donderdag 31 oktober 2013

vormgeving inspiratie

It is on the day one year agothat I wrote about the book fair in Leipzig and also this year I saw a bunch of in­spir­ing books there – con­tent-wise as well as re­gard­ing the de­sign and pro­duc­tion.  I spent hours ad­mir­ing the nom­i­nees and win­ners of the yearly award »Best Book De­sign From All Over The World« and the pre­sen­ta­tions of the stu­dents of dif­fer­ent Ger­man book art study pro­grammes, find some im­pres­sions in the pic­tures. An­other high­light was the Ko­rean Pavil­lon – every sin­gle book here could have won the best book award, in my opin­ion!
I con­cluded my week­end in Leipzig with a visit to »It’s a book, it’s a stage, it’s a pub­lic space«,  a meet­ing of small in­de­pen­dent pub­lish­ers, where I met friends who pre­sented their cool pro­ject »Pub­lish­ing as (part time) prac­tice«. Check it outhere, I heard they will come to Berlin with it, soon.

The team be­hind Ger­man ty­pog­ra­phy and graphic de­sign mag­a­zineSlanted dis­cov­ered the amaz­ing power of Cuban poster art and is plan­ning on a spe­cial issue to give the Cuban artists an in­ter­na­tional voice. With 320 pages this Slanted issue will have an im­pres­sive cov­er­age and ex­hi­bi­tions in Berlin, Leipzig and Paris will give deeper in­sights into Cuban de­sign.
To make all these great plans re­al­ity, Slanted is de­pen­dent on the sup­port of all you de­sign en­thu­si­asts out there: Via crowd­fund­ing you can sup­port the pro­ject by or­der­ing copies in ad­vance or buy­ing hand-pressed prints signed by the artists. You can find the lat­est info on the pro­ject’s Face­book page.

What started out al­ready in 1966 as a com­pe­ti­tion for the best posters in the GDR has be­come a dear re­cur­ring event: The ex­hi­bi­tion »Die 100 besten Plakate des Jahres« (100 Best Posters of the Year) is once more on dis­play atKul­tur­fo­rum at Pots­damer Platz. 53 posters from Ger­many, 45 from Switzer­land and 2 from Aus­tria were awarded for their out­stand­ing de­sign, whereof 23 of the prize-win­ning en­tries are posters de­signed by stu­dents.
We were great fans of the posters by the fol­low­ing de­sign­ers: Paula Trox­ler for a Moby Dick the­ater play, Va­le­ria Gordeew for a masked ball at Udk Berlin, Mark­wald & Neusitzer for an ex­hi­bi­tion of is­landic artist erró,Björn-Chris­t­ian Schiebe for the Mu­seum of Nat­ural Sci­ences.
Have a look at all win­ning posters here or check other dates of the trav­el­ling ex­hi­bi­tion.

Yes, time is fly­ing and once again we pre­sent the next issue of Œ Mag­a­zine. Eleven dif­fer­ent paper qual­i­ties, an open-stitched bind­ing in two colours and as the icing on the cake a holo­graphic dif­frac­tion foil on the cover, we can’t ask for more! Sur­pass­ing the every­day stan­dards in pro­duc­tion, we are happy to work with ex­perts Heen­e­mann Druck and book­binder Rein­hart & Wasser. Pro­duc­tion nerds, please enjoy some im­ages of print­ing, bind­ing and fin­ish­ing!

Right in time for Berlin Fash­ion Week, the look­book we de­signed for eye­wear labelLunettes Kollek­tion ar­rived from the print­ers. Great glasses, per­fect mod­els, beau­ti­ful pho­tos shot by David Fis­cher and styled by Rainer Metz … a wel­come dash of colour in Berlin’s grey weather. Check out the new Lunettes col­lec­tion at the Col­lect Show­room!

Ob­vi­ously, I bought these 1950s is­sues of »Coun­try Fair« be­cause I fell in love with their splen­did cover il­lus­tra­tions. But also the mag­a­zine’s con­tent is worth men­tion­ing: lessons on how to shoot pheas­ants, ar­ti­cles on bee­keep­ing and ads for har­vest­ing ma­chin­ery add up to an in­ter­est­ing read­ing. The ge­nius be­hind the strik­ing mag­a­zine cov­ers is named John Hanna. He was an Aus­tralian who ar­rived in Lon­don in 1947, mak­ing his liv­ing as a com­mer­cial artist and car­toon­