created for the high-end online gallery Wonderwall. They wanted a black-and-white piece as muted and monochrome was trending at the time. I managed to change their minds with this everything-but-gray piece. And it became a best seller. One of the hardest things when selling art is naming the pieces. I know I could have called it Untitled, but this gal needed a name. When I was sitting in a retro-styled French coffee shop, I saw a poster for the Charlie Chaplin movie The Kid, only this was the French version of the poster, so it was Le Kid. And there it was.” Jessica Lindberg, Wonderwall, client. “When I got asked to be a part of the New Nordic Fashion Illustration exhibit, I was thrilled. Helen Saluveer, the curator and creative director, wanted all the artwork for the show to be original and really large, in A1. To not get too terrified in front of enormous sheets of white paper, I used smaller sheets and just collaged pieces together. This way, the art grew organically. But my studio was like a confetti factory for weeks.” Helen Saluveer, New Nordic Fashion Illustration, creative director; New Nordic Fashion Illustration, client. “Swedish couture queen Ida Sjöstedt asked me to interpret her spring/summer 2019 collection. The prints would be shown and sold by Absolut Art and therefore had to be ready in time for fashion week in Stockholm, in late August 2018. At the time of the request, the dresses were still mainly in Ida’s head, so with the help of her own sketches, fabric swatches and mood boards, I tried my best to get in there. The collection was called Dream on Dreamer, and the project was a dream from start to finish. I got to do what I love most—capture the vibe and essence of clothing rather than the seams and hemlines—and Ida, being the curator, got to pick her four favorite pieces out of 20 artworks.” Ida Sjöstedt, Ida Sjöstedt Couture, designer; Lisa Törner, Absolut Art, client.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

STINA PERSSON Persson. These days, she goes straight to creating different versions of artworks so clients can select the final from a pool of three to six images. “There’s just more room for happy accidents this way,” she says. As most of her pieces are hand drawn, her whole process can take anywhere from five minutes to five days. The appeal of her work lies in her ability to make each piece look effortless, and the necessary repetition and practice can create a literal paper trail—the floor of the studio that she shares with four other people in Stockholm is sometimes covered with so many drawings and paintings that her studio mates have to sidestep her pieces as they’re drying on the floor. Persson’s ability to work quickly stems from her desire to get her ideas onto paper as much as she can while they’re still fresh in her mind. Once a final piece is selected, it goes through a round of tweaking on the computer to allow for any necessary color adjustments. Her style has also evolved throughout the years. When creating past works, she felt as though her hands were less secure, although no less daring. Her work these days is more fluid, albeit with an edge. She’s ever conscious of negotiating this fine balance by shying away from works that are too pretty or soft. “Her portfolio has expanded organically. Though her work was never literal, she’s experimented with narrative art and even abstract pieces to add breadth to her portfolio,” says Nakano. This growth and change is partly attributed to the art shows that she’s put on almost every year since her graduation from Pratt, either in New York, Sweden or Tokyo. Once a curator gets in touch about showing her work at a bar or a small gallery, things move forward quickly. “I’ll say yes to a show for March, but then February comes along and I’ll panic,” she says. In preparation for the show, she goes through a phase where absolutely nothing happens on the page. “It’s a struggle—it’s painful and really not fun.

Left: “One in a series of four prints created for the fashion brand & Other Stories. I was doing my take on different looks from that season’s catwalks.” Josefine Engström, & Other Stories, art director; & Other Stories, client. This page: “I worked with the people at Louis Vuitton to create an online animation using watercolor portraits and photographs of that season’s accessories. It was that stunning collection with all oversized broderie anglaise embroidery and poppy pastels. This piece ended up not being used, but I still like it.” Laure de Dampierre, Louis Vuitton, client. “This was such a fun project due to the artistic sensitivity of the people at the agency L.O.V.E. They were open to all kinds of solutions for something as simple as hair product packaging. They didn’t want just hair, but more of an image that drew the buyer to the product. It was quite an organic process; in the end, I created both type and art.” Benjamin Schafir, L.O.V.E, creative director; L.O.V.E, design firm; L’Oréal, client. Communication Arts | commarts.com

STINA PERSSON I create so many bad pieces. But, all of a sudden, everything falls into place—it works, and I evolve. [I create work that] is new and different.” Making art for shows offers her a way to explore new themes and techniques in a zone unhindered by the realities of client work— much like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Ultimately, the new rhythm and energy born out of these shows seep into her commercial work. When I ask Persson what her advice to young artists and illustrators is, she says, “Don’t be afraid of change. Adapt a little sooner. Say yes more often.” They’re succinct words of wisdom she’s distilled over the years of kicking herself for turning down amazing projects—an album cover for Lady Gaga; a collaboration with fashion photographer Michelangelo Di Battista; a live-painting gig for one of her “favorite designers,” Stella McCartney—simply because she was fearful of doing something beyond her comfort zone. She’s aware of how easy it is to be overwhelmed by fear when there’s no precedent, although this is something she’s learning how to let go of. “Now I can see that it’s only paper, so how bad could it be? So, if Stella McCartney reads this, I’m here,” she says. “I’m ready.” ca

This page: “This was another fun project. This time, I was working with DDB and Reebok Brasil. The idea was to have a very retro style and a René Gruau feel in order to give it an old-school, high-end look. For each illustration, I had to add gym equipment, like water bottles, dumbbells and jump ropes. Once the ads were long gone, online gallery Wonderwall wanted to sell this one as a print. I removed the jump rope, and she was ready to go. I like the mix of elegance and absolute mess.” Teco Cipriano/Maurício Mori, CentoeSeis, Brazil, art directors; Sergio Magalhães/Ricardo Chester, CentoeSeis, Brazil, creative directors; CentoeSeis, Brazil/DDB, ad agencies; Reebok Brasil, client. “One of eight images created for OM Matters, a brand making ecofriendly yoga clothes for women. Called Bow Pose or Dhanurasana, this yoga pose is one of my favorites to both practice and paint.” Tambra Wayne, OM Matters, art director/client. Right: “This was created for a gallery night at the & Other Stories flagship store in Stockholm. I was interpreting different looks from the catwalks for the spring/summer 2017 season, which was so much about the heavy bangs. They were everywhere, from Versace to Proenza Schouler and Rodarte to Dries Van Noten. Here, I matched the fluid portrait with bold shapes cut out of paper. I love to add colored paper to my watercolor and ink drawings. It adds playfulness and edge to the final work.” Josefine Engström, & Other Stories, client. “Another piece for the gallery event at the & Other Stories store in Stockholm.” Josefine Engström, & Other Stories, client. “Poppies have been popular as an ingredient in beauty products as well as on packaging. Vogue Russia published a few pages about this. Growing up in ’70s Scandinavia, I was surrounded by the Unikko poppy print from Marimekko, which made quite a revival a few years ago. This was kind of an homage to Unikko and the genius behind it, designer Maija Isola.” Polina Grigoryan/Anna Zhakevich, Vogue Russia, art directors; Vogue Russia, client. 34

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

BY GARRICK WEBSTER

tep through the door at Pearlfisher’s studio in the Hammersmith area of London, United Kingdom, and you’ll enter a space full of optimism, progress and creativity. It’s bathed in natural light, there’s a bar with a concierge and a shelf is full of industry awards. With white walls and pale wood floors, opulent arches lead through to a gallery space, and there are botanical illustrations of cacti, aloes and succulent plants everywhere.

“This is some of the art that we produced to promote our garden at the Chelsea Flower Show,” says Jonathan Ford, one of the company’s three founding partners. “It was literally an immersive experience. We created the illusion that you were underwater, so it was like walking through a coral reef.” It’s not really what anyone expects to hear when visiting one of the world’s leading independent branding agencies. With bases in London, New York, Copenhagen and San Francisco, Pearlfisher is known for its work boosting the desirability of iconic brands, like Cadbury, Starbucks and Target. But garden design? That’s new—something the Pearlfisher team immersed themselves in for a special, signature project last year. In 2017, the agency celebrated its 25th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, its founders wanted to do something different—to make a real statement of intent. “We didn’t want to produce a book of 25 years of Pearlfisher. That was a definite no-no. We asked the company, and they said, ‘It’s all about looking forward,’” says Ford. Having designed a lot of packaging over the years, the staff at Pearlfisher realized that they have contributed to the vast amount of waste that modern society generates. So, for the company’s 25th anniversary, they decided to highlight one key issue—that of plastic in the ocean. Going back to the

Pearlfisher name, which references the Japanese ama— women who free dive to find pearls—one idea was to create an ama statue out of recycled plastic and submerge it in the sea off Japan, where pearl fishing takes place. It would have represented how people can live in harmony with nature. However, the location seemed too remote, and Pearlfisher wanted to make a wider impact. Then they hit on the idea of creating a specially themed garden at the United Kingdom’s number one horticultural event, the Chelsea Flower Show. Founding partner Karen Welman started sketching, a concept was developed and, sure enough, Pearlfisher’s application to the Royal Horticultural Society was accepted. After a year of hard work, the company unveiled its creation at the 2018 show. Three cylindrical tanks containing live coral and fish supported a 20-foot glass disc filled with water. When people walked into the open space between the tanks and looked up, they saw a 3-D printed sculpture of an ama poised above the glass disc and appearing to be diving into it. The three tanks were surrounded by all sorts of plants, like cacti and Spanish moss, which were configured like a coral reef, and people could relax among the plants to experience a sort of dry land seascape complete with the sounds of the ocean. Surrounding the installation were 500 plastic bottles, representing the amount of waste plastic that goes into the ocean every 2.5 seconds. Media outlets, including the BBC and Harper’s Bazaar, picked up on Pearlfisher’s unique contribution and spread the story to around 500 million people globally. The company also landed a gold award for the garden’s design—a unique gong to sit alongside all its Cannes Lions, Clios, D&AD Pencils and DBA Design Effectiveness awards.

Captions supplied by Pearlfisher. Jonathan Ford was chief creative officer on all projects shown. Right: “The inundation of ‘craft’ as an expression of authenticity in every category was diluting Taylors of Harrogate’s positioning. By exploring an extension of ‘craft’ into ‘craftsmanship’ and bringing this together with a focus on family, flavor and service, we defined a new creative vision—‘The Home of Extraordinary Flavour’—to take Taylors forward.” Harriet Ferguson, senior designer; Yael Alaton, strategy; David Bates/Hiroyuki Izutsu/Suthipa Kamyam, contributing artists; Taylors of Harrogate, client. 36

Typography Annual 2019

PEARLFISHER

But, more importantly, it helped Pearlfisher look forward. “In a way, the next 25 years is all about how to design ourselves out of a job,” Welman says. “We’re quite serious about that.” It also set the company up with a platform for a new initiative it is rolling out to the industry. Lightweighting—a design concept all about sustainable design, taking responsibility, reducing waste and doing more with less—is being led across the company by Ford, Welman and Pearlfisher’s third founding partner, Mike Branson. The approach is being used as a basis for Pearlfisher’s own branding and packaging work with clients, and the agency is also sharing its thinking with other designers through talks, presentations, events and a white paper that can be downloaded from its website. By changing client and industry behavior, the hope is that consumer behavior will be influenced too and that the environment will be the winner. While thought leadership often doesn’t extend much further than writing a blog, at Pearlfisher, they really walk the walk. On the first floor of the company’s London headquarters, you’ll find the global strategy team, led by chief strategy officer Yael Alaton, along with the futures team, headed by futures director Sophie Maxwell. The second floor is home to London creative director David Jenkinson and a broad team of designers that includes conceptual thinkers, graphic and 3-D designers, and a group of production experts. The building that Pearlfisher has occupied for the last fourteen years used to be a school, which is entirely fitting, as constant learning is a big part of the company’s ethos.

“Yesterday I was learning a 3-D program,” says Welman. “That is the future for designers. All of us need to be able to use a three-dimensional program. Whereas in the past, designers have been au fait with Photoshop and Illustrator, that’s no longer enough.” By keeping up to date on new materials, such as plastics that biodegrade at a molecular level, Pearlfisher is continually ramping up knowledge about the complex issues of sustainable manufacturing. For instance, producing plastic bottles can mean they’ll end up in the ocean, but on the other hand, manufacturing recyclable glass bottles increases a project’s carbon footprint. Pearlfisher works with clients and suppliers on these tricky decisions. “It’s not just graphics; it’s the whole concept. It’s the whole item that you’re using or producing. Everything is changing,” says Welman. And Pearlfisher is prepared for change. Its futures team devotes a lot of time and resources to understanding the key markets in which its clients operate. The team contributes to the company at two levels. First, it researches and produces reports on how key sectors—like food and drink, health and well-being, and luxury—are changing. Based on quantitative research that covers everything from surveys to financial and market statistics, as well as qualitative research into attitudes and trends, this work is fed through to Pearlfisher’s strategists and designers. Second, when creative concepts are developed for specific brands, futures helps ensure that the work not only has here-and-now value, but also will carry the brand into tomorrow.

This page: From left to right: Jonathan Ford, founding creative partner and chief executive officer; Karen Welman, founding creative partner and chief creative officer; Mike Branson, founding partner and chief executive officer; Yael Alaton, chief strategy officer; Sophie Maxwell, futures director, global; David Jenkinson, creative director. Right: “Pharmaceutical company Help Remedies tasked Pearlfisher to refresh its existing product range and introduce new variants into the portfolio. By refining the existing identity and color-coding the embossed pill shape, we visually strengthened the brand architecture.” Help Remedies, client. “The Pearlfisher Garden transported visitors into an underwater world. Beneath a 3-D printed sculpture of a pearl diver, or Japanese ama, made from recycled polylactic-acid plastic, specimen planting including cacti, succulents and exotics was used to juxtapose the beauty and possible desertification of the world’s most precious garden. At the center sat the Coral Man, from sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, which was surrounded by 500 Tŷ Nant mineral water bottles to fill the boundary walls, representing how much plastic packaging is thrown into the oceans every 2.5 seconds.” Miles Wagner, designer; John Warland, Senseless Acts of Beauty, design; Karen Welman, chief creative officer; Jason deCaires Taylor, artist.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

PEARLFISHER “We don’t baton pass between departments,” says Jenkinson. “It’s as important that design is as involved from the outset as futures or strategy.” Pearlfisher’s focus is on working with both challenger and iconic brands, and bringing a premium quality to clients’ brands in each category. The company is enthused by startups that want to create new market categories. For instance, it created a natural identity for Seedlip, a new nonalcoholic distilled spirit for people who don’t drink. Sometimes, Pearlfisher will even invest in a challenger brand alongside developing its identity. One example of this is The Clock, a high-end gym concept with timefocused workout equipment in luxury surroundings that includes a kitchen. Pearlfisher helped develop the identity, exercise equipment, décor and even the menu. Equally, the agency loves reinvigorating category-leading brands like Jim Beam bourbon. In a market full of new entrants, craft whiskeys and flavor rivals, Jim Beam needed to future-proof. Pearlfisher asked if the brand was seen as too big, generic and mass-produced. “Together with our clients, we identified that there was the opportunity to be the global icon in bourbon,” says Alaton. “The name is synonymous with American history and a bourbon heritage with seven generations of distilling. We came up with the idea of creating the living legacy of Jim Beam, and that enabled us to take what was traditional and authentic about Jim Beam, but also introduce contemporary elements within that.” To help facilitate this, the futures team studied how Jim Beam’s brand expression had changed over the years within the bourbon category, how the company had evolved and how other bourbons, as well as brands Left: “Cawston Press wanted to extend its sparkling drinks to an on-the-go format with more mass appeal. Bespoke typography and cues of visual pressing represent the traditional process of pressing apples whilst ‘sparkle’ icons and a crafted tone of voice reference the product’s refreshing sparkle and natural ingredients.” Cawston Press, client. “The identity for Little Moons is simple, iconic and places the product at the heart of the brand; complementing a classic typeface, the o’s of moons replicate the shape of the mochi themselves. ‘The Mochi Makers’ sign-off establishes the brand with a stamp of credibility, giving the brand an artisanal feel.” Harriet Ferguson, senior designer; Karen Welman, chief creative officer; Yael Alaton, strategy; Little Moons, client. This page: “Before Blue Bottle introduced its artisanal single-serve coffee to retail, it tasked Pearlfisher to get its bottle design to rise and shine. The new coffee carton cues dairy and evokes nostalgia. Pearlfisher clarified the Blue Bottle wordmark, simplified messaging and played up the blue palette in unexpected ways, like with the saturated gable.” Hamish Campbell, creative director; Blue Bottle Coffee, client. “With a holisitc brand strategy and contemporary brand identity, Pearlfisher transformed GoMacro’s macrobiotic and vegan offering into a desirable staple for fulfilled living. The mosaic design gives the brand an ownable secondary language that dramatizes the core principles of this lifestyle.” Hamish Campbell, creative director; GoMacro, client. Communication Arts | commarts.com

PEARLFISHER in other categories, signify their premium status to consumers. The design team used these insights to reconsider the various ways in which Jim Beam communicated with its customer base. Giving an iconic brand relevance in a changing market has a “fix and flex” aspect to it, according to Jenkinson. “We work with the brand’s assets to make sure there’s a common, recognizable thread, but that there are assets within their toolkit so that when they need to flex—so that it’s not one dimensional, one size fits all—they can adapt to different needs.” A whole range of little refinements was made, such as the fluting on the bottle, which gives it a more tactile quality. As you go up through the Jim Beam range, the bottle fluting becomes more detailed to express the premium quality. The broad, white label was maintained and simplified slightly to ensure that it still expresses the open and generous nature of the brand. By applying its holistic approach, Pearlfisher generates desirability across the look, feel and narrative of each brand the agency works with. And it’s heartening to know that by following its Lightweighting concept at the same time, the company isn’t just striving to create desire for brands—it is trying to do so sustainably. Wherever possible, Pearlfisher is suggesting ways of reducing waste, and in doing so is becoming the go-to agency for brands that want to improve sustainability in their processes and message. Pearlfisher is currently putting the finishing touches on some work for a major fast food label that will reduce landfill by millions of tons a year. So, watch this space— sustainability is going to be the theme at Pearlfisher for the next 25 years. ca This page: “Jim Beam turned to Pearlfisher to reassert its leadership with a brand vision, product architecture and packaging redesign that would better represent the premium bourbon inside. By enabling the graphic treatment of each individual range to have its own personality whilst always remaining firmly rooted in the Jim Beam family DNA, Pearlfisher has better connected the brand’s past to its future.” Mike Beauchamp, design director; Yael Alaton, strategy; Jenny Cairns, project manager; Jim Beam, client. Right: “In the Nordic region, people mistook smoothies for yogurt-based drinks rather than rejoicing in their fruit-only credentials. Pearlfisher’s challenge was to disrupt the crowded category and convey Froosh’s modern attitude toward health. The new identity creates a straighttalking brand that speaks with immediacy and a twist of humor.” Froosh, client. “Seedlip is a sophisticated and craft-driven spirit that is also nonalcoholic. Utilizing an artful arrangement of Seedlip’s own botanicals, a distinct monogram and copper detailing, Pearlfisher has infused Seedlip with layers of discovery.” Hamish Campbell, creative director; Seedlip, client.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

KILIII YUYAN BY DZANA TSOMONDO

t’s easy to say that Seattle-based photographer Kiliii Yuyan’s photos are beautiful and majestic, but his work is particularly distinguished by its visceral nature. His tableaux are holistic, bringing all visual elements into harmony; there is a sense not of looking at these panoramas, but experiencing them. I marveled at the texture coaxed from each flake of snow; sunlight streaming through the span of a vulture’s lofted wings as it feeds on a dead calf; the ear-popping clarity of a river winding through a gorge; Icelandic rock formations whose jagged peaks joust for the sky. But the breadth of Yuyan’s vision is not conscribed by remote, breathtaking landscapes; in fact, his work is about the proud Indigenous people and communities who make their lives there. Frequent collaborator Nejma Belarbi knows this better than most. She is the codirector of Voices For Biodiversity, an environmentalist nonprofit. “His perspective and dedication to sharing the importance of the relationship between ecosystems, biodiversity, and Indigenous knowledge and practice is commendable,” she says. When I hop into Yuyan’s compact truck, I’m struck by his affability and boyish appearance, both of which belie his 39 years. I quickly discover that we grew up in the same county, each raised by our respective fretful immigrant parents. Yuyan, the first of two brothers, was born in Washington DC to a Han Chinese father and a Nanai mother. Known as the Nanai in Siberia and the Hezhe across the Chinese border, they are Indigenous people whose traditional way of life is centered around fishing. His early years were spent shuttling back and forth between the United States and a village in what is now southeastern Siberia. Yuyan’s parents were determined to make a life in their adopted country, but they struggled mightily in those early days. Long hours and frequent relocations meant the children would often be entrusted to the care of Yuyan’s maternal grandmother.

Photography was not Yuyan’s first love. He has always been inexplicably drawn to the water, to its wild, unknowable depths and to the vessels that brave its embrace. He remembers his grandmother’s stories of catching sturgeon with her father on the Amur River—giants too big to pull aboard their canoe. She kept picture books of a Nanai boy riding the back of a sturgeon, and told stories of a hero who undertakes a river odyssey. No doubt all of that was part of why, when he stumbled on George Dyson’s Baidarka, a seminal work on the Aleut sea kayak, Yuyan was captivated. Two weeks later, he enrolled in a skin-on-bone kayak-building workshop. “If that happened now, I think I would feel weird about learning to build kayaks from a White guy who learned from a White guy,” Yuyan says, “but I also think about how awesome it was that it didn’t vanish, and how important it was that myself and other native people were able to bring it back [to our communities].” Identity is a thorny issue for any first-generation immigrant, but for Yuyan, it was particularly fraught. Trying to be Chinese and American was hard enough, but his family had its own internal identity crisis that only fully became clear to Yuyan as an adult. In China, Nanai/Hezhe people are discriminated against and marginalized. That internalized racism and selfloathing was the unacknowledged dark cloud that hung over his childhood. Growing up, there was no discussion of their native heritage at all. “One time, my brother and I were playing in the forest behind our house in Maryland, and we made a shelter out of sticks and leaves—probably something we had done playing in China,” Yuyan remembers. “And a bunch of bugs were crawling around in there, so I made a smudge bowl and started to smoke them out.” Neighbors saw the smoke pouring from the backyard and called Yuyan’s parents, panicking. He vividly recalls his father’s blinding rage—how he cursed and called them “dirt

Right: Personal project. “Crystalline hoarfrost builds up overnight on the refrozen surface of an ice-fishing hole. Speckles of blood from the trout caught the previous evening dot the ice as well. Taken in Gold Bridge, British Columbia, Canada.” 44

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people” in Mandarin. Only later would Yuyan realize it was not a literal admonishment for getting dirty playing in the woods, but a racial slur for Nanai people. He tells me this story in a booth at Seven Stars Pepper Szechuan Restaurant as we share fragrant plates of spicy wontons, numbing pork and dry-fried green beans. The food is legitimately delicious. Still, Yuyan’s demeanor shifts ever so slightly, his infectious enthusiasm dropping a beat as he reflects. It’s clear that even now, this is a difficult subject. After Yuyan graduated from high school in Silver Spring, Maryland, he enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He studied cognitive psychology before switching to design, despite his parents’ insistence that his education be in service of pragmatic financial goals, not “art.” But Yuyan was determined, and after graduation, he and a few friends started a design boutique in Pittsburgh in 2000. “I really wanted to work for nonprofits, so we were barely scraping by, and anytime we needed assets, I would go out to shoot stuff. It was really bad, though,” Yuyan says with a laugh. The design work also helped Yuyan get his kayaking business off the ground. It was eight years ago, when he moved the kayaking business to Seattle, that Yuyan’s relationship with photography changed. He got interested in moreadvanced lighting techniques, gleaned from off-camera lighting blog Strobist, and eventually started assisting Seattle-based photographer David Clugston, which led to assisting Damon Parrish at REI, which snowballed into a position shooting for REI. As much as Yuyan enjoyed commercial photography, it started to feel limiting. At first, he thought he was burned out. He spoke to career consultants, and one, Monica Suder, told him he wasn’t burned out—he was uninspired. Suder

told Yuyan that he needed to do something that mattered to him. “I had long thought I was in my ‘Indigenous shoes,’ but in order to do photography that is meaningful and deep, you have to really, really own it. And to do that, I needed to reach out to the North American Indigenous community,” Yuyan says. So, when representatives from the website Digital Photography Review reached out with an assignment and asked him where he was interested in shooting, Yuyan didn’t hesitate. He traveled to Utqiaġviq on Alaska’s North Slope, where the Native Iñupiaq people still hand sew skin-on-frame boats— in this case, the umiaq, a bigger version of the baidarkas that Yuyan had fallen in love with a decade before. That short assignment morphed into a three-year mission, altering the trajectory of Yuyan’s personal and professional life. The result was People of the Whale, a powerful, intimate portrait of the Iñupiaq and their struggle to maintain their way of life in the face of climate change and the pressures of modernity. Out on the ice, there is no room for impartial observers. Yuyan is welcome on Iñupiaq expeditions because he has two hands and works hard, not because he works for National Geographic. As beautiful and esoteric as the landscape is, this is one of the harshest places on Earth, and constant vigilance is required. “At night, there is always one person on watch for polar bears and breaking ice. And you just sit there, and there isn’t much stimulus, and your mind kind of lets go; where, cliché or not, you are totally in tune. Every minute sound, every movement, you are aware of it all, and you know what everything is. It’s a feeling everyone feels, where you might have eight guys watching the water for three hours and nobody says a word,” Yuyan says. He is quick to point out that in many ways, the Iñupiaq are distant relatives of the Nanai; they just live on the other side of Siberia. For a variety of reasons, it is very difficult for Americans to travel to Russia’s Far East, and Yuyan has not yet managed to visit the region as an adult, to see his birthright for himself. The experience of being among the Iñupiaq was unique for him in all his travels around the world because he felt comfortable—so “at home”—in a way he never had before. “I feel like part of the community. That project is done, but if I don’t go whaling up there come springtime, I am going to feel really weird. It was the first time my work life really

Right: Personal project. “A dominant male California condor spreads its wings to ward off competitors. This flock of condors, although wild, is tracked by biologists around Big Sur, and is occasionally left stillborn calves that are free of poisonous lead contamination.” “Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon, seen here in March 2018 in southern Iceland, is a remnant from a past ice age.” Josh Raab, TIME, photo editor; TIME, client. 46

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

KILIII YUYAN crossed that line where”—he pauses, searching for something before stating firmly—“I could never not go back.” Working with Indigenous communities and not just as an agency’s hired gun certainly has its rewards, but it also means that Yuyan is responsible to a lot of people, not just himself and his editors. He tells me about his time in Gambell, Alaska, on St. Lawrence Island, a spit of land in the Bering Sea. Gambell has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and Yuyan was determined not to do the sort of flyby, exploitative journalism he had seen so many times. He went to the high school and offered his skills in the form of an art therapy program focused on suicide prevention. It was a challenging and ultimately powerful experience for Yuyan, and one that required careful negotiations with the Indigenous community in Gambell—negotiations that often had to be renegotiated anytime someone in the community voiced a new concern. “In a situation like that, I am still an artist, but so much happens before that shutter clicks,” he says. I ask him if he is still doing commercial work, and he nods in assent. For Yuyan, it is all about context. “I’ve mostly worked with socially responsible agencies that have been open to a dialogue on how to best approach advertising or other work with Indigenous themes,” he says before we part ways. “I will probably always be a documentary photographer first and foremost, but I recognize that doing commercial work is a powerful way to engage the world and a powerful lever to change the narrative for Indigenous peoples.” ca

Left: “Although European whaling decimated the global whale population by the 1900s, the Iñupiaq maintained a sustainable harvest of bowheads and slowly managed the population back to precontact levels.” Barney Britton, DPReview, editor; DPReview, client. “Raleigh Kowunna (left) is an elder that Iñupiaq hunters often consult in questions about sea ice conditions and other deep ecological knowledge. Sigvaun Kaleak (right) wears his traditional ice camouflage parka, used by Iñupiat for subsistence hunting on sea ice.” These images can be licensed through the artist management, production, and content distribution company INSTITUTE. This page: “Chantelle Pydyn (top) laughs with joy at the top of a ridge in the North Cascades range in Washington. Despite the presence of encroaching wildfires and not having enough food to eat, she endures her month as a participant in the Stone Age Living Project with aplomb. Taken in August 2014. Lynx Vilden (bottom) is one of the world’s foremost experts on primitive skills—the technologies people practiced before the advents of agriculture and metal. Vilden says she is trying to recover an ancient lifeway that can resolve the tensions between human technology and wild nature. Taken in June 2014.” Mike Berard, editor; Peter Moynes, photography director; Coast Mountain Culture, client.

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KILIII YUYAN This page: “Revonne (top), a Wasco woman, performs a jingle dance at the Chemawa school powwow in Oregon. A Lakota dancer (bottom) at the Chemawa school powwow. For many Indigenous peoples, traditional dance is a powerful form of resilience against the forces of colonization.” Victor Pascual, Digital Navajo, art director; We R Native, client. Right: “An umiaq skin boat rests on the tuvaq, or edge of the sea ice, in Utqiagvik, Alaska, in April 2018. Traditional Iñupiaq whaling is practiced in tune with the unpredictable weather of the Arctic. Wind has pushed floating ice near the shore-fast ice, and the whalers must wait until it shifts again—sometimes weeks later.” Julie Hau, National Geographic, photo editor; National Geographic, client. Personal project. “The aurora borealis blazes over ice in the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon in southern Iceland. The draw of the northern lights has greatly increased tourism in the north— especially Iceland.”

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

COLORING OUTSIDE THE LINES BY JULIE PRENDIVILLE ROUX

here are places that are full-fledged characters in their stories, not mere backdrops. The mansion in Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. The city of Los Angeles in Chinatown. The Enterprise spaceship in Star Trek. Austin is such a place. A bastion of the arts, it’s also home to some of the most forward-thinking businesses. It even has its own soundtrack: live music at all hours; bits of conversation bubbling up from the largely outdoors lifestyle; and the constant call and caw of two species of grackles, blackbirds with personality-plus, who seem to understand that Austin is the place to be. As composer Glen Galloway observes, “Austin, in general, is an amazingly creative place. Everyone’s trying to color outside the lines.”

Door Number 3 Although this boutique-sized agency is technically located in downtown Austin, Door Number 3 sits at the top of a sloping hill surrounded by graceful vintage homes. It’s housed on the first floor of a two-story, small condo-style building. All around are calling grackles, lush green trees and, on this July day, a wetness in the air, with a cool breeze. Inside Door Number 3, there’s a homey feeling; although the space has the clean lines of a design-oriented space, there’s also a whiteboard inviting staff to vote on a refreshment drink they should (or should not) stock. Comprised of twelve full-time staffers, the agency’s size is part of its winning formula. Door Number 3 (also called Dn3) has the usual creative, account and media representation—it’s just that it has pared it down to essentials. Nimble and streamlined, it seeks out brands it deems to be challengers. Owner and chief creative officer Prentice Howe explains, “Challenger brands are small but mighty. We empower them to have a big megaphone.” To achieve that, Howe and his staff look beyond the brief to bigger thinking. “There will be 100 times you can give a client something they were expecting,” says Noah Davis, executive creative director. “Our strategy is to surprise and delight. That can be a strategic position.” Howe adds, “Give them what they ask for and give them what they didn’t think of. That’s going to be the most important job—something they didn’t think of.”

Mark Seiler didn’t think he needed a thing. As president of Maine Root, an organic beverage company, he was relying on his sales roots. “My sales training had brainwashed me to think that companies that spent a ton on marketing were wimps,” he says. “Then I got a call from Prentice basically asking me what I was thinking with our old website. He told me to shoot the lock off my wallet, stop being an idiot and get with the times. We sucked at telling our story online. Our story didn’t need to be fabricated; it just needed to be told. Door Number 3 was able to bring that story to life in a way that’s true to our roots.” The agency decided the most compelling aspect of the brand was that it was just plain good, from its sourcing practices to its taste. Creating the positioning “Rooted in Goodness,” it generated point-of-sale, print, out-of-home, social and digital. One ad showing Maine Root blueberry soda reads: “Where tongues dye and go to heaven.” For Mighty Swell wine spritzers, the agency declared “Let’s Swellebrate!” in a very crowded landscape, to great results. Jason Bronstad, president of Mighty Swell, remembers, “We discussed our project with companies of all sizes, and what we found most favorable about Dn3 is that their size allowed for fast and transparent conversations. Prentice and the team were open to discussing feedback and taking it seriously. They were the consummate professionals. The fact that we could collaborate and openly disagree with a common end point allowed us to complete the project in record time.” Howe, who has lived in Texas half his life, has worked in more-traditional, larger ad settings for clients that include Anheuser-Busch, Minute Maid and the UPS Store. But he clearly thrives in the “challenger” space. He wrote a book, released in 2017, titled The Empowered Challenger Playbook: How Brands Can Change the Game, Steal Market Share, and Topple Giants, which details his methods and illustrates them with case studies. Similarly, Davis, who is from Austin, worked in New York for years on brands like Diet Coke, Oreo and Samsung. Both find that this Texas city and its mind-set are the right fit for their mission. “Austin is the cool kid on the block,” says Howe. “It’s got everything going for it: health care, consumer products, tech—there’s a cache.”

Captions supplied by Door Number 3, Proof Advertising and Greatest Common Factory. 52

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the agency is bifurcated by departments. Assignments, however, are not. There is no automatic pairing of copywriter and art director—unless a job calls for it. More regularly, a social media person will team with a producer, or a media person will pair with a writer.

Senior copywriter Mark Killian went from graduating from portfolio school to working on a shoot in his first month at Dn3. “After my first time working here, I went off and experienced other atmospheres. I’m so glad I kept in touch with Prentice, and now I’m back. Back in a place where humor and personality are wanted.” Ines Morel is head of design and an art director. She says, “We all work for the same purpose. And we all get a voice, from concept to pitch to execution—everything.” The challenger rallying cry seems to be at work among the staff as well as the clients—empowering the small to be mighty. Seiler says, “Prentice has an eye for finding brands with a strong, competitive spirit. Brands that are crazy enough to battle with the biggest in the world.” That eye goes for those behind Door Number 3 too.

Proof Advertising

Springing up from a merger and acquisition in 2010, Proof Advertising began fully formed with $60 million in billings, long-standing clients and a staff numbering 65. Taking up three floors in a soaring downtown Austin bank building,

Creative director Claire Jordan explains, “Coming from a traditional ad agency, I’m seeing a much closer relationship among all the departments [here at Proof]. When we get a new assignment, we’re all in the room, giving our perspectives. It cuts down on time, and it’s much more efficient.” In this way, the agency delivers on assignments with ideas the client perhaps never envisioned. Because all departments are weighing in from the beginning, a campaign may be driven by media or research, for example. “A substantial amount of our media wins have been won by a creative solution, and many of our creative awards may have been driven by a media insight,” says Bryan Christian, president. And the ideas can come from anyone. Craig Mikes, executive creative director, says, “A week ago, I shot a piece because the interns had a fun idea for a social campaign. The client bought it.” “They will veer off the brief, but they’ll tell you they’re going to do it,” says Carrie Lumb-Dewey, formerly with Stubb’s Bar-B-Q sauce. “They’ll bring one campaign that’s close in, and then they’ll bring in a campaign where you can tell they had a ball. That one may not be on strategy, but you’ll just love the energy and feeling.” The sauce’s homemade recipe, formulated in the sixties (and probably earlier) by late barbecue icon and blues lover C.B. “Stubb” Stubblefield, was long on a passionate, authentic origin story, but short on awareness and sales. One fun fact is that before Stubblefield launched his company, he’d pack bottles of his homemade sauce into the trunk of his Cadillac and pass them out as he went from town to town. Proof managed to imbue the brand with a small-batch, straight-from-C.B.’s-kitchen feel,

This page: Door Number 3. From left to right: Brooke Hummel, integrated producer; Marsha Daigle, studio manager; Mark Killian, senior copywriter; Ines Morel, design director; Noah Davis, executive creative director; Hannah Young, account executive; Zach Cochran, vice president, media; Prentice Howe, owner/chief creative officer; Karen Reiner, vice president, client engagement. Right: Print. “‘Let’s Swellebrate’ is an invitation to savor the wins. In a day and age mired by cynicism, it has become a rallying cry for a challenger brand in midst of a rebrand that needed to zag.” Noah Davis, art director/executive creative director; Erik Enberg/Mark Killian, writers; Prentice Howe, chief creative officer; Door Number 3, ad agency; Mighty Swell, client. Poster (on premise). “Our theme line ‘Live Legendarily’ gave us the creative license to position Drunken Sailor as the go-to spirit for those seeking a top-shelf whiskey or rum with a side of salty storytelling. We rounded out the campaign with stories of legendary sea creatures—like the squidopotamus and the sharkophant—as told by a drunken sailor. Our blood alcohol levels while concepting? We’ll never tell.” Noah Davis, art director/executive creative director; Prentice Howe, writer/chief creative officer; Robert Lin, contributing artist; Door Number 3/Drunken Sailor Spirits, ad agencies; Drunken Sailor Spirits, client. “Her Big Day” :30 Commercial (TV, pre-roll and in-theater). “When our executive creative director hit on the idea that we’ve all changed our plans to avoid traffic, we took that simple human truth and dialed up the humor with some extreme scenarios. The tagline ‘Made to Move’ was the bow we needed for an integrated campaign with a slew of touchpoints, from online display to paid social to bus wraps.” Noah Davis/Mark Killian, writers; Noah Davis, executive creative director; Prentice Howe, chief creative officer; Chance George/Andrea Mendoza, editors; Ricardo Diaz, director of photography; Scott Rice, director; Dennis Valk, Flame artist; Brandon Thomas, digital imaging; Dusty Albertz, sound design; Kate Eads, producer; Amanda Fox, executive producer; Yvonne Boudreaux, production designer; Door Number 3, ad agency; TEXpress Lanes, client.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

coupled with up-to-the-minute relevance, when they uncovered one simple truth: folks eating barbecue cannot read a recipe book at the same time. Too messy. Enter Ask Stubb. Unearthing archival recordings of C.B.’s actual voice, Proof created a hands-free barbecue manual. The result is a colorful, soulful pistache of C.B.’s musings, favorite tunes and tips on barbecuing, and it’s even a way to order more sauce. Led by Christian and Mikes, Proof has a client list that includes, along with Stubb’s, the American Heart Association, E. & J. Gallo Winery, Mouser Electronics, Subway, Texas Tourism and the US Army. Ad Age has recognized Proof with four Small Agency Awards. Like many advertising people in Austin, Christian and Mikes both arrived here having worked in many other markets, and for stellar clients. Both feel that Austin is a great fit for their creative endeavor. “When recruiting, I usually lead with, ‘We’re in Austin,’” says Christian with a laugh. “Austin gives you a business-friendly life. There’s no shortage of talent of any kind.” Their name comes from Mikes’s prior life, as a leader in a different agency—SJ&J Advertising, located in a vintage warehouse space complete with a gorgeous full bar. Row upon row of spirits fueled the idea: “Proof, nothing watered down.” After SJ&J merged with Proof, the team kept that space as an annex of their buttoned-up bank-building selves. There, they hold parties, events and retreats. Proof has a penchant for experiential solutions for its clients. For the American Heart Association, the agency rigged up

a Scream Booth on a busy city street, where passersby could step inside a soundproof booth and let out all their frustrations. The point was well-taken: reduce your stress; improve your health. And in one of many initiatives for Apothic Wines, E. & J. Gallo Winery’s run at targeting millennials, Proof turned a smartphone into an interactive palm reader. After users scanned their dominant hand with their camera phone, a fortune was given. “If your palm reading said adventure or calm or extrovert, we added a cue to the wine that aligns. The tool itself was not created to directly sell the wine; it served to create an engagement with the brand and fuel word of mouth,” Mikes explains. Christian adds, “Apothic has become a creative reputation maker for us. It took the sum total of our talents and put them into action—everyone working at the peak of what they do. It’s the kind of client we built the place for.” Lumb-Dewey says, “Proof’s process has the ultimate goal of doing the best creative that gets the client results. I loved that they weren’t afraid to challenge me as a client.”

Greatest Common Factory “All the things that get in the way, went away,” says John Trahar, cofounder of Greatest Common Factory (GCF). He’s referring to his years at GSD&M in Austin and Ogilvy New York. Karen Jacobs, cofounder and director of production, worked with Trahar at GSD&M, where he was a creative director and she was executive producer. She had also served at J. Walter Thompson in San Francisco and DDB in London. Operating with a small staff, their East Austin agency has

Left: Print. “After Maine Root successfully pioneered the craft soda category many years ago, big soda counterpunched by creating their own lines of craft soda knockoffs. We were asked to tell the story of a homegrown brand that, unlike the behemoths, is truly rooted in goodness. We shined the spotlight on Maine Root’s fair-trade practices, organic ingredients and natural flavors without getting all preachy. ‘Keep it pos,’ requested our fun-loving client, Mark. Indeed we did.” Mark Killian, writer; Stephanie Romero, designer; Ines Morel, design director; Noah Davis, executive creative director; Prentice Howe, chief creative officer; Andrew Reiner, photographer; Allison Kuglitsch, retoucher; Door Number 3, ad agency; Maine Root, client. “Using real audio from late Texas barbecue hero and beloved Stubb’s Bar-B-Q sauce founder C.B. Stubblefield, we created the first hands-free barbecue manual. By saying, ‘Alexa, Ask Stubb,’ the user can get recipes, listen to music, get cooking tips and order more sauce.” Joy Barnett, writer; Matt Morris, designer; George Ellis, creative director; Lane Jordan, interactive creative director; Craig Mikes, executive creative director; J Hausmann, developer; Proof Advertising, ad agency; Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, client. This page: Proof Advertising. At table, from left to right: Bryan Christian, president/principal; Ly Tran, associate partner, chief media officer; Craig Mikes, executive creative director/principal. Communication Arts | commarts.com

AUSTIN ADVERTISING

peeled away the layers to end up with an agency that has no titles per se and lots of hats residing on each head. Trahar serves as lead strategist and creative director, and also directs most of the work. “The key is to hire a good director of photography. I let them do their job,” he says. Jacobs adds, “There are people who need five people, and there are people who are five people. We were both frustrated with the traditional agency model, and we tested out our concept.” One title they abolished: account person. “We let the client find their point person,” says Jacobs. They put this theory into motion eight years ago. Scrappy, nimble and resourceful, the result has captured the loyalty of clients who appreciate efficiency that doesn’t have to sacrifice ideas and talent. Anthony Abernathy, who spent thirteen years at Nike, first worked with GCF on an app whose purpose was to give aspiring athletes training tips. “At Nike, we had a deep bench of athletes across all sports,” Abernathy says. “We would make transcriptions, and GCF took that on, keeping track of all these interviews, all this footage. It just so happened that this mixed martial artist, Jon Jones, was up and coming. I said, ‘Hey, GCF, I need some

B-roll.’” The agency took that project on, which was to film segments of the boxer to use as filler between interviews or other segments—that’s what B-roll is used for. But they also developed a script. Abernathy remembers, “They had been faithful to us, so I said, ‘Let’s see what you can do behind the camera and in editing.’ It turned out really solid.” The piece GCF created, one of a series of training videos of athletes, is emotional, powerful and beautifully shot. Similarly, Nike’s Jordan Brand asked GCF to strategize and create content for a mobile platform for elite high school athletes, to be unveiled at invitation-only events across the country. The agency conceived the Breakfast Club, a series of videos based on basketball star Michael Jordan’s dedication to adding an early-morning extra practice to his training regimen. Having rolled out to wider use, inspiring videos of athletes’ and coaches’ regimens and philosophies can be accessed by athletes right from their phones. Jacobs says, “These kinds of shoots take lots of planning. We have to think, ‘What might we need that we don’t know we need yet?’” For all their Nike work, they have to meticulously plan around athletes’ schedules. “GCF knows when to be flies on the wall and when to go in for a close-up,” Abernathy says. Tyler Crelia is an excellent example of one who wears many hats. He started as an editor in the agency’s in-house post suite. One day, he had an idea for their client SafeAuto. “I said, ‘Hey, can I direct on this round?’ They said, ‘Sure,’” he says with a laugh. “I like to do everything, and this is one of the few places that allows that. They’ve done a good job of hiring people who can do a lot of things. Things you would never be able to do in bigger places.” GCF’s SafeAuto work is funny, at times whacky, and attention-getting. In the insurance landscape, SafeAuto is a small player, so its aim is to break through. The campaign Fârnhäan spoofs Alexa with an at-home electronic helper that gives terrible advice and nonsensical answers to everyday questions. The

This page: Greatest Common Factory. From left to right: Cofounders John Trahar, who leads all strategy and creative, and Karen Jacobs, who leads all production and business affairs. Right: Poster. “In 2017, Bailey Banks & Biddle, one of the oldest and most prestigious jewelry stores, reached out to us to freshen up its brand. We launched a new campaign centered around bridal collections with a new look that harkened back to designs of the brand’s storied past.” Drew Hammond, art director; George Ellis, writer; Craig Mikes, executive creative director; Proof Advertising, ad agency; Bailey Banks & Biddle, client. “This digital palm reader provided a common ground between the playfulness of online personality quizzes with a guise of Apothic Wines’ mysterious sophistication. To use the digital tool, users scanned their dominant hand with their camera phone. Each user’s reading was paralleled to wine-drinking occasions, and the predictive readings aligned to both the users’ personality traits and Apothic varietals and their tasting notes. The scarily accurate fortunes could then be shared via social channels.” Drew Hammond, art director; Jenna Lindstrom, writer; George Ellis, creative director; Craig Mikes, executive creative director; Elissa von Czoernig, strategist; Wildlife, digital imaging; Proof Advertising, ad agency; Apothic Wines, client. “The American Heart Association wanted to come up with a unique way to help people let their stress out. So, we created the Scream Booth, a soundproof enclosure housing an interactive digital assistant. The voice-activated interface judged your scream for both decibel level and longevity. If you were holding back, it would prompt you to really ‘let it out.’ We activated the Scream Booth on the street, toured it at tradeshows and created an online version for anytime stress relief.” Juan Roque, art director; Jenna Lindstrom, writer; Lane Jordan, interactive creative director; Craig Mikes, executive creative director; Matt Morris, interactive developer; Gina Grande, director; Vicki Russell, agency producer; Thousand Ships, production company; Proof Advertising, ad agency; American Heart Association, client.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

AUSTIN ADVERTISING announcer then says, “That doesn’t sound right. But SafeAuto can get you a great car insurance quote in just three minutes, and it could save you up to 25 percent.” Composer Glen Galloway of Singing Serpent, a music and sound design firm, has worked on many projects with GCF, including Golfsmith, Nike and SafeAuto. He appreciates the lack of layers at the agency. “You don’t get the feeling they’re running everything through 50 focus groups. It’s not death by committee. At the end of the day, the best creative comes out of partnerships where everyone trusts each other. Let’s find the most direct route between A and B to do the best work.” For GCF, that route starts in East Austin. ca

Left: “Welcome to the Breakfast Club” 1:04 Online video and social media. “We developed a production protocol that was ready to go, at a moment’s notice, to capture 55 professional athletes and coaches at the times and in the cities they were available to talk to us. Beyond this scripted piece, we also captured authentic advice delivered directly to the camera from these pros, who described the resonant value of the dedicated mental and physical work required of the Breakfast Club.” John Trahar, art director/strategist/director; Zach Rener, writer/creative director; Tyler Crelia, editor/video director; Nick Smith, digital imaging; Joel Pettit, agency producer; Karen Jacobs, executive producer; Greatest Common Factory, ad agency; Anthony Abernathy/Ian Carey/Alexis Jackson, Nike, Jordan, clients. “Fârnhäan - Tokyo” :30 Broadcast. “Fârnhäan helped SafeAuto stand out in the crowded car insurance space. The device has proven to be an incredibly flexible and effective ‘spokesthing’ across all of SafeAuto’s media channels, even prompting several thousand people to sign up to buy their very own Fârnhäan. We have since gone on to launch the 2.0 versions: Fârnhäan Fit, Fârnhäan Haus and Fârnhäan Auto.” John Trahar, art director/ strategist/director; Tyler Crelia/Zach Rener, writers; Richard Sanchez, designer; Zach Rener, creative director; Tyler Crelia, editor; Corey Walter, video director; Nick Smith, digital imaging; David Bewley, sound engineer; Sue Crain/Joel Pettit, producers; Karen Jacobs, executive producer; Eric Archer, production designer; Greatest Common Factory, ad agency; Charles Kordes/Sloane Stegen, Safe Auto Insurance Company, clients. This page: Print ad and poster. “A shopping center that strove to be less typical and more local reached out to us to do something different. We gave it a ‘neighborhood’ name, Northside, which didn’t yet exist in the Austin vernacular. Then we messaged ‘lots of stuff to buy’ in an evocative, authentic way that was more reflective of the national and local tenants it had secured or was looking to secure.” Zach Rener, writer; Katie Johnson/Brett Stiles, designers; John Trahar, creative director; Becca Clason, typographer; Joel Pettit, producer; Karen Jacobs, executive producer; Greatest Common Factory, ad agency; Julie Sutton, Domain Northside, client. Poster and for the event’s award book. “Anyone who has spent time near an advertising awards show understands the ego-filled, alcoholfueled and long-winded nature of the genre. We fully embraced that notion and created what may be the first-ever self-aware awards show for the Austin ADDYs, themed ‘An Evening Spent Up Our Own Ass.’” Zach Rener, writer; Katie Johnson, designer/typographer; Zach Rener/ John Trahar, creative directors; Joel Pettit, producer; Karen Jacobs, executive producer; Greatest Common Factory, ad agency; Cynthia McGuineas, Austin Advertising Federation, client. Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

Zumtobel Group annual report Each year, Zumtobel Group, a company that manufactures high-end lighting and lighting systems, partners with a designer, artist or studio to create a limited edition, mailable report. “We decided to create a piece with colorful typographic spreads on the theme of light and darkness,” say New York–based Sagmeister & Walsh, which designed the most recent report. “We wanted to bring playfulness, color and humor to accompany the straightforward financial data. We also created a set of typographic prints that can be enjoyed independently from the book.” Daniel Brokstad/Juan Carlos/Lina Forsgren/Faith Hardal/Stefan Hürlemann/Shy Inbar/HeeJae Kim/Cory Say/Anthony Velen, designers; Jessica Walsh, creative direction; Erica Grubman/HeeJae Kim, production; Sagmeister & Walsh (New York, NY), design firm; Zumtobel Group, client.

Saatva TV commercial “The Path to Sleep Enlightenment” 2:11 Saatva had built a successful business, but risked getting lost in the growing sea of mattress makers. “Our answer was a simple one: education,” says Rob Baird, partner and chief creative officer at Austin, Texas–based Preacher. “The more enlightened consumers become, the more likely they are to choose Saatva. And a magical elevator that takes you on a trip through the entire decision-making process is a pretty engaging way to educate. In this two-minute spot, we met a very nice monkey, we could watch the mattress store scene alone on repeat forever, we stranded a hipster in the desert, and we may have hid a literal Easter egg in every scene.” Sally Franckowiak/Nick Troop, art directors; Maxx Delaney/Gabe Long, writers; Anna McCaleb, designer; Taryn Kealani, senior designer; Maxx Delaney/Nick Troop, associate creative directors; Kellyn Blount/Greg Hunter, Preacher/Steve Mottershead, Artjail, creative directors; Rob Baird, chief creative officer; Paola Ortega, strategist; Sean Scannell, Cabin Editing Company, assistant editor; Graham Turner, Cabin Editing Company, editor; Don Davis, Community Films, director of photography; Eric Eckelman/JEAN/ Armand Prisco, Community Films, directors; Dusty Albertz, TBD Post, audio mixer; Duotone, music; Janine Conway, Artjail/Liz Lydecker, Cabin Editing Company, producers; Tony Cantale, Community Films, line producer; Shane Smith, senior producer; Stacey Higgins, Preacher/Ross Hopman, Duotone/Lizzie Schwartz, Community Films/ Carl Swan, Community Films, executive producers; John Gaglio/Katie Gibson, project managers; Ben Elliot/Chris Memoli/Margolit Steiner, Artjail, Flame artists; Tim Masick, Company 3, colorist; Cabin Editing Company, post-production company; Community Films, production company; Preacher (Austin, TX), ad agency; Ricky Joshi/Joe McCambley/Jen Pressley/Ron Rudzin/Ellen Tsai, Saatva, clients.

We’re looking for new, outstanding collateral, packaging, print ads, television commercials, direct mail, books and exhibits. For submission details, visit: commarts.com/submissions.

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EXHIBIT 1

Greenpeace animated film “Rang-tan: The Story of Dirty Palm Oil” 1:30 To put pressure on large companies to stop using palm oil that’s depleting rainforests, Mother London and Passion Animation Studios created a short animated film for Greenpeace that distills the complex issue into a simple story that even children can understand. “From early talks with Greenpeace, we knew that our audience was becoming desensitized to hard facts and shock tactics,” say Mother. “So, we created a piece of emotional content to make people care about an issue that’s currently far from their minds.” Actress Emma Thompson narrates what at first appears to be a colorful children’s rhyme, which then changes to depict a cold, brutal black-and-white world reflecting the situation for orangutans. “The twist in the story is the best part,” says the agency. “It is most impactful the moment the rhyming couplets flip on their head, combined with the sudden shift in animation style, as well as the shift in Thompson’s tone in her voice-over.” Salon Alpin, director; Lennert Busch, music; Passion Animation Studios, production company; Mother (London, United Kingdom), strategy/ad agency; Greenpeace, client.

Manos de Cacao packaging Manos de Cacao is a premium Mexican chocolate brand that cares deeply about the entire production process of its products, especially the process of working with local farmers. “This inspired us to create something that felt handmade and organic without seeming too obvious,” says David Gutiérrez, partner and creative director at Monterrey, México–based Anagrama. “We learned a lot about the process of making chocolate, primarily from an agricultural viewpoint, and about all the people that are part of the entire endeavor. What we learned helped us make conscious design decisions to highlight these attributes. We kept the brand balanced with clean layouts, bright colors and metallic finishes to give it a premium feel. We especially like the way the logo fits and looks on the chocolate bars because it’s the final layer of branding that you actually eat!” Lorena González, designer/strategy; David Gutiérrez/Sebastian Padilla, art directors/creative directors; Anagrama (Monterrey, México), design firm; Jorge Llanderal, Manos de Cacao, client.

IBM Think 2018 motion graphics The IBM Think 2018 conference in Las Vegas celebrated the company’s longtime corporate mantra—Think—by convening inspiring experts from disparate fields for a series of workshops, experiences, talks, education and networking. “Partnering with the agency Athletics, we developed a series of creative interpretations of the Think wordmark to be used as the identity for the event through a provocative, flexible and practical system that asks us all to think,” say Berlin, Germany–based visual trend lab and brand image consultancy f°am Studio. “We chose substances and shape configurations that resemble everyday materials, and coupled them with dynamic behaviors and looks, using our hyperrealistic style that focuses on material visions of the future. The Think type logo is a strong and recognizable branding element. Our aim was to emphasize the multiple layers of its meaning and invite the audience to explore their own thoughts through playful animations that offer a different view on ‘Think’ every time.” f°am Studio (Berlin, Germany), director; Athletics, design firm; IBM, client.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

EXHIBIT

Royal Mail stamps Royal Mail commissioned London, United Kingdom–based hat-trick design to create a set of stamps to celebrate the 200th anniversary of iconic London theater The Old Vic, which has hosted performances from many leading actors, like Glenda Jackson and Laurence Olivier. “Since the brief was to put the actors front and center in the designs, we saw an opportunity to create some interest and depth in the backgrounds to help bring the stamps to life,” says hat-trick’s creative director Gareth Howat. “We looked at theater posters from the Old Vic archives and were inspired by the bold use of typography, especially in the early posters. This led to the idea to use type in the stamps. We previously worked with typographer Kelvyn Laurence Smith on some Great War stamps and knew he would be the perfect partner with whom to collaborate.” Kelvyn Laurence Smith, typographer; hat-trick design (London, United Kingdom), design firm; Royal Mail, client.

River Island print ads To launch River Island’s autumn/winter 2018 collection and continue with the Labels Are For Clothes campaign started earlier in the year, London, United Kingdom–based Studio Blvd created a print campaign that celebrates diversity and inclusivity. “We wanted to feature a mixed-ability cast without focusing on their disabilities,” says Studio Blvd’s chief strategy officer Alistair Green. “Instead, we tried to celebrate their potentials, their personalities and their beauty. Fans of the campaign asked to see more inclusivity of disabled people, who make up 19 percent of the UK population. We listened and gave them the campaign they were asking for. Casting is always a challenge when it is integral to the idea. Our casting directors never fail to amaze me—they make the hard parts look easy.” Callum Walker, art director; Jen Cox, writer; Victor Pyk, creative director; Liz Collins, photographer/director; JN Production, production company; Studio RM, post-production company; Studio Blvd (London, United Kingdom), ad agency; Josie Cartridge, River Island, client.

Barwis identity Barwis is the holistic human performance company founded by Mike Barwis, one of the world’s top strength and conditioning coaches. Barwis works with athletes from nearly every sport, utilizing methods based on an understanding of the neuromuscular system and the biomechanics of the body. “We were asked to create a brand identity and website for Barwis and his company as they expand into new initiatives, extending this same high-quality training to a wider audience,” says Pentagram New York partner Michael Bierut. “The Barwis branding centers on a B monogram, with a dumbbell embedded in the letter to symbolize strength. In building a larger brand around one man’s compelling personality, we were, in effect, being asked to do the same thing. The graphic system is on one hand, extremely rigorous, but on the other hand, very dynamic. The B can be integrated with dynamic photography of athletes in motion, and the form of the monogram inspired a set of custom icons, built on a grid.” Michael Bierut, art director; Aron Fay/Daisy Dal Hae Lee, designers; Audrey Francis, strategist; Tess McCann, project manager; Pentagram (New York, NY), design firm; Mike Barwis, client. Communication Arts | commarts.com

EXHIBIT 1

Plastic Bag Free World print ad As part of a campaign for global initiative Plastic Bag Free World and its Plastic Bag Free Day, Birmingham, United Kingdom–based agency One Black Bear created print ads to highlight the effects of plastic bags on the environment. “With so many marine wildlife deaths attributed to plastic bags, we wanted to completely stigmatize single-use bags by labeling them in an overly dramatic way, much like cigarette boxes,” say One Black Bear creative partners Richard Elwell and Jon Harrison, and creative contributor Jason Vinny Vinciguerra. “We knew the print ads would stand out within the public interest and charity sector. The use of arresting, bag-clad ‘heads’ is quite a taboo imagerywise. But we’ve become a bit complacent to seeing plastic bags linked to harming wildlife and the environment, and we rarely see them in context of the human cost.” Richard Elwell/Jon Harrison, creative directors; Jason Vinny Vinciguerra, creative contributor; One Black Bear (Birmingham, United Kingdom), ad agency; Plastic Bag Free World, client.

Dukes Bread print ad While it seems that many people today are going on low-carb diets, these fad-diet followers are forgetting one very important fact: bread is delicious. In this print campaign for bakery Dukes Bread, Charlotte, North Carolina–based BooneOakley attempted to reverse this dietary trend. “Bread gets very little respect these days,” says BooneOakley creative director David Oakley. “We thought it was high time to celebrate the wonders of bread, diets be damned. Carbs just taste better than kale. Founder Adam Duke immediately loved the idea of the campaign and worked closely with us to get headlines on the bread. When the print ads didn’t look quite as nice as we wanted, we were fortunate enough to have retouching company Hac Job work some of its magic to help the headlines become more legible.” Laura Beebe, art director/photographer; Mary Gross, writer; David Oakley, creative director; Savannah Jackson, designer; Hac Job, retoucher; BooneOakley (Charlotte, NC), ad agency; Adam Duke, Dukes Bread, client.

Typography Annual 2019

“

Identity was the category where we saw the most exuberance and play.”—Bethany Heck

“

TYPOGRAPHY 2019 ANNUAL

Once in a while, there would be an entry that did something I’d never seen before, something that broke new ground in some way. These were my favorites.” —Mark Simonson

Typography Annual 2019

POSTERS 1 Michael Braley, designer/art director Braley Design (Lexington, KY), design firm Ravinia Women’s Board, client “Official poster for the Ravinia 2018 season. Ravinia is North America’s oldest music festival. The 2018 festival celebrated Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday.” 24 × 36, 4-color plus 1 PMS, offset lithography. Typeface: Champion.

2 David Jones, designer DPL Jones Design (West Chester, PA), design firm West Chester University, client “Poster developed to advertise a four-week integrated study abroad program for graphic and interactive design students enrolled at West Chester University. The biannual program focuses on two- and three-dimensional Scandinavian design, with a special emphasis on sustainability. The primary typeface used in the word Copenhagen is a set of bespoke display characters, which synthesize themes from Victorian woodcut typefaces and three-dimensional shadow typography, as well as motifs from Scandinavian textiles. The colors reference those found in Danish advertising and packaging examples.” 26 × 36, 4-color, digital printing. Typeface: Montserrat.

3 Pablo Delcan, Delcan & Company, designer Ryan Durinick, Visual Arts Press, Ltd., senior designer Gail Anderson, Visual Arts Press, Ltd., creative director Anthony P. Rhodes, Visual Arts Press, Ltd., executive creative director Justin Metz, illustrator Jennifer Liang, Visual Arts Press, Ltd., production manager Delcan & Company (New York, NY)/Visual Arts Press, Ltd., design firms School of Visual Arts, client “Tasked with creating a poster representing the School of Visual Arts (SVA), Pablo Delcan incorporated the tagline ‘Art Is,’ which is historical copy from past iconic SVA posters. He used form to represent the words in a way that at first is abstract, but draws you to linger on the image to get the message.” 30 × 46, 4-color, UV inkjet.

4 Ashford Stamper, designer Katy Fischer, creative director Eric Thoelke, executive creative director TOKY Branding + Design (St. Louis, MO), design firm Ad Club STL, client “For an annual pinball tournament for St. Louis agencies.” 12 × 18, 2-color, digital, die cut, printed on Neenah Astrobrights and Mohawk Chromolux. Typeface: Trim Poster.

5 Stéphane Monnet, designer Monnet Design (Toronto, Canada), design firm The Advertising & Design Club of Canada, client “A poster promoting the Advertising & Design Club of Canada’s Design Mexico event in Toronto.” 15½ × 34, 2 PMS, offset. Typeface: Druk. Communication Arts | commarts.com

POSTERS 1 Lucho Correa, designer/creative director Lip (Bogotá, Colombia), design firm Johana Bahamón, Acción Interna, client “Acción Interna has been doing theater with prisoners inside principal Colombian prisons for more than ten years. Recently, it launched the Prison Theatre National Festival. This poster promotes the festival’s third edition, which took place in seven cities around the country.” 47 × 70, digital. Typeface: Hoefler Text.

2 (series) Cédric Rossel, typeface designer Cédric Rossel/Sophie Rubin, art directors WePlayDesign (Grandvaux, Switzerland), design firm Les Concerts du Mercredi, client “Les Concerts du Mercredi offers classical music concerts to an eclectic audience. Unlike a musical recording, the conditions of space and time make each performance unique. This observation was the starting point of our approach, which led us to develop a generative design to produce 750 unique posters. The music and its variations are illustrated by a series of forms representing the idea of movement and gesture.” 35 × 50�, 4-color, digital. Typefaces: Bourdonnette sans, Bourdonnette mono.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

POSTERS 1 (series) Fidel Peña, designer Claire Dawson/Fidel Peña, art directors Underline Studio (Toronto, Canada), design firm Sur Gallery, client “We were one of nine Toronto-based artists and designers—working with themes relevant to marginalized and underrepresented communities in Canada—asked to reinterpret the 1973 Chilean poster exhibition Por la Vida...Siempre! (For Life...Always!). We reinterpreted two of the posters.” 22 × 28, 4-color, offset. Typefaces: Druk, Neue Haas Grotesk.

2 (series) Annie Stoll, designer/art director RCA Records/Sony Music Entertainment (New York, NY)/Weathers, clients “Weathers’ first gig posters on RCA Records were made with Xerox, sweat and gunk from the street.” 11 × 17, silkscreen. Typefaces: Morl Sans Extra Black, Toronto Gothic.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

POSTERS 1 Alex Bakker/Pamela Rounis, designers/art directors Ian Grais/Chris Staples/Hans Thiessen, creative directors Ken Malley, web developer Kyle Hicks, producer Kerry Bhangu, print producer Total Graphics, production company Rethink (Toronto, Canada), ad agency/client “Nothing brings people together like fierce competition. So, to get people primed for King Pong, our annual ping-pong tournament, we created a poster you can play by tapping into your smartphone’s accelerometer. Physical posters to promote the event were also created using real states of gameplay, creating a unique series where no two were the same.” 13½ × 24, 4-color, digital. Typefaces: Ace, Faction.

2 (series) Anja Delbello/Aljaž Vesel, designers/art directors AA (Ljubljana, Slovenia), design firm Fundacija Brumen, client “Posters promoting the 8th Brumen Biennial, a prestigious Slovenian design competition. Using the biennial edition number as the main visual is the recurring concept of the biennial’s identity, so the main visual is the gigantic 8. It’s constructed out of eight parallel lines as a homage to the 1968 Summer Olympics identity, with the Olympics as a symbol of the positively spirited competition. The entire numeral is waving like a flag to communicate the pride of winning an award. The flag also emphasizes that the biennial is of national importance.” 26¾ × 38�, 1-color, offset. Typeface: Graphik.

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

POSTERS 1 (series) Judith Mayer (Chicago, IL), designer Avondale Type Co., client “The Avondale Type Co. (ATC) Artist Series is an illustrated exploration of the alphabet, highlighting designers from around the world. Each artist interprets two letters and one symbol from an ATC typeface, in addition to the ATC logo. Outside of these guidelines, the interpretation is entirely up to the artist.” 20 × 20, 4-color, digital. Typeface: ATC Harris.

BROCHURES 2 (series) María Paula Moreno/Mariana Saldarriaga, designers Julián Cardozo, co-creative director Lucho Correa, creative director Lucho Mariño, photographer Silvia La Rotta, strategic planner Lip (Bogotá, Colombia), design firm Disidente Colombian Cacao Taxonomy, client “Disidente is a Colombian raw cocoa producer. Its principal strength is its knowledge of the botanicals of the plant, the seeds, the crop, the species and the varieties. We created these brochures to introduce the brand at the Salon du Chocolat event under the concept of ‘Colombian cacao taxonomy.’” 13½ × 19�, 4-color. Typefaces: Bulmer, Univers.

Communication Arts | commarts.com

BROCHURES 1 Chantal Fischzang, designer Eva Giloi, writer Ian Cofre, editor Shine Portrait Studio, producer Newark Rhythms/Rutgers University-Newark (Newark, NJ), clients “The publication expands associate professor Eva Giloi’s exhibition, Making a Place: Rutgers University-Newark as a Microcosm of 1960s America, at John Cotton Dana Library. It reinterprets archival material about the intentions and process of the campus’s construction into a self-reflection on the university’s postwar legacy and contrasting effects on the city. A twocolumn, modular grid layout corresponds to the narrative about modernist architecture, interjecting subversive typography to reinforce connections between words, photographs and graphics.” 11¼ × 16½, insert 6 × 9, black plus PMS 185, saddle stitched. Typeface: Sk-Modernist.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

BROCHURES 1 (series) Brian Azer, designer Brian Azer/Brendan Tapley, art directors Timothy Davis/Thurston-Lighty, Ltd./Ron Wagner, writers Clif Stoltze/Brendan Tapley, creative directors Sam Angel, photographer Stoltze Design (Boston, MA), design firm Watkins College of Art, client “Taking its cue from editorial design, this lookbook tells Watkins College of Art’s story through feature stories and a dynamic, highly visual design, showcasing the students and their work as well as the Nashville environment. Working with a well-curated set of typefaces, this bold visual approach accommodates the rich variety of content with a flexible layout—and complements our responsive website redesign for the college.” 64 pages, 9� × 11�, 4-color plus 1 PMS, perfect bound.

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

ADVERTISING 1 (series) Andrew Wetzel, designer Milton Un, design director Chad Temples, writer Josh Leutz, executive creative director Marty Senn, chief creative officer Carmichael Lynch (Minneapolis, MN), ad agency Phillips 66, client “To commemorate Phillips 66 day at Busch Stadium, the home of the St. Louis Cardinals, we partnered with Ozzie Smith, the hall-of-fame shortstop famous for his celebratory backflips. With a green screen and a little computer wizardry, we created a game-day experience that helped everyone #FlipLikeOzzie.” Typefaces: Knockout No. 53 Heavyweight, Knockout No. 50 Welterweight.

2 (series) Avni Jain/Juan Miguel Marin/Eduardo Palma/Luke Williams (Brooklyn, NY), art directors Ali Fenwick, writer Jaime Fallon, project manager Tribeca Film Festival, client “Combining the technical language of screenplay writing with an energetic celebration of the powerful simplicity of ink on paper, the Tribeca Film Festival aims to inspire audiences to perceive the many experiences the event has to offer. The campaign communicated the energy of the festival programming with a consistent design language that translated effectively through digital, print and environmental marketing applications. The entire creative effort was concepted, produced and managed by our small in-house team.” Typefaces: Akkurat Mono, Druk.

Communication Arts | commarts.com

ADVERTISING 1 Jimmy Hansen, designer Brock Haldeman, art director Katharine Cikanek, writer Pivot Design (Chicago, IL), ad agency Kevin Boraca/Jack O’Brien, Beacon Capital Partners/Greg O’Neal, Telos Group, clients “An avant-garde and engaging broker marketing campaign that used a newspaper medium to rewrite what was considered newsworthy. A lofted office environment was renamed The Penthouse, positioning the leasing opportunity as ‘the most interesting space in Chicago.’ It suggested that the singular nature of the space could only be appreciated through an in-person viewing. This drove brokers to go beyond reading the materials and instead schedule site visits, clearing one of the industry’s biggest sales hurdles.” Typeface: Knockout No. 67 Full Bantamweight.

PACKAGING 2 (series) Amy Pastre/Courtney Rowson, designers Meredith Chamberlain, writer SDCO Partners (Charleston, SC), design firm Aishwarya Iyer, Brightland, client “Brightland is out to remake the American olive oil industry by crafting the highest-quality custom-blended extra virgin olive oil. Packaged in minimalist powder-coated bottles.” Typefaces: Circular, Fairplex.

3 (series) Zach Wieland, designer Christian Helms, art director Helms Workshop (Austin, TX), design firm Kohana Coffee, client “Brand extension for premium organic coffee brand Kohana, marking an entry into the value ready-to-drink coffee space. Our work focused on creating a bold shelf presence and fostering a direct conversation with consumers for the traditionally refined and reserved coffee brand.”

Typography Annual 2019

Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

PACKAGING 1 (series) Ksenia Agres/Russell Edling/Woody Harrington/Jason Kernevich/Dusty Summers/Brandon Wherley, designers Jason Kernevich/Dusty Summers, creative directors The Heads of State (Philadelphia, PA), design firm Interboro Spirits & Ales, client “Interboro brews a steady stream of new releases and is always collaborating with other breweries. The graphic identity itself is fairly simple and utilitarian. Rather, each can is a blank canvas for playful typography that expresses something unique to the style of beer, the collaborator or a pop culture reference.” Typefaces: ARB-218 Neon Blunt MAR-50 Normal Italic, Franklin Gothic Condensed, ITC Verkehr Bold, Hobeaux Black, Rodger Black, Trade Gothic.

2 (series) Brent Schoepf, designer Christina Fischer, senior designer Dan Olson, creative director Studio MPLS (Minneapolis, MN), design firm Rishi Tea & Botanicals, client “Rishi is a direct-trade, best-source importer of organic teas and botanicals. It was our goal to envision a new mark and packaging that would more clearly express its values and the origins of its teas. We developed the iconic ‘plucking hand’ mark, inspired by artistic renditions of rishis beholding plants in remote places around the world. The new packaging design acknowledges this, providing an elegant platform for Rishi to share its rich heritage.” Typefaces: Franklin Gothic, Louize, Sentinel.

Communication Arts | commarts.com

PACKAGING 1 Joana Monteiro, Tipografia Damasceno (Coimbra, Portugal), typographer/designer/art director Bruno Pires, photographer Lux Records, publisher The Millions, client “Vinyl cover for the band The Millions. Set in lead type, decorative type elements and spacing material (furniture) belonging to an old letterpress. The band requested an image produced with no photos of the musicians. The main challenge was to transmit a warm feeling, with an old-school style, similar to the mood of the music—classic rock ‘n’ roll from the ’60s and ’70s.” Typeface: A2 Beckett.

2 (series) Natalia Kowaleczko/Casey Martin, lead designers Jelita Aldrich/Jay Jeon/Fumitaka Saito, designers Casey Martin, creative director Eric Louis Haines, photographer Giant Void, 3-D artist Joe Maggiore, producer Side C (San Francisco, CA), design firm Ryan Frank/Caitlin O’Connor/Margie Silverstein/Max Silverstein, Original Pattern Brewing Company, clients “Logo, identity and packaging system for Oakland, California–based Original Pattern Brewing Company. Expanding, mixing and constantly moving, the evolving logo and packaging system play with this notion. A different mark for a different context, but all created from the same seed. A different typeface and a different gestural pattern for each new brew build on this idea and create a foundation to build upon as new brews continue to be created.” Typeface: NB International.

3 (series) Stranger & Stranger (New York, NY), design firm Arcus Norway AS, client “Adding craft and premium cues in design and finishes to elevate this iconic heritage brand.” Typefaces: ATF News Numbers Fourteen, Numbers Indicia, Trade Gothic Bold, Trade Gothic Condensed.

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Communication Arts | commarts.com

Typography Annual 2019

PACKAGING 1 Želimir Boras/Ana Pernar/Saša Stubičar, designers Orsat Franković, art director Flomaster (Zagreb, Croatia), design firm Maritimus Ragusa d.o.o., client “Design of the label for Dubrovnik, Croatia’s first craft beer, Republika, was carried out as a combination of improvised handmade letterpress and collage illustration made of textual pages from the Rector’s Palace tourist guide from 1975. While the name and origin of the product inspired the design narrative, the type of product and the production methods inspired the design methodology, or, in short, the handmade design for craft beer.” Typeface: woodblock type bought on eBay.

2 (series) Sébastien Bisson, designer/creative director Jean Doyon, project manager Polygraphe Studio (Montréal, Canada), design firm Nadine Jazouli, Prune les Fleurs, client “The solution for illustrating each scent was simple: for each candle, we created a typographic design that captures the character of the fragrance. The limitless flexibility of the typography means that the collection, which had eight candles at launch, can evolve in any direction.” Typefaces: Circular, Freight.

3 (series) Scott Steele, art director Kurt Beaudoin, writer ZGM Modern Marketing Partners (Edmonton, Canada), ad agency Honest Dumplings, client “Food packaging lies. From the photos to the ingredients to the promises of 100 percent this and 100 percent that, there’s deception everywhere. But Honest Dumplings didn’t need dishonesty to sell its product. The quality and flavor of its dumplings is outstanding—honestly. It just needed a brand that would take its product from the farmers markets into the grocery stores.”

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IDENTITY 1 Valentina Casali, typographer Marco Emanuele Romano, designer Francesca Pignataro, art director Sunday Büro (Jesi, Italy), design firm Il Mucchio Selvaggio Magazine, client “Il Mucchio Selvaggio Magazine is one of the oldest music magazines in Italy. The blackletter style was designed with a simplified ductus, resulting in an unusual sans serif.”

2 Jessica Barry, designer David Barry, art director What is Eight (Temecula, CA), design firm Invisible Collective, client “Identity for a production house that believes in providing amazing customer service along with superior skills. Those characteristics render it actually invisible through the creative process.”

3 Erik Herberg/Logan Ogden, 10 Thousand Design, designers Jen Orth, 10 Thousand Design, design director Dan Linnihan, art director Lee Hanson, writer Puja Shah, creative director Mike Caguin, chief creative officer Colle McVoy (Minneapolis, MN), ad agency Proof Alliance, client

Typography Annual 2019

“We developed a new identity for the Proof Alliance, an organization working to prevent fetal alcohol spectrum disorders and improve the quality of life for those impacted.” Typeface: Aperçu.

4 Ken Li/Koan Tse, designers Vince Cheung, art director Vincdesign (Kowloon, Hong Kong), design firm Lane House, client “Lane House is a hotel regenerated from fishing village cottages. The design of the logo immerses visitors in the rich heritage of the historic compound.”

5 Thomas C. Bradley, designer Famous Charm (Portland, OR), design firm Dig A Pony, client “For this very special evening with our favorite larger-than-life DJ duo, we wanted to create an illustrative, over-the-top type piece that would complement their retro, kitschy sensibilities.”

6 Saturday Studio (Charleston, SC), design firm Isidore & Augustine, client “Isidore & Augustine is a full-service, luxury stationery boutique. Custom typography and traditional constructions reflect the client’s refined, old-world-meets-modern aesthetic.”

7 Luke Bott/Kortney Carter-Greer, designers Ty Mattson, creative director Mattson Creative (San Juan Capistrano, CA), design firm Theresa Fitzgerald, Sesame Workshop, client “In honor of Sesame Street’s 50th anniversary, a bold new logo playfully celebrates the cultural and educational impact of this globally beloved brand.” Typeface: Houschka Heavy (modified).

8 Barbara Hennelly, designer Bassackward Press (Fair Oaks, CA), client “Bassackward Press is a small garage print workshop. The typographic solution playfully illustrates the care one must take when composing type manually.” Typeface: Stymie Bold.

9 Christine Strohl/Eric Strohl, designers Strohl, Inc. (San Francisco, CA), design firm WSO2, client “Ballerina is a lightweight and agile new programming language. The customized letters give a nod to both the language’s name as well as the concept of flexibility and grace.”

10 Zack Guerra, designer Jose Canales, design director Ampersand Agency, ad agency Canales & Co. (Austin, TX), design firm Bird and Biscuit, client

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“Bird and Biscuit is a fried chicken restaurant that “2030 is a prepared meal kit with a cooking time 17 Robert Buber/Graham Clifford, designers embodies the spirit, personality and manners of of 20 to 30 minutes. The logo shows the Meg Jannott, design director the South. The illustrative, hand-drawn indicated time in minutes.” Typeface: Circular. Toby Barlow, chief creative officer feathered script is paired with a roughened Lafayette American, ad agency version of Brandon Grotesque.” Graham Clifford Design (New York, NY), 14 Kurt Niedermeier, designer design firm Niedermeier Design (Tacoma, WA), design firm Detroit Department of Transportation, client 11 Yani&Guille, typographer Vivienne MacKinder, client Felipe Osorio, designer “We went through the gears to create a symbol “Logo for Vivienne MacKinder, one of the most Julian Jaramillo/Oliver Siegenthaler, art directors based on a custom-drawn double D conveying highly respected international leaders and Siegenthaler &Co (Bogotá, Colombia), design firm positive motion, a connective loop and better innovators in the hairdressing profession today.” Merqueo, client all-round service to the community.” Typeface: Bodoni. “Merqueo is an online supermarket dedicated to bringing discount groceries to an overlooked 18 Yaoyao Huang, Wenzhou-Kean University/ 15 Alexander Wright, typeface designer sector of Bogotá’s population. Our challenge was Oncetudio, designer/art director Michu Benaim/Alexander Wright, art directors to design a visual language familiar enough to Vincent Peu Duvallon, Oncetudio, contributing In-House International (Austin, TX), design firm earn the trust of tech-skeptic customers.” artist Leonardo De La Rocha, client Oncetudio (Wenzhou, China), client “Our objective was to build a nuanced, exciting 12 Erik Marinovich (San Francisco, CA), calligrapher “Oncetudio is a collaboratively creative design and authentic identity that Latinos in Tech Tina Hardison, art director studio. The letters of the logo form a continumembers would feel proud to display and share.” Sunski, client ous loop that begins and ends with the letter O.” “Logotype for Sunski, a San Francisco–based sun wear company.”

13 Einar Gylfason/Unnur Valdis, designers Einar Gylfason, art director Leynivopnid (Reykjavik, Iceland), design firm Hagar, client

16 Morgan Curley (Calgary, Canada)/Marc Rimmer, designers Eighty-Eight Brewing Co., client “Custom logotype for Eighty-Eight Brewing Co., a brewery that pays tribute to a special year in Calgary’s history.”

Typeface: Helvetica Neue.

19 Mark Fox/Angie Wang, designers Design is Play (San Francisco, CA), design firm Touchstone Climbing, client “Monogram for Great Western Power Co., a rock-climbing gym built inside a former power substation and steam heating plant in Oakland, California.” Communication Arts | commarts.com

IDENTITY 1 (series) Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, designer de Vicq design (Corte Madera, CA), design firm Marty Grims/Kerrie Van Horn, Fearless Restaurants, clients “Louie Louie is a French-inspired American bistro in Philadelphia. The decor mixes colorful, organic forms of the art nouveau movement with a relaxed ’70s vibe. Adding a dash of a timeless, grand European café, the result is eclectic and surprising. We based the logo on Aldo Novarese’s 1973 Sintex typeface and utilized supporting typefaces that are contemporary versions of the heavy Didots and geometric sans serifs of the ’70s. We limited the palette to orange, gold, dark teal and powder blue to unite all the elements and echo the energy and happiness of the typography.”

2 (series) Stefan G. Bucher, 344 Design, LLC (Pasadena, CA), designer/art director Joe McGarry, web developer Gregory Rodriguez/Louis Wheatley, Zócalo Public Square, clients “Zócalo Public Square, a Los Angeles–based nonprofit and a creative unit of Arizona State University, publishes intellectually frisky essays on political and cultural issues and hosts public events locally and worldwide. Zócalo’s rebrand centers around a logo made of squares expanding into the third dimension; flat rectangles grow into zocalohedrons, evoking Zócalo’s prismatic view of the world. Gregory Rodriguez, Zócalo’s founder, publisher and editor in chief, explains, ‘By anchoring our identity in a colorful, dynamic, multidimensional logo, we are rededicating ourselves to one of our founding principles—that generosity and fun are essential to building community around ideas.’”

3 (series) Ross Clodfelter/Shane Cranford/Noemi Zelaya, designers Device Creative Collaborative (Winston-Salem, NC), design firm Reynolda House Museum of American Art, client “Our goal was to create an experience that gave insight into Ansel Adams, his methods and his work.” Typeface: Futura Bold.

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Connecting People to Ideas and to Each Other

Communication Arts | commarts.com

IDENTITY 1 (series) Kevin Cantrell, lettering/creative director Erik Attkisson, strategic planner Kevin Cantrell Studio (Mantua, UT), design firm Tavern on the Green, client “Kevin Cantrell Studio created a comprehensive brand refresh for Tavern on the Green in New York. The identity maintained the integrity of the existing mark while bringing more emphasis to the name and adding a new monogram and typographic system. The identity is modular, with the ability to scale up or down in complexity and detail, and the lush and seasonal foliage of Central Park has become a more integral part of the system.” Typefaces: Bariloche Sans, Vance Serif.

2 (series) Jan Šabach, designer Code Switch (Northampton, MA), design firm Beach Soccer Czech Republic, client “I knew I wanted to stay away from the overused motifs of palm trees; sun; ocean; and a silhouette of a beach soccer player doing the signature bicycle kick, or ‘scissors’ kick as it is known in Czech. Such a visual language wouldn’t feel believable and authentic in the Czech (a landlocked country) environment. A playful logo and identity based on a typeface specifically designed for that purpose proved to be a good idea. I’m happy that the leadership of Beach Soccer Czech decided to go with this for its industry-unusual solution.” Typeface: BC Dres.

3 (series) Josh Carnley, creative director Carnley (Atlanta, GA), design firm Great Bear Wax Co., client “Great Bear Wax Co. creates delicately scented candles that enhance any environment they are burned in without demanding too much attention. The primary logotype captures the organic nature of a burning flame, and the secondary identity system and packaging relay the restraint and thoughtfulness of the company’s mission statement.” Typeface: Highway Gothic.

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IDENTITY 1 (series) Jon Contino, designer Ryan McLaughlin, design director Diko Daghlian, creative director DIKO (Austin, TX), ad agency/client “In an overly formal, process-driven industry, we wanted an identity that felt authentic and fun. Having worked on the branding for many companies, we knew it was best to get out of our own way. Handlettered type and some irreverence were our only mandatories for the talented Jon Contino. We’re small but hit hard with our many partnerships. Like us, the elephant seal thrives by having multiple partners. We copied its business model.” Typefaces: New Century Schoolbook, Plak.

2 (series) Brandon Levesque/Josh Posty, designers Justin Kowalczuk, senior designer/art director Dennis Lenarduzzi, creative director Makespace (Edmonton, Canada), design firm Gather Factory Co., client “Factory is a startup based in Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto. We know that small-brand, small-box-format retail is on the rise; we convert large, underutilized urban spaces into lively communities of local brands and experiences. Factory is a modern retail campus that brings brands, shoppers and retail developers together—a community hub to shop, eat and socialize. Located in up-and-coming neighborhoods in some of Canada’s fastest-growing cities, Factory is building within innovation districts—smart neighborhoods that can be places for live, work and play. Every day is an event. Every space is a destination.” Typeface: NB Akademie.

3 (series) Ashford Stamper, designer Katy Fischer, creative director Eric Thoelke, executive creative director TOKY Branding + Design (St. Louis, MO), design firm Firecracker Pizza & Beer, client “Firecracker Pizza & Beer is a celebration of lo-fi—and maybe even lowbrow—American attitude. Serving damn fine pizza, with exciting and unexpected ingredients but without the pretense. TOKY Branding + Design was tasked with creating a brand that would position Firecracker as an innovative and bold standout in the pizzeria/bar landscape. Inspired by the client’s affinity for vintage firework packaging, the identity blends lo-fi aesthetics and fiery copywriting to separate Firecracker from the pack.” Typefaces: Knockout, Sign Painter.

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IDENTITY 1 (series) Stuart Brown/Todd Temporale, designers Todd Temporale, art director Frank Viva, writer Camille Viva, programmer Flash Reproductions, print producer Janille Giambattista, project manager Viva & Co. (Toronto, Canada), design firm Spy Cider House and Distillery, client “After a twenty-plus-year relationship, Spy hired Viva & Co. to assist with all aspects of this startup brand. We helped with naming the company, packaging design and website creation, as well as stationery and writing. We are excited to continue helping out as Spy grows and evolves.” Typefaces: ITC American Typewriter, Dala Floda (modified), Sofia Pro.

2 (series) Kevin Cantrell, lettering/creative director Erik Attkisson, writer/strategic planner Kevin Cantrell Studio (Mantua, UT), design firm Star Union Spirits, client “Behold your salvation! Presenting Star Union Spirits. No dividing deeds shall halt the tide of her invention. Icons may crumble, truth may be impugned, till prosperity and spirits prevail. Out of a postindustrial chasm emerged a tide of reinvention and a champion of Midwestern entrepreneurialism in the form of an artisanal, small-batch distillery. Operating out of the historic Westclox factory, Star Union Spirits is reinvigorating specialty craft spirits. Inventive in that can-do Midwestern way, Kevin Cantrell Studio created a brand platform and comprehensive brand standards across multiple touchpoints—including copywriting, packaging and collateral—to create a brand as rich and vibrant as the Star Union Spirits story.” Typefaces: Flama, Knockout, Peru Serif.

3 (series) Erik de Vlaam/Stan Haanappel, designers Studio Dumbar – Part of Dept (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), design firm Amsterdam Sinfonietta, client “Amsterdam Sinfonietta, an independent music ensemble with an international reputation, continually strives for excellence and performs classical music with a uniquely inventive spirit. The look and feel is flexible. In order to communicate this, we created custom code that transforms music into dynamic patterns (still and motion), made by repeating the brand’s AS acronym in an endless variety of configurations. This technology-led concept to visualize music reflects the forward-thinking attitude of Amsterdam Sinfonietta.” Typeface: Maison Neue Extended.

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BOOKS 1 Ned Drew/Brenda McManus, BRED, co-creative directors BRED (New York, NY), client “Drew’s ABCs is a letterpressed book of ABCs. The concept for the book is to expose the richness of diversity within typography and celebrate its differences. We wanted to bring to light our love of typography and our reverence for design history and letterpress. We wholeheartedly embrace the imperfections as they unveil the history of each letterform. By drawing out these unique distinctions and differences, our goal is to impress upon the audience that ‘we learn to see as we see to learn.’” Typefaces: Akzidenz-Grotesk, Palatino Italic, assorted woodblock typography.

2 (series) Ana Boavida, FBA. (Coimbra, Portugal), designer Polity, client “A book series in which top thinkers offer their informed takes on the critical issues facing the future of capitalism and the economic issues of our time. The books are short and aimed at a general readership. The titles and authors’ names needed to be clearly visible. The titles vary in length, and the design needed to be easily extended. Bright colors and bold typography in a contemporary pop style appeal to the wider audience. Additionally, a visual twist highlights parts of the title, creating a second question, which almost always works as a reinforcement of the title.” Typeface: Grotzec Condensed.

3 Isaac Tobin, designer Jill Shimabukuro, creative director University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), publisher

“The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War by Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers is both a medical history of the research that emerged from the brutal injuries of World War I and a broader intellectual history of the resulting concept of the body as a selfregulating identity. The cover needed to suggest both the World War I setting and the broader concept of human identity.”

4 Tyler Comrie, designer Kelly Blair, art director Pantheon Books (New York, NY), client Book cover design for Bitwise: A Life in Code by David Auerbach. “An exhilarating, elegant memoir and a significant polemic on how computers and algorithms shape our understanding of the world and who we are.” Green type printed with glow-in-the-dark ink. Typefaces: Maison Neue, Mono Bold.

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PERIODICALS 1 Jeff Rogers (Dallas, TX), typographer Rami Moghadam/Eric Paul, art directors Chin Wang, creative director Karen Frank, director of photography Alison Overholt, editor in chief ESPN The Magazine, client “This issue of ESPN The Magazine, in collaboration with The Undefeated, explores the State of the Black Athlete—a glimpse into the creativity, struggles and brilliance of African Americans in sports. On newsstands Friday, January 26, 2018, the issue was anchored by an essay from The Undefeated editor in chief Kevin Merida, ‘Speaking Their Minds,’ which stresses that Black athletes need to be looked at in full, starting with their intellect.”

2 Jenn Roberts, associate designer Tom Brown, designer/creative director Emily Chavous/Paul Weaver, writers Fredrik Brodén/Darren Heath, photographers Magnus Greaves, editor in chief Miss Archer Ltd., production company Tom Brown Art+Design (Port Moody, Canada), design firm Rev Media, client “For Rev 001: Barcelona, we sampled jamón ibérico and Spanish espresso, toured R2 Biker Shop and the Auto Retro Museum, and shred some pavement at Kartòdrom Catalunya. Then we went to the races with Ana Carrasco, Jack Aitken, Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz and an ode to the blessed grid girl.” Typefaces: Druk, Founders Grotesk.

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PERIODICALS 1 Rob Gonzalez/Jonathan Quainton, designers Mike Novak, IBM Systems Magazine, art director/client Sawdust (London, United Kingdom), design firm “Typographic image for an IBM Systems Magazine article identifying a shift from selective encryption to full pervasive encryption.”

2 Nancy Campbell/Trevett McCandliss, designers/creative directors Zoe Adlersberg, photographer Mariah Walker, stylist/producer Emily Beckman, editor Earnshaw’s (New York, NY), client “To open the children’s fashion story ‘The Naturals’ for the September 2018 issue of Earnshaw’s magazine, we created a customized typographic design. The story was shot in Ibiza, Spain. We strove to create an exotic feel for the display type to accompany the beautiful photography.” Typefaces: Farao, Salvaje, various ornaments.

3 Valentina Casali/Marco Emanuele Romano, designers Hitomi Sato, art director Sunday Büro (Jesi, Italy), design firm Men’s Health, client “We designed bold illustrated lettering, a drop cap and a little spot illustration about digital detox for the November 2017 issue of Men’s Health.”

4 Kristie Bailey, designer Fred Woodward, design director Justin O’Neill, photo editor Krista Prestek, director of photography GQ (New York, NY), client “Opening spread for a feature on Dylann Roof, a white supremacist and mass murderer convicted for perpetrating the Charleston church shooting in 2015, written by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah.”

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PERIODICALS 1 Jenn Roberts, associate designer Tom Brown, designer/creative director Emily Chavous/Paul Weaver, writers Fredrik Brodén/Darren Heath, photographers Magnus Greaves, editor in chief Miss Archer Ltd., production company Tom Brown Art+Design (Port Moody, Canada), design firm Rev Media, client “For Rev 002: Monaco, the race weekend took us to Blue Coast Brewing, a brewery owned by Daniel Ricciardo, Jenson Button and Karen Minier-Coulthard. We ate our way through some of the world’s finest meats at Beefbar. And we visited PitStop Monte-Carlo, a concierge car shop owned by driver Clivio Piccione, among other French Riviera hangouts. Ricciardo and Formula 2 star Lando Norris spoke to us about the challenges of racing on the streets of Monaco, and we took a look inside the McLaren F1 Team.” Typefaces: Druk, Founders Grotesk.

DIGITAL MEDIA 2 (series) Jaye Kang (Düsseldorf, Germany), designer/illustrator Association of Illustrators, client “My mission was to create new illustrated covers for the client directories of the Association of Illustrators. It has three different directories—Advertising, Editorial and Publishing. My idea was to use the first letters of the three titles and combine these with different yet related elements and scenes.”

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DIGITAL MEDIA 1 (series) Brian Feeney/Bonnie Jarvie/Fernando Turch/ Thomas Williams, designers Che Douglas, art director The Wall Street Journal (New York, NY), client “Merging a 130-year history with an elevated digital brand identity, the Wall Street Journal design team worked with Type Network and Frere-Jones Type to recut the newspaper’s heritage typefaces for its digital products. The transition enhanced brand recognition and consistency and helped to simplify, standardize and modernize the fonts used across all the Wall Street Journal products and experiences.” Typefaces: Escrow, Exchange, Retina.

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DIGITAL MEDIA 1 Tien-Min Liao (Long Island City, NY), designer Type Directors Club, client “Decentralizing Type, a Chinese lettering piece for the cover of Typegeist, a new online magazine published by the Type Directors Club.”

2 (series) Tré Seals (Accokeek, MD), typographer/designer AIGA DC/Gail Anderson, clients “In preparation for an upcoming lecture at The Washington Post, AIGA DC commissioned a series of social media graphics and banners to promote the speaker, legendary designer Gail Anderson. For these banners, Tré Seals selected colors and typography referencing Gail’s breadth of work.” Typefaces: League Gothic, Libre Franklin, Woodkit Solid.

ENVIRONMENTAL 3 Craig Ward, designer Gallo Ward (New York, NY), design firm Two Trees, client “We were tasked with producing a wayfinding mural to guide tenants of a Brooklyn commercial building up to its roof deck. The mural spanned several hundred feet of corridors and stairwells.”

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ENVIRONMENTAL 1 Ben Johnston (Toronto, Canada), typographer Up Here, client “The mural Heart of Gold was designed and painted for the city of Sudbury, Canada, as a celebration of the people. It references the phrase ‘city of nickel, heart of gold.’”

2 (series) Sohee Kim, designer Kris Wong, design director Ben Crick, creative director Joanna Hobson, director of creative innovation Matt Luckhurst, chief creative officer COLLINS (San Francisco, CA), design firm Exploratorium, client “COLLINS designed the campaign for the Exploratorium’s Inflatable: Expanding Works of Art, an exhibition of massive air-filled sculptures. The campaign was defined by a set of custom inflatable letterforms, designed by COLLINS to be as tactile as the experience itself. The letters dynamically blow up to fill whatever space they’re in, from buses to billboards to banners. Each expression is unique, every surface a new canvas, inviting viewers into the wondrous world of Inflatable.”

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ENVIRONMENTAL 1 (series) Tsvetislava Koleva/Ivaylo Nedkov, designers Ivaylo Nedkov, creative director Eva Markova/Mila Spasova, illustrators Vera Schwartz/Nadezhda Stefanova, project managers FourPlus Studio (Sofia, Bulgaria), design firm America for Bulgaria Foundation, client “Along with the America for Bulgaria Foundation, we started a much-needed renovation of the children’s ward at Pirogov Hospital. Together, we transformed 65 rooms on three floors. Each floor has its own theme: the first one is devoted to the oceans; the second, to fairy tales; and the third, to the real superheroes. To help the parents get around easier, we developed a clear bilingual navigation system complementing the wall graphics. The result is a combination of illustrations appealing to the young patients and an intuitive signage system for their parents, all aiming to reduce the stress and pain of all visitors.” Typeface: Akrobat.

2 Andy Westbrock, art director Andrew Gall, writer Mike Hayward, executive creative director Jim Copacino, chief creative officer Todd Hofmeister, production manager Copacino+Fujikado (Seattle, WA), ad agency Premera Blue Cross, client

“To announce the unveiling of Premera Blue Cross’s new company-wide idea-sharing initiative, we were tasked with creating a unique campus entryway design that would be impossible to ignore. The giant mosaic was created and affixed to the front doors of the main campus building.”

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ENVIRONMENTAL 1 Stefan Canuel, designer/art director National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), design firm/client “The National Gallery of Canada underwent a window replacement project during its peak season, which required boarding to be installed around its main entrance, risking the appearance of closure. The National Gallery used this real estate to promote its summer exhibition and anchor its outdoor marketing campaign. The visual design used large type and bold blue to create a contemporary feel for the names of nineteenthcentury artists and contrast with the historical artwork.” Typeface: ITC Golden Cockerel.

2 Lambchop (Lexington, KY), designer THIRD SHIFT, client “Typographic fencing defines space and engenders dialogue through the creation of large-scale text in unexpected areas. Reimagining fences as a medium for messages, these temporary installations recontextualize the use of large text by prompting conversation instead of consumption. Sparking curiosity, they transform overlooked spaces into landmarks. I know now/you should have was commissioned as part of THIRD SHIFT, a festival of public contemporary artworks in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.” Typeface: ITC Century Std.

3 (series) Caroline Bagley, designer Clay Kippen, senior designer Brian Collins, chief creative officer Antonia Lazar, project manager COLLINS (San Francisco, CA), design firm Museum of the Moving Image, client “For the Museum of the Moving Image’s launch of the Jim Henson Exhibition, COLLINS led the creative execution of the exhibition space and all surrounding marketing material. Henson is best known as the visionary creator of the Muppets, with a vast body of work characterized by bold inventiveness and playfulness. The custom typeface designed by COLLINS for the exhibition gathered inspiration from his oeuvre, referencing his characters’ striking personalities and his work’s unmistakable sense of whimsy.”

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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 (series) Kris Sowersby, Klim Type Foundry, typeface designer Mariano Barreiro/Bethany Powell/Emmet Smith, National Geographic, creative directors National Geographic Partners (Washington, DC), client “Geograph is a contemporary, plain sans serif designed for National Geographic to elevate its brand identity. It comprises 24 styles for use across our broadcast, print and web channels. We drew inspiration from several international type foundries and historic fonts. Geograph is the primary set, with sharp detailing. Geograph Edit is the secondary set; its aesthetic features blunt detailing and a more robust finish. Both sets have ‘Futura alternates’ and a fancy crossed W for special occasions.”

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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 (series) Carl Crossgrove/Juan Villanueva/Lynne Yun, typeface designers Charles Nix, type director Monotype (Woburn, MA), foundry “The modernized Walbaum typeface is a restoration of a classic design. A serif typeface that can be used across a wide range of applications, from small caption text to massive display headlines, the Walbaum typeface features a warm design, making it well suited for brands seeking a type solution that blends high style with approachability. Walbaum is at home in publishing, advertising and branding, in both digital and print.”

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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 Dave Bailey/Danelle Cheney/Dan Gneiding/ Heather Neale, typeface designers Riley Cran, type director Jon Kowing, Sullivan Higdon & Sink, creative director Amanda Blake, Sullivan Higdon & Sink, design director Sullivan Higdon & Sink (Kansas City, MO), design firm SONIC Drive-In, client “SONIC Drive-In has a history as rich and flavorful as anything on its menu. When crafting messages that live up to this heritage, not just any old lettering will do. We partnered with type designer Riley Cran to develop custom script typefaces which complement our expansive custom sans serif suite. Drawing inspiration from classic midcentury American sign painting, SONIC Brush helps celebrate and promote everything that makes America’s drive-in unlike any other quickservice restaurant on the road.”

2 Alfio Mazzei, designer Alfio Mazzei/Pete Rossi, creative directors RM&CO (London, United Kingdom)/RM&TYPE, foundries Radix, client “A conceptual display typeface designed as an identity system for Radix, an association working with young people dealing with drug abuse. The former communication guidelines always used the Pac-Man character as a metaphor of the use and abuse of drugs in that it plays and swallows them, having fun but eventually becoming a ghost. The typeface was designed to embody the spirit of the arcade game in a contemporary way, being playful and young but mindful of the serious subject matter. We introduced Pac-Man and the ghosts as glyphs and special characters as part of the typeface.”

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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 (series) Ryota Doi/Sammy Fung/Julius Hui/Robin Hui/Juan Villanueva, typeface designers Akira Kobayashi/Steve Matteson, type directors Monotype (Woburn, MA), foundry Elvis Guo/Leo Lai/Winson Yu, Tencent, clients “Tencent Sans is the bespoke brand typeface for Tencent, one of the world’s largest companies and a leading provider of Internet value-added services. The typeface, a critical component of the brand’s identity, covers Chinese, Japanese and Latin-based languages. It harmonizes Tencent’s voice across borders and supports the company’s plans to expand and establish brand awareness around the world. Tencent Sans is designed to convey the company’s vision of ‘innovation, responsibility and enablement.’”

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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 (series) Connor Davenport/Lucas Sharp/Kia Tasbihgou, typeface designers Sharp Type Co. (Brooklyn, NY), foundry “Beatrice is a new kind of typeface. The family is an exploration of contrast methodologies, combining various aspects from the canon expansionist systems, inverted contrast and the contrast behavior of standard grotesks. These methodologies were dissected and used as cornerstones in building our own system, with the final result landing largely in unexplored territory. Built on the foundation of a traditional American Gothic with tight-as-can-be spacing, the superfamily spans a robust set of weights and includes two optical sizes: a highcontrast display cut, as well as a standard cut, designed to function in a wide range of optical sizes.”

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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 (series) Khajag Apelian, Debakir/Wael Morcos, Morcos Key (Brooklyn, NY), typeface designers Mike Abbink/Paul van der Laan/Pieter van Rosmalen, Bold Monday, foundry “Brando Arabic is an interpretation of Brando Latin, designed by Mike Abbink, balancing hard and soft characteristics and giving this Naskh-based typeface a refined, contemporary elegance. Brando Arabic is a companion for both Brando Serif and Brando Sans and supports Arabic, Persian and Urdu. The family includes a comprehensive set of ligatures and comes in eight weights—Hairline to Black—making it ideal for display settings as well as the rigorous demands of text.”

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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 (series) Hugues Gentile/Jean-Baptiste Levée/ Quentin Schmerber, typeface designers Thibaut Mathieu, design director Cake Design, design firm Production Type (Paris, France), foundry LVMH, client “For the world’s premier luxury conglomerate, Production Type developed a typeface family—a revival of Jannon and Granjon types—in the shape of a ‘future classic.’ Reflecting the finesse and elegance representative of LVMH and its Houses, the LVMH Air typeface conveys a feeling of crisp, timeless classiness.”

2 (series) Gal Sonnenfeld (Tel Aviv, Israel), typeface designer/design director Guy Saggee, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, creative director Jerusalem Cinematheque, client “Protagonist and Antagonist are Hebrew typefaces created for my graduation project to be the heart of the Jerusalem Cinematheque’s new identity. The Cinematheque, a cinema and the largest film archive in the Middle East, had such character and rich history but no existing visual language. Protagonist’s design was inspired by the geometry of filmmaking, and its role is to be the leading bold typeface in the new visual language, while Antagonist is a cursive Hebrew typeface born from photographs taken of Protagonist prints. Both typefaces work together in creating a new, bold visual language led entirely by type.”

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CALLIGRAPHY/HAND LETTERING 1 David Terrill, designer/creative director/illustrator Jessi Wilson, writer Robin Knight, executive creative director C3 (Overland Park, KS), design firm/client “Are you a shapeshifter? This call-for-interns poster promoting C3’s paid internship program was sent to local and regional colleges with illustration and design programs. Paid internships are available in the fall and spring semesters along with a more immersive ‘full-time’ summer internship.”

2 (series) Olga Kovalenko (Moscow, Russian Federation), letterer Maksim Arbuzov, designer/art director Russian Pointe, client “An advertising campaign was launched to promote a premiere collection of leotards by dance brand Russian Pointe. We were inspired by the elegance of ballerinas. The refinement of their movements pushed us to create these posters, where the lettering gently intertwines with the dancers, reflecting the beauty of the body shape and grace of the dancer.”

3 Michelle Haiyun Deng (New York, NY), calligrapher/designer Dakyung Lee/Jong Woo Si, art directors Jd&co. Design, design firm “Joy is an e-card that Jd&co. sends out to clients and friends during the holidays. The aesthetics of the studio is elegant yet approachable, and the idea is to thank everyone who has worked with the studio in a personal way. Calligraphy serves as the ideal form to merge elegance and the sense of handmade craftsmanship that the studio offers.”

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CALLIGRAPHY/HAND LETTERING 1 (series) Yanina Arabena/Guillermo Vizzari, designers Yani&Guille (Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina), client “Honrar el Oficio is a series of letterings designed to be part of a letterpress-printed product lineup. The phrases are meant to evoke in the reader a feeling of encouragement to take the leap without thinking too much about it. At Yani&Guille, we took this project as an excuse to push our limits, exploring new letterform styles and at the same time compacting each piece within a kind of cartouche or ex libris layout.”

2 (series) Erik Marinovich (San Francisco, CA), calligrapher Angie Elko/Patrick Knowlton, art directors Goodby Silverstein & Partners, ad agency/client “Lettering for the Golden State Warriors 2018 playoff and finals campaign.”

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CALLIGRAPHY/ HAND LETTERING 1 Katie Sutton, designer Elma Giavasis, art director/writer Highline Design Company (Kalispell, MT), design firm Sacred Waters Brewing Company, client

“For the rivers. For the wilderness. For the wild ones. Sacred Waters Brewing Company (SWBC) has heritage grown in the backcountry. The founder grew up on the remote South Fork of the Flathead River, steeped in Montana wilderness. After losing her mother to cancer, she founded SWBC as a tribute to her mother, and to the solace that so many of us seek in the wilderness. This tagline was written and illustrated to help tell that story.”

2 Raphael Geroni, letterer/designer Paul Yeates/James Zdaniewski, Rockstar Games, art directors Wendy Chin/Josh Moskovitz, Rockstar Games, project managers Raphael Geroni Design (Brooklyn, NY), design firm Rockstar Games, client “A custom piece designed and lettered for Rockstar Games to promote its highly anticipated Westernthemed action-adventure video game, Red Dead Redemption 2, set in 1899. It was a tricky piece to create technically as the final file had to be completely vector for the company’s various uses while still appearing textured. The piece was made available on a T-shirt and a collectable découpaged dish manufactured by the legendary John Derian Company.”

MOTION 3 (series) Nadia Husain, art director Dyana Weissman, senior art director Angelina Battista/Anna Minkkinen, creative directors Daniel Dörnemann, executive creative director Beat Baudenbacher, chief creative officer Victoria Rushton/Desmond Wong, designers Mike Taylor-Mozer, design director Shawn Kelley, producer Scott Lakso, executive producer David Herbruck, principal Andrea Torres, project manager Font Bureau, design firm loyalkaspar (New York, NY), ad agency Vedia Ayvaz/Josh Line/Chris Scarlata, Comedy Central, clients “As part of Comedy Central’s brand refresh and inspired by the new Comedy Central logo, we created Comedy Sans, a custom typeface built to support funny across all platforms. Comedy Sans contributes to a flexible set of tools made to amplify the brand, prioritizing clarity over clutter and effectively framing Comedy Central’s constant stream of creative. No matter the content, no matter the platform, Comedy Sans is there to represent the voice of this relevant and hilarious brand.” 140

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MOTION 1 Max Strizich, art director Jeremy Cox, creative director Sam Alexander/Henry Chang/Clint Chang/Griffin Frazen/Nathan Goodell/Arisu Kashiwagi/Ann Kreutzkamp, designers Austin Marola, animator Rachel Ambelang/Nate Buchik/Luca Campanale, editors Christine Hernandez, production coordinator Tess Sitzmann, producer Jon Hassell, executive producer Aleen Kim, head of production Imaginary Forces (Los Angeles, CA), production company Hulu, client “Castle Rock Main Title” :30 “Filled with the haunting pages from Stephen King’s universe, the opening sequence to Hulu’s Castle Rock leads the show with eerie snippets of stories from the past and things yet to come.” Typefaces: Fortescue, Futura Condensed Bold.

MISCELLANEOUS 2 (series) Graham Clifford, typographer/designer Colin Corcoran, art director/writer/creative director Todd Thyberg, producer Angel Bomb Design + Letterpress, production company Graham Clifford Design, design firm Colin Corcoran, IndependentCopywriter.com (Minneapolis, MN), client “Die-cut dots, floating free from their respective dotless i’s, visually reinforce the client’s independent brand name.” Typeface: A2 Typewriter.

3 (series) Daniel Robitaille, art director/illustrator Louis Gagnon, creative director Yousuf Karsh, photographer Paprika (Montréal, Canada), design firm Canada Post, client “Canada Post celebrated the 65th anniversary of the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history. The portrait, by Armenian Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, is from a famous sitting in July 1951, when the Queen was still known as Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth.” Typeface: Mirador.

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1 Donald Kiel (Brooklyn, NY), designer Eva Weise, Paris Images Screen Printing, print producer Ann Makowski, SEGD, client “The SEGD auction encourages members and designers to submit unique items to be bid upon at the annual SEGD conference. Living in New York, I encounter caution tape everywhere. I thought the tape itself would make a great fashion and design statement. If one wore this T-shirt, the chances are she or he would be left alone! The fabric for the shirt is 100 percent bamboo from the ONNO T-Shirt Company.” Typeface: TheSans ExtraBold.

2 Hans Thiessen, designer/art director Sean O’Connor, writer/associate creative director Ian Grais/Chris Staples/Hans Thiessen, creative directors Kerry Bhangu/Sarah Lee, print producers Porchlight Press, production company Rethink (Toronto, Canada), ad agency Megan O’Connor, client “Megan O’Connor is a Vancouver-based film editor. She needed a business card that not only communicates what she does, but also promotes her services. We decided to take her contact information and rearrange it, much like a film editor would tackle raw footage.” 3½ × 2, PMS Cool Gray 11, letterpressed on Lettra Fluorescent White 220 lb. Duplex Cover. Typeface: Sporting Grotesque FBM Edit.

3 Studio-Takeuma, typographer Kosuke Takebayashi (Kyoto, Japan), designer Benesse Corporation, client “These numbers were made for a family interaction campaign and became anniversary stickers. At the idea stage, there were insects, amphibians and fish, which were rejected by the client. Each number is made of animal families. The majority are mammalians. Round, familiar forms and colors were adopted to appeal to children.”

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UNPUBLISHED 1 Samuel Jacques, Conifère (Montréal, Canada), designer “Hand-drawn typography inspired by cheap vernacular design found in local French Canadian grocery stores, bookshops, liquidation stores and thrift stores.“ Gold and white on black paper, screen-printed edition of fifteen. © Samuel Jacques

2 (series) SERIESNEMO (Barcelona, Spain), design firm “Raw Beer is a beer collection of avant-gardes. Each design represents a cultural current: brutalism, Dadaism, futurism and nihilism. Together, they create a powerful graphic system with a big typographic impact. These beverages have been created using ArqType, a brutalist variable semi-serif typeface inspired by brutalist architecture from the ’50s and ’60s. Its solid and squared appearance evokes the classic buildings and materials of this architectural and cultural movement.” © SERIESNEMO

3 Rateb S, Shaban (Amman, Jordan) typographer/ calligrapher/designer “I designed this project first as a poster and second as a logo to identify my artworks and designs in solo exhibitions. The poster represents my name twice. I used Arabic letters with specific triangular shapes. I designed them as a complete Arabic typeface for titles. When I started the design of the poster, I found that complementary colors are a suitable solution for the design, which attracts the eyes of viewers.” Silkscreen. © Rateb S, Shaban

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UNPUBLISHED 1 (series) Billy Renkl (Clarksville, TN), designer “I made this set of collages while in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Each is a reconfiguration of a vintage typographic treatment—a box office sign, tuna can labels and a soft drink poster. I systematically cut the ephemera apart and reassembled them, making something that references the typographic sensibility of the original while defusing its function. A series of almost 40 works, Commerz refers to the Dada collagist Kurt Schwitters.” © Billy Renkl

STUDENT WORK 2 Will Givens, designer/art director Kelly Bryant, instructor Auburn University (Auburn, AL), school “Tasked with creating a poster to publicize an upcoming concert and given only an unlabeled single recording to inform the design, I used characters from the reversed-stress typeface Maelstrom and bulb photography to create a sense of apocalyptic collision.” 11 × 17. Typefaces: Akzidenz-Grotesk, Maelstrom. © Will Givens

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STUDENT WORK 1 (series) Saba Sobhani, designer Zab Hobart, instructor York University/Sheridan College (Oakville, Canada), school “Zenith is a translation of brutalist ideologies into graphic design. It demands a closer look and is built from simple means. One weight of Neue Haas Grotesk is used throughout the piece, mimicking how architects experimented with concrete in the 1960s. The convoluted nature of brutalism informed the display typeface. It challenges the viewer at first, but with time, it becomes easier to understand, perhaps urging us to also reconsider the remaining structures of that time.” 10 × 15, 1-color, perfect bound. © Saba Sobhani

2 (series) Emilie Hahn, designer Brad Bartlett, instructor ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA), school “A new visual identity system for the Palm Springs International Film Festival and a sister microidentity for Palm Springs International ShortFest. The identity draws from the local vernacular of Palm Springs, using midcentury modern aesthetics paired with bright colors and wood type influences from the same time period. The confetti graphic element is inspired by film on a cutting-room floor and celebrates the diverse voices that are showcased at the festival.” Typefaces: Akkurat Pro, Bixa, Sharp Grotesk. © Emilie Hahn

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STUDENT WORK 1 (series) Tommi Sharp, designer James Edmondson/Frank Grießhammer/Tânia Raposo, instructors Type@Cooper West (San Francisco, CA) school “Inspired by a workshop about drawing and ideating in unconventional ways, I had a wild urge to carve up a gigantic potato in my fridge and make prints. Taters is served three ways: Regular, Baked and Fried. Regular is a display typeface that looks great in short paragraph settings. Baked is best above 180pt since it has tiny counters. Fried is optimized for body copy and could be used to set your favorite cookbook.” © Tommi Sharp

2 (series) Meagan L. Vanderhill, designer/typographer Sohee Kwon, instructor Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA), school “This experimental book reimagines five chapters from the novel Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. It experiments with structure, grid, material and typography in order to conceptually explore the novel’s different representations of time. The result is an experience that brings the themes of the novel to life in the hands of the reader.” Typefaces: Alternate Gothic (modified), Windsor. © Meagan L. Vanderhill

3 (series) Cooper H. Weinstein, designer David Beck/John Norman, instructors Texas A&M University-Commerce (Dallas, TX), school “Catch-22 is a satirical book about the paradoxes of war. To convey this, I decided to make a cover that has different meanings depending on how the book is turned. When the book is sitting right side up, it depicts an image of a plane being bombed; but when the book is turned upside down, the plane is dropping bombs. The type lets the viewer know that there are two different ways the cover can be interpreted.” Typefaces: Courier Bold, Norwester. © Cooper H. Weinstein

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STUDENT WORK 1 (series) Mandy Rochat, designer UCO Design, instructor University of Central Oklahoma, Department of Design (Edmond, OK), school “This poster series promoted a hands-on workshop that was held at the Letterpress & Prototyping Lab. The text of each poster was letterpress printed on top of make-ready sheets, making each print multilayered and unique. Some of the make-ready sheets are made from the work of almost every student that has ever used the letterpress!” 13 × 19, silkscreen over letterpress make-ready sheets. Typefaces: Balboa Plus, Balboa Ultra Light. © Mandy Rochat

2 Colin Butler, designer Molly Sherman, instructor Texas State University (San Marcos, TX), school “The goal was to conceptualize a workshop, lecture or discussion series surrounding the idea of ‘Designer as... ’ or ‘Design for... ’ in order to spark new, critical conversations. Students were then tasked with designing an expandable typographic identity for the event series. The subsequent concept, Storytellers by Design, is a multiday design conference that focuses on the importance of design from a narrative point of view. Storytellers by Design features lectures and panel discussions from an array of different creative professionals. The solution combines typography with both narrative and design iconography.” Typefaces: Beirut Display Bold, Nimbus Sans Extd Bold. © Colin Butler

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STUDENT WORK 1 (series) Skyler Wheeler, designer Veronica Vaughan, instructor Texas A&M University-Commerce (Commerce, TX), school “This poster series was created for my advanced typography class. I was assigned to design these posters for the Alzheimer’s Association in order to raise awareness of the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. The concept for this piece was to use the textures and ink transparency of letterpress to communicate the sense of confusion Alzheimer’s patients experience at different stages.” 18 × 24, 4-color, digital. Typefaces: Avenir Next Condensed, Helvetica. © Skyler Wheeler

2 (series) Ana Andreeva, art director/typographer Hannes Famira, instructor Type@Cooper (New York, NY), school “Aarchibald is a typeface family designed for architectural publications. The concept is an open, readable, fluid typeface with sharp, angular elements. Aarchibald has an extralow cap height and extender lengths to accommodate tight line spacing and usage in cap-heavy languages such as German. Supports most European languages and includes linear and old-style number sets and ligatures.” © Ana Andreeva

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STUDENT WORK 1 Sanie Irsay, designer Katarzyna Gruda/William Morrisey, instructors Parsons School of Design (New York, NY), school “Typographic poster for a festival.” 22 × 30, 4-color, silkscreen. Typefaces: Minecraftia 2.0, Foundry Gridnik. © Sanie Irsay

2 (series) Hsin-Ho Hsieh/Yu-Chen Huang/Chang-Wei Huang/Sung-Che Huang/ Ju-Fang Liu/Li-Fang Tseng/Yuan-Ting Tung/Yu-Quan Zhang, designers Kuo-Chun Chiu, instructor Kun Shan University (Tainan, Taiwan), school “We are inundated with tiny noises from every direction in life, and the feeble sounds infiltrate our lives, groups and society. The noise movement is launched through visual design to reach the audience’s hearts so that they can be internalized to become their exclusive inner noise and seize the opportunity to initiate their noise movement in life. The intention is to explore the unknown and the known because everyone is an advocate of the noise movement. By utilizing various mediums, we can all begin a revolution to care about Earth from the heart.” © Hsin-Ho Hsieh/Yu-Chen Huang/Chang-Wei Huang/Sung-Che Huang/ Ju-Fang Liu/Li-Fang Tseng/Yuan-Ting Tung/Yu-Quan Zhang

3 (series) Billy Muschinske, designer UCO Design, instructor University of Central Oklahoma, Department of Design (Edmond, OK), school “These posters were created to promote a hands-on workshop in the Letterpress & Prototyping Lab. The workshop exposes students to letterpress, screen printing and the laser. These posters were created using a mix of all three techniques.” 8 × 18¼, 3-color, letterpress from a laser-engraved plate, silkscreen. Typeface: Gotham. © Billy Muschinske

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STUDENT WORK 1 (series) Jack Burnside, designer Brad Bartlett, instructor ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA), school “Verso Books is an independent, radical publishing house founded by the staff of London’s New Left Review in 1970. Today, Verso releases more than 100 titles a year with a focus on politics, philosophy and culture. This identity proposal honors Verso’s leftist roots while employing a flexible graphic language that can exist comfortably in both political and cultural contexts.” Typefaces: Brown, Simplon Mono, Suisse Int’l. © Jack Burnside

2 (series) Axel Lindmarker, designer Peter Ahlberg, instructor School of Visual Arts (New York, NY), school “What started out as a series of typographic experiments for instore graphics turned into a full campaign for Nike. The patterns were generated using a custom program so that every piece— motion or still—can be unique and original.” Typeface: Futura Bold. © Axel Lindmarker

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STUDENT WORK 1 (series) Lulubi Garcia, designer Brad Bartlett, instructor ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA), school “As part of the programming of online radio station NTS, SOS Radio was created as an event that would branch out as a physical event: a pop-up radio festival with three different locations—Los Angeles, London and Amsterdam. The SOS Radio festival celebrates the worldwide rise and musical diversity of internet radio. SOS Radio is based on Sofie Fatouretchi’s original monthly radio show on NTS Radio.” Typefaces: Druk, Favorit. © Lulubi Garcia

2 Nicholas Losacco, designer Gyula Gefin, instructor Dawson College (Montréal, Canada), school “Tasked with designing a book cover for the work of Edward Ruscha, an artist who uses primarily typography, I created a bespoke typeface that includes many elements of typography as a whole. Mixing serif, sans serif, humanist and geometric elements would pose a challenge for consistency. The type was therefore designed to be unicase to keep a consistent optical size from letter to letter. Moreover, this added a certain linear quality while reading. To make each letter cooperate further with the letters around it, similar weight and contrast were applied to each letter and optical tricks were implied.” © Nicholas Losacco

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STUDENT WORK 1 (series) Yi Jun Lin, designer Ariel Grey, instructor Academy of Art University (San Fransisco, CA), school “The brief was to design a recipe book around a single ingredient. My approach was to create a series of three books about eggs for the adventurous eater, presented in the form of a field guide, complete with richly set type and vintage-style illustrations. The books describe various types of eggs from the farm, the ocean and the wild, including where they can be found and how to eat them.” 146 pages, three books, 8½ × 11, digital, perfect bound with hardcover uplift and encasement. Typefaces: Arno Pro, Verlag. © Yi Jun Lin

2 Chelsea Le, designer Cheri Gray, instructor ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA), school “If I Don’t Talk About It, Who Will... is an abstraction from an Asian American female survivor of domestic abuse. My concept is to move chronologically through the background of this taboo and unheard-of group of Asian American women and reveal their problems, existing in the past and present, which these women were and are too afraid to speak about, due to social expectations. The accordion folds illustrate the idea of the hidden feelings and emotions tucked into the book, revealed as you experience each page.” 170 pages, 8 × 10, 4-color, perfect bound, Japanese fold, accordion fold. Typefaces: Fakt Pro, Ogg. © Chelsea Le

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FRESH JANNIKE STELLING

“In this era of social media, we are overloaded with all kinds of materials,” Berlin-based photographer Jannike Stelling says. Thankfully, she carves out spaces for our minds to inhale, exhale and wander. “A few years ago, when I stopped using analog cameras and available light, I discovered that I was addicted to neat visual language—it gives the viewer more space to create the rest of the story,” she says. With Stelling’s eye for shapes, color and composition, it’s hard to believe that an art teacher once thought she would be no good in the arts. But after a friend connected Stelling with an advertising photographer in need of an assistant, she went on to study photography, and began working as a freelance photographer in 2015. Now, she photographs people and objects against backgrounds that burst in shades of bubblegum pink, buttercup, cream and more, creating soothing minimalist worlds that maximize color. jannikestelling.com

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1. “Flo Mega is a German soul singer. This was a photo for his new tour.” Björn Rausch, art director; Flo Mega, model; Four Artists, client. 2. “Commission for the Welcome Center Berlin. The piece is about immigrant women talking about how they found their way to work in Berlin.” Büro Farbe, art director; Senat Berlin, client. 3. “For renk., a German Turkish online art and culture magazine. For its second issue, I created a series for an article asking questions about affiliation and the feeling of being torn between two cultures.” Jannike Stelling, photographer/set designer; renk., publisher/client. 4. “Personal project showing an artistic interpretation of Cape Town, South Africa, many years after the abolishment of apartheid. The ambivalence of the realities is the subject of my work.” 5. “This personal project is a visual approach that captures the basic feeling of today’s voyeurism.”

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“My career as an illustrator started slowly and steadily,” Cornelia Li says. “At first, I scarcely received assignments, which gave me ample time to experiment and analyze my work to find my own voice.” Since then, art directors at The New Yorker, Tor.com and more have called on Li to vocalize stories. “While my sources of inspiration change as I grow,” says Li, who’s been influenced by everything from classic fairytales to surrealist art to daily observations, “I always gravitate towards strong narratives.” That narrative is often revealed in details—like a shadow, a reflection or a symbol—that externalize the heart of the story while undertones of color suggest the mood. Nestled in a suburb of Toronto, from a home studio overlooking the nearby woods and farmlands, Li creates pieces that harmonize subject and surrounding. corneliali.com

1. “The worst phone call a prosecutor has to make: delivering bad news to victims and their families.” Nick Gazin, art director; The Marshall Project/VICE, clients. 2. “A man who was wrongfully incarcerated for 26 years realizes the life he has missed upon his release.” Nick Gazin, art director; The Marshall Project/ VICE, clients. 3. “When studying Alzheimer’s, it’s important to look at sex-specific risks.” Michael Mrak, art director; Scientific American, client. 4. “Personal piece depicting the feeling of isolation amongst crowds.” 5. “How three generations of women from the same family escaped domestic violence through self-help and resourcefulness.” Vinnie Neuberg, art director; Narratively, client. 6. “After introducing human stem cells to mice embryos, scientists were able to study the effects of certain diseases on humans by observing the lab mice.” Rebecca Horne, art director; Spectrum News, client. 7. “Portrait of composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane performing his album Book of Travelers.” Deanna Donegan, art director; The New Yorker, client.

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FRESH XXIX

In New York City’s East Village is a space that shrugs off neat labels. It’s a salon for exhibitions, live readings, performances and events. It’s a sometimes-open retail store. It’s a studio shared by friends. It’s XXXI, the home base of XXIX, a “small, hardworking design studio” whose portfolio straddles divides. Cofounded by Jacob Heftmann and Jake Hobart, XXIX’s approach is to “create contemporary graphic design on screens,” as Heftmann says. “The way we look at graphic design has always been with technology as a fundamental aspect of the work.” That work includes fresh website design, as well as identities, animated signage, packaging, and side projects like Small Victories, which enables designers to take files in a Dropbox folder and turn them into a website, and @telier, a platform that opens up XXXI and other studios to designers on a residency basis. What’s next for XXIX? “To grow the studio in size and thinking to address what a graphic design studio can be today.” xxix.co

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1. “Brand and packaging design for Aida, a line of food items created to help people entertain easily.” Aida, client. 2. “Website for IBM’s corporate typeface IBM Plex.” Anthony Zukofsky, designer; Mike Abbink/IBM brand team, clients. 3. “Brand design and website for Le Fleuriste, a high-end floral design company that specializes in unique botanical ‘encounters.’” Elena Seegers, Le Fleuriste, client. 4. “Website and digital signage for the 2017 installment of Google Design’s annual design and technology conference SPAN.” Google Design, client. 5. “Small Victories is a digital product we created as an easy way to make websites.” Michael Dijkstra/Jacob Heftmann/Jake Hobart/Maria Sieradzki, designers.

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Typeset in the Future

Reinventing Print Technology and Craft in Typography By David Jury 208 pages, softcover, $44.95 Published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts bloomsbury.com

Read the title carefully. If you stop at “reinventing print,” you’ll probably be disappointed with this book. The rest of the title—“technology and craft in typography”—is more telling. Reinventing Print is about technology’s effect on printing over the last five centuries. David Jury begins with a series of essays on technology’s relationship to creativity, culture, the craft of printing and the business of graphic design. Following these, he explores the changes technology has made to how the phone book, encyclopedias and similar directories have been redefined digitally. Other chapters celebrate the resilience, tactility and charm of paper; the resurgence of the maker ethic; and the new popularity of hard-copy novels and children’s books. Jury’s books abound with illustrations, and Reinventing Print is no exception. Pages are filled with historical prints, magazine and book covers, double-page spreads, photographs, and typographic specimens. An academic and design historian—perhaps one of the best of our time—Jury has a lot to say and takes his time doing so. The book is approachable, but his writing can be a bit hefty, and it’s not one to scan. It’s one to learn from and reflect on. Reinventing Print is about wrapping yourself in the history of print since Gutenberg decided he wanted to make Bibles, and learning how printing has been forced to change over time. Reinventing Print is about evolution and survival—not just about reinvention. It’s about the history of a craft that’s at the soul of graphic design, be it digital or hard copy. —Allan Haley

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Typography Annual 2019

Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies By Dave Addey

When you watch sci-fi movies, do you notice the typefaces used on ships, data logs—and everything else? Dave Addey does. His book, Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies, continues the obsessive attention to detail started on his website of the same name. Beginning with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Addey walks readers through seven influential sci-fi films as only a design and typography nerd can. In the process, Addey makes us laugh with sarcastic quips, and makes us wonder at design’s role in storytelling. Prepare to buckle up and hyperdrive into a fascinating look at the visualizations of the future that grace our screens. 264 pages, hardcover, $40, Abrams. —Michelle Yee

Letraset

The DIY Typography Revolution Edited by Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy

Remember Letraset? If you do, then Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution is for you. If you don’t, then Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution is for you. Inside the yellow covers of Letraset is both love letter and chronicle— essays, a gatefold timeline, images and a series of interviews illuminate the story of a company whose products democratized typography before desktop publishing. You’ll learn about more than just the dry-transfer lettering sheets that enabled even students to set their own professional-quality display type without professional typesetting services; you’ll also discover how Letraset impacted the cultural and typographic landscape, from fostering punk graphics to creative experimentation. 312 pages, softcover, £55, Unit Editions. —Esther Oh

Goodtype The Art of Lettering By Brooke Robinson; contributions from Ken Barber, Jessica Hische, Lauren Hom and Gemma O’Brien 288 pages, hardcover, $45.00 Published by Rizzoli rizzoliusa.com

Goodtype: The Art of Lettering is noisy, eclectic and glorious. It’s more than 280 pages of lettering samples, with a foreword by Ken Barber and brief interviews with Jessica Hische, Lauren Hom and Gemma O’Brien. The foreword is insightful. The interviews are fresh, lively and provide a peek at what drives these three remarkable women. But it’s the examples of lettering that make this book grand.

projects in their evolutionary stages. Goodtype, however, gives us a look over the designer’s shoulder as the lettering evolves. We’re treated to the rough pencil sketches (complete with editing notes) and predigital renderings that lead to the ﬁnal art. Buy Goodtype. Keep it close to where you work. If your typographic mojo falls flat, pick up the book. If you’re not sure how to handle a bit of display typography, pick up the book. If you’re looking for a young and talented lettering artist, pick up the book. —A.H.

The motivation behind Goodtype is Brooke Robinson’s insatiable love of lettering. She collected examples by the bushel—and stored them all on her phone. When she got to the point where she would have to delete samples to gather more, it hit her: she could upload all of the images to an Instagram account dedicated to her lettering and type ﬁnds. This was in 2013, and Robinson never looked back. But there’s more to Goodtype than its collection of drop-to-yourknees lettering. In a world of bits and bytes, we seldom see design

Theory of Type Design By Gerard Unger 240 pages, hardcover, $50 Published by nai010 publishers nai010.com

are very practical, a theory of type design is definitely of use, as it will broaden insights and can benefit the quality of the profession by stimulating debate,” Unger writes. This book is a resource that will push type designers to go beyond technical refinement of their craft and look to meaningful contemplation of letterform design. —Denise Bosler

Type design as a practice has deep cultural, historical and social roots. Gerard Unger delves into all of them in Theory of Type Design. This culmination of a lifetime dedication to typography is written with the serious student of letterform design in mind. However, the well-organized mix of historical context, typography basics and meticulous detail makes it an accessible read for all lovers of typography. Unger eloquently and accurately expresses that anyone embarking on the study of typography already has years of experience through the reading and observing of the written word, thus encouraging budding type designers to join the ranks of the masters. Unger shows us the limitless nature of typography through his vast knowledge, love of the subject and thoughtful choice of images. Embedded too is a philosophical conversation about originality, expression and relevance that reminds designers to explore all possibilities and reﬁne until perfect. “Although many type designers Communication Arts | commarts.com

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INDEX TO TYPOGRAPHY ANNUAL 9

AA 77 Abbink, Mike 132 Academy of Art University 164 Acción Interna 72 Ad Club STL 71 Adlersberg, Zoe 108 The Advertising & Design Club of Canada 71 Agres, Ksenia 89 Ahlberg, Peter 160 AIGA DC 115 Aldrich, Jelita 90 Alexander, Sam 143 Ambelang, Rachel 143 America for Bulgaria Foundation 118 Ampersand Agency 95 Amsterdam Sinfonietta 102 Anderson, Gail 71, 115 Andreeva, Ana 156 Angel Bomb Design + Letterpress 143 Angel, Sam 82 Apelian, Khajag 132 Arabena, Yanina 138 Arbuzov, Maksim 136 Arcus Norway AS 90 ArtCenter College of Design 150, 160, 163, 164 Association of Illustrators 111 Attkisson, Erik 98, 102 Auburn University 149 Avondale Type Co. 79 Ayvaz, Vedia 140 Azer, Brian 82

Bradley, Thomas C. 94 Braley Design 71 Braley, Michael 71 BRED 105 Brightland 86 Brodén, Fredrik 106, 111 Brown, Stuart 102 Brown, Tom 106, 111 Tom Brown Art+Design 106, 111 Bryant, Kelly 149 Buber, Robert 95 Bucher, Stefan G. 96 Buchik, Nate 143 Burnside, Jack 160 Butler, Colin 155

Bagley, Caroline 121 Bahamón, Johana 72 Bailey, Dave 127 Bailey, Kristie 108 Bakker, Alex 77 Barlow, Toby 95 Barreiro, Mariano 123 Barry, David 94 Barry, Jessica 94 Bartlett, Brad 150, 160, 163 Bassackward Press 94 Battista, Angelina 140 Baudenbacher, Beat 140 Beach Soccer Czech Republic 98 Beacon Capital Partners 86 Beaudoin, Kurt 93 Beck, David 153 Beckman, Emily 108 Benaim, Michu 95 Benesse Corporation 144 Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design 135 Bhangu, Kerry 77, 144 Bird and Biscuit 95 Bisson, Sébastien 93 Blair, Kelly 105 Blake, Amanda 127 Boavida, Ana 105 Bold Monday 132 Boraca, Kevin 86 Boras, Želimir 93 Bott, Luke 94

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Typography Annual 2019

Caguin, Mike 94 Cake Design 135 Campanale, Luca 143 Campbell, Nancy 108 Canada Post 143 Canales & Co. 95 Canales, Jose 95 Cantrell, Kevin 98, 102 Kevin Cantrell Studio 98, 102 Canuel, Stefan 121 Cardozo, Julián 79 Carmichael Lynch 85 Carnley 98 Carnley, Josh 98 Carter-Greer, Kortney 94 Casali, Valentina 94, 108 Chamberlain, Meredith 86 Chang, Clint 143 Chang, Henry 143 Chavous, Emily 106, 111 Cheney, Danelle 127 Cheung, Vince 94 University of Chicago Press 105 Chin, Wendy 140 Chiu, Kuo-Chun 158 Cikanek, Katharine 86 Clifford, Graham 95, 143 Graham Clifford Design 95, 143 Clodfelter, Ross 96 Code Switch 98 Cofre, Ian 80 Colle McVoy 94 COLLINS 117, 121 Collins, Brian 121 Comedy Central 140 Comrie, Tyler 105 Conifère 147 Contino, Jon 101 Copacino+Fujikado 118 Copacino, Jim 118 Corcoran, Colin 143 Colin Corcoran, IndependentCopywriter.com 143 Correa, Lucho 72, 79 Cox, Jeremy 143 Cran, Riley 127 Cranford, Shane 96 Crick, Ben 117 Crossgrove, Carl 124 C3 136 Curley, Morgan 95

Daghlian, Diko 101 Davenport, Connor 131 Davis, Timothy 82 Dawson, Claire 74 Dawson College 163 De La Rocha, Leonardo 95 de Vicq de Cumptich, Roberto 96 de Vicq design 96 de Vlaam, Erik 102 Debakir 132 Delbello, Anja 77 Delcan & Company 71 Delcan, Pablo 71 Deng, Michelle Haiyun 136 Design is Play 95 Detroit Department of Transportation 95 Device Creative Collaborative 96 Dig A Pony 94 DIKO 101 Disidente Colombian Cacao Taxonomy 79 Doi, Ryota 128 Dörnemann, Daniel 140 Douglas, Che 112 Doyon, Jean 93 Drew, Ned 105 Durinick, Ryan 71

Earnshaw’s 108 Edling, Russell 89 Edmondson, James 153 Eighty-Eight Brewing Co. 95 Elko, Angie 138 ESPN The Magazine 106 Etzkorn, Cory 112 Exploratorium 117

Fallon, Jaime 85 Famira, Hannes 156 Famous Charm 94 FBA. 105 Fearless Restaurants 96 Feeney, Brian 112 Fenwick, Ali 85 Firecracker Pizza & Beer 101 Fischer, Christina 89 Fischer, Katy 71, 101 Fischzang, Chantal 80 Fitzgerald, Theresa 94 Flash Reproductions 102 Flomaster 93 Font Bureau 140 FourPlus Studio 118 Fox, Mark 95 Frank, Karen 106 Frank, Ryan 90 Franković, Orsat 93 Frazen, Griffin 143 Fundacija Brumen 77 Fung, Sammy 128

Gagnon, Louis 143 Gall, Andrew 118 Gallo Ward 115

Garcia, Lulubi 163 Gather Factory Co. 101 Gefin, Gyula 163 Gentile, Hugues 135 Geroni, Raphael 140 Raphael Geroni Design 140 Giambattista, Janille 102 Giant Void 90 Giavasis, Elma 140 Giloi, Eva 80 Givens, Will 149 Gneiding, Dan 127 Gonzalez, Rob 108 Goodby Silverstein & Partners Goodell, Nathan 143 GQ 108 Grais, Ian 77, 144 Gray, Cheri 164 Great Bear Wax Co. 98 Greaves, Magnus 106, 111 Grey, Ariel 164 Grießhammer, Frank 153 Grims, Marty 96 Gruda, Katarzyna 158 Guerra, Zack 95 Guo, Elvis 128 Gylfason, Einar 95

138

Haanappel, Stan 102 Hagar 95 Hahn, Emilie 150 Haines, Eric Louis 90 Haldeman, Brock 86 Hansen, Jimmy 86 Hanson, Lee 94 Hardison, Tina 95 Harrington, Woody 89 Hassell, Jon 143 Hayward, Mike 118 The Heads of State 89 Heath, Darren 106, 111 Helms, Christian 86 Helms Workshop 86 Hennelly, Barbara 94 Herberg, Erik 94 Herbruck, David 140 Hernandez, Christine 143 Hicks, Kyle 77 Highline Design Company 140 Hobart, Zab 150 Hobson, Joanna 117 Hofmeister, Todd 118 Honest Dumplings 93 Hsieh, Hsin-Ho 158 Huang, Chang-Wei 158 Huang, Sung-Che 158 Huang, Yaoyao 95 Huang, Yu-Chen 158 Hui, Julius 128 Hui, Robin 128 Hulu 143 Husain, Nadia 140

IBM Systems Magazine 108 Il Mucchio Selvaggio Magazine Imaginary Forces 143 In-House International 95

Interboro Spirits & Ales 89 Invisible Collective 94 Irsay, Sanie 158 Isidore & Augustine 94 Iyer, Aishwarya 86

Jacques, Samuel 147 Jain, Avni 85 Jannott, Meg 95 Jaramillo, Julian 95 Jarvie, Bonnie 112 Jazouli, Nadine 93 Jd&co. Design 136 Jeon, Jay 90 Jerusalem Cinematheque Johnston, Ben 117 Jones, David 71 DPL Jones Design 71

135

Kang, Jaye 111 Karsh, Yousuf 143 Kashiwagi, Arisu 143 Kelley, Shawn 140 Kernevich, Jason 89 Kiel, Donald 144 Kim, Aleen 143 Kim, Sohee 117 Kippen, Clay 121 Klim Type Foundry 123 Knight, Robin 136 Knowlton, Patrick 138 Kobayashi, Akira 128 Kohana Coffee 86 Koleva, Tsvetislava 118 Kovalenko, Olga 136 Kowalczuk, Justin 101 Kowaleczko, Natalia 90 Kowing, Jon 127 Kreutzkamp, Ann 143 Kun Shan University 158 Kwon, Sohee 153

La Rotta, Silvia 79 Lafayette American 95 Lai, Leo 128 Lakso, Scott 140 Lambchop 121 Lane House 94 Lazar, Antonia 121 Le, Chelsea 164 Lee, Dakyung 136 Lee, Sarah 144 Lenarduzzi, Dennis 101 Les Concerts du Mercredi 72 Leutz, Josh 85 Levée, Jean-Baptiste 135 Levesque, Brandon 101 Leynivopnid 95 Li, Ken 94 Liang, Jennifer 71 Liao, Tien-Min 115 Lin, Yi Jun 164 Lindmarker, Axel 160 Line, Josh 140 Linnihan, Dan 94 Lip 72, 79 Liu, Ju-Fang 158 Losacco, Nicholas 163 loyalkaspar 140 Luckhurst, Matt 117 Lux Records 90 LVMH 135

MacKinder, Vivienne 95 Maggiore, Joe 90 Makespace 101 Makowski, Ann 144 Malley, Ken 77 Marin, Juan Miguel 85 Mariño, Lucho 79 Marinovich, Erik 95, 138 Maritimus Ragusa d.o.o. 93 Markova, Eva 118 Marola, Austin 143 Martin, Casey 90 Mathieu, Thibaut 135 Matteson, Steve 128 Mattson Creative 94 Mattson, Ty 94 Mayer, Judith 79 Mazzei, Alfio 127 McCandliss, Trevett 108 McGarry, Joe 96 McLaughlin, Ryan 101 McManus, Brenda 105 Men’s Health 108 Merqueo 95 Metz, Justin 71 The Millions 90 Minkkinen, Anna 140 Miss Archer Ltd. 106, 111 Moghadam, Rami 106 Monnet Design 71 Monnet, Stéphane 71 Monotype 124, 128 Monteiro, Joana 90 Morcos Key 132 Morcos, Wael 132 Moreno, María Paula 79 Morgan, Adele 112 Morrisey, William 158 Moskovitz, Josh 140 Muschinske, Billy 158 Museum of the Moving Image

Paprika 143 Paris Images Screen Printing 144 Parsons School of Design 158 Pastre, Amy 86 Paul, Eric 106 Peña, Fidel 74 Pernar, Ana 93 Peu Duvallon, Vincent 95 Phillips 66 85 Pignataro, Francesca 94 Pires, Bruno 90 Pivot Design 86 Play 90 Polity 105 Polygraphe Studio 93 Porchlight Press 144 Posty, Josh 101 Powell, Bethany 123 Premera Blue Cross 118 Prestek, Krista 108 Production Type 135 Proof Alliance 94 Prune les Fleurs 93

q r

Quainton, Jonathan

121

National Gallery of Canada 121 National Geographic 123 National Geographic Partners 123 Neale, Heather 127 Nedkov, Ivaylo 118 Newark Rhythms 80 Niedermeier Design 95 Niedermeier, Kurt 95 Nix, Charles 124 Norman, John 153 Novak, Mike 108

O’Brien, Jack 86 O’Connor, Caitlin 90 O’Connor, Megan 144 O’Connor, Sean 144 Ogden, Logan 94 University of Central Oklahoma, Department of Design 155, 158 Olson, Dan 89 Oncetudio 95 O’Neal, Greg 86 O’Neill, Justin 108 Original Pattern Brewing Company 90 Orth, Jen 94 Osorio, Felipe 95 Overholt, Alison 106

Palma, Eduardo 85 Pantheon Books 105

108

Radix 127 Raposo, Tânia 153 Ravinia Women’s Board 71 RCA Records 74 Renkl, Billy 149 Rethink 77, 144 Rev Media 106, 111 Reynolda House Museum of American Art 96 Rhodes, Anthony P. 71 Rimmer, Marc 95 Rishi Tea & Botanicals 89 RM&CO 127 RM&TYPE 127 Roberts, Jenn 106, 111 Robitaille, Daniel 143 Rochat, Mandy 155 Rockstar Games 140 Rodriguez, Gregory 96 Rogers, Jeff 106 Romano, Marco Emanuele 94, 108 Rossel, Cédric 72 Rossi, Pete 127 Rounis, Pamela 77 Rowson, Courtney 86 Rubin, Sophie 72 Rushton, Victoria 140 Russian Pointe 136 Rutgers University-Newark 80

Šabach, Jan 98 Sacred Waters Brewing Company 140 Saggee, Guy 135 Saito, Fumitaka 90 Saldarriaga, Mariana 79 Sato, Hitomi 108 Saturday Studio 94 Savannah College of Art and Design 153 Sawdust 108 Scarlata, Chris 140 Schmerber, Quentin 135 Schoepf, Brent 89 School of Visual Arts 71, 160 Schwartz, Vera 118 SDCO Partners 86

Seals, Tré 115 SEGD 144 Senn, Marty 85 SERIESNEMO 147 Sesame Workshop 94 Shaban, Rateb S, 147 Shah, Puja 94 Sharp, Lucas 131 Sharp, Tommi 153 Sharp Type Co. 131 Sherman, Molly 155 Shimabukuro, Jill 105 Shine Portrait Studio 80 Si, Jong Woo 136 Siegenthaler &Co 95 Siegenthaler, Oliver 95 Silverstein, Margie 90 Silverstein, Max 90 Sitzmann, Tess 143 Smith, Emmet 123 Sobhani, Saba 150 SONIC Drive-In 127 Sonnenfeld, Gal 135 Sony Music Entertainment 74 Sowersby, Kris 123 Spasova, Mila 118 Spy Cider House and Distillery 102 Stamper, Ashford 71, 101 Staples, Chris 77, 144 Star Union Spirits 102 Steele, Scott 93 Stefanova, Nadezhda 118 Stoll, Annie 74 Stoltze, Clif 82 Stoltze Design 82 Stranger & Stranger 90 Strizich, Max 143 Strohl, Christine 94 Strohl, Eric 94 Strohl, Inc. 94 Stubičar, Saša 93 Studio Dumbar – Part of Dept 102 Studio MPLS 89 Studio-Takeuma 144 Sullivan Higdon & Sink 127 Summers, Dusty 89 Sunday Büro 94, 108 Sunski 95 Sur Gallery 74 Sutton, Katie 140

Takebayashi, Kosuke 144 Tapley, Brendan 82 Tasbihgou, Kia 131 Tavern on the Green 98 Taylor-Mozer, Mike 140 Telos Group 86 Temples, Chad 85 Temporale, Todd 102 Tencent 128 10 Thousand Design 94 Terrill, David 136 Texas A&M University-Commerce 153, 156 Texas State University 155 Thiessen, Hans 77, 144 THIRD SHIFT 121 Thoelke, Eric 71, 101 344 Design, LLC 96 Thurston-Lighty, Ltd. 82 Thyberg, Todd 143 Tipografia Damasceno 90 Tobin, Isaac 105 TOKY Branding + Design 71, 101 Torres, Andrea 140

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INDEX TO TYPOGRAPHY ANNUAL 9 Total Graphics 77 Touchstone Climbing 95 Tribeca Film Festival 85 Tse, Koan 94 Tseng, Li-Fang 158 Tung, Yuan-Ting 158 Turch, Fernando 112 Two Trees 115 Type@Cooper 156 Type@Cooper West 153 Type Directors Club 115

u v

UCO Design 155, 158 Un, Milton 85 Underline Studio 74 Up Here 117

Valdis, Unnur 95 van der Laan, Paul 132 Van Horn, Kerrie 96

van Rosmalen, Pieter 132 Vanderhill, Meagan L. 153 Vaughan, Veronica 156 Vesel, Aljaž 77 Villanueva, Juan 124, 128 Vincdesign 94 Visual Arts Press, Ltd. 71 Viva & Co. 102 Viva, Camille 102 Viva, Frank 102 Vizzari, Guillermo 138

Wagner, Ron 82 Walker, Mariah 108 The Wall Street Journal 112 Wang, Angie 95 Wang, Chin 106 Ward, Craig 115 Watkins College of Art 82 Weathers 74 Weaver, Paul 106, 111

Weinstein, Cooper H. 153 Weise, Eva 144 Weissman, Dyana 140 Wenzhou-Kean University 95 WePlayDesign 72 West Chester University 71 Westbrock, Andy 118 Wetzel, Andrew 85 What is Eight 94 Wheatley, Louis 96 Wheeler, Skyler 156 Wherley, Brandon 89 Wieland, Zach 86 Williams, Luke 85 Williams, Thomas 112 Wilson, Jessi 136 Wong, Desmond 140 Wong, Kris 117 Woodward, Fred 108 Wright, Alexander 95 WSO2 94

INDEX TO TYPEFACES USED

Aarchibald 156 Ace 77 NB Akademie 101 Akkurat Mono 85 Akkurat Pro 150 Akrobat 118 Akzidenz-Grotesk 105, 149 Alternate Gothic 153 ITC American Typewriter 102 Antagonist 135 Aperçu 94 ARB-218 Neon Blunt MAR-50 Normal Italic 89 Arno Pro 164 ArqType 147 Avenir Next Condensed 156

Balboa Plus 155 Balboa Ultra Light 155 Bariloche Sans 98 Beatrice 131 A2 Beckett 90 Beirut Display Bold 155 Bixa 150 Bodoni 95 Bourdonnette mono 72 Bourdonnette sans 72 Brando Arabic 132 Brandon Grotesque 94 Brown 160 Bulmer 79

ITC Century Std 121 Champion 71 Circular 86, 93 Comedy Sans 140 Courier Bold 153

d e f

Dala Floda 102 BC Dres 98 Druk 71, 74, 85, 106, 111, 163

Escrow 112 Exchange 112

Faction 77 Fairplex 86 Fakt Pro 164 Farao 108 Favorit 163 Flama 102 Fortescue 143 Founders Grotesk 106, 111 Foundry Gridnik 158 Franklin Gothic 89 Franklin Gothic Condensed 89 Freight 93 Futura Bold 96, 160 Futura Condensed Bold 143

Geograph 123 ITC Golden Cockerel Gotham 158 Graphik 77 Grotzec Condensed

ATC Harris 79 Helvetica 156 Helvetica Neue 95 Highway Gothic 98 Hobeaux Black 89 Hoefler Text 72 Houschka Heavy 94

NB International

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Typography Annual 2019

121 105

Kill Screen 127 Knockout 101, 102 Knockout No 50 Welterweight 85 Knockout No 53 Heavyweight 85 Knockout No 67 Full Bantamweight 86

l m

League Gothic 115 Libre Franklin 115 Louize 89 LVMH Air 135

Maelstrom 149 Maison Neue 105 Maison Neue Extended 102 Minecraftia 2.0 158 Mirador 143 Sk-Modernist 80 Mono Bold 105 Montserrat 71 Morl Sans Extra Black 74

Neue Haas Grotesk 74, 150 New Century Schoolbook 101 ATF News Numbers Fourteen 90 Nimbus Sans Extd Bold 155 Norwester 153 Numbers Indicia 90

o p

Ogg

164

Palatino Italic 105 Peru Serif 102 Plak 101 Protagonist 135

Yani&Guille 95, 138 Yeates, Paul 140 Yon, Lee 112 York University/Sheridan College Yu, Winson 128 Yun, Lynne 124

Zdaniewski, James 140 Zelaya, Noemi 96 ZGM Modern Marketing Partners Zhang, Yu-Quan 158 Zócalo Public Square 96

150

Editor’s Note Every effort has been made to ensure that the credits comply with information supplied to us. If, for any reason, a misspelling, omission or other error has occurred, notify us within 30 days and we will be able to issue corrected award certificates.

r s

Retina 112 Rodger Black

Salvaje 108 Sentinel 89 Sharp Grotesk 150 Sign Painter 101 Simplon Mono 160 Sintex 96 Sofia Pro 102 SONIC Brush 127 Sporting Grotesque FBM Edit Stymie Bold 94 Suisse Int’l 160

Taters 153 Tencent Sans 128 TheSans ExtraBold 144 Toronto Gothic 74 Trade Gothic 89 Trade Gothic Bold 90 Trade Gothic Condensed Trim Poster 71 A2 Typewriter 143

u v w

Univers

Vance Serif 98 ITC Verkehr Bold Verlag 164

Walbaum 124 Windsor 153 Woodkit Solid 115

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MARCH/APRIL 2009

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TYPOGRAPHY ANNUAL 1 MICHAEL OSBORNE McGARRAH JESSEE TRONIC STUDIO JAMES DAY CHRISTIAN NORTHEAST EXHIBIT

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Nicoletta Ceccoli National Film Board of Canada Droga 5 Chen Design Associates Exhibit

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“Typography on the web matters because typography matters.” Richard Rutter, via Medium

“Delivering a job with a tight deadline is like running a marathon of 48 hours; unless you are training daily and keeping your body in good shape, you won’t make it.” Maria Montes, via Typism Conference 2017

“You can’t make good decisions about type unless you understand the content.” Mark Boulton, via Twitter

“If I were a typeface, I’d be a slob serif.” Hannah K. Lee, via Twitter

“Still waiting for a Shazam for fonts that includes all libraries.” Troy Leinster, via Twitter

“That sound? It is me torturing this typeface into submission.” Tiffany Wardle, via Twitter

“When you make me look at mediumcontrast/lightweight slab serifs in the same ‘branding system’ as high-contrast serifs shaped like Caslons, it makes me think about going back on anxiety medication.” Elizabeth Carey Smith, via Twitter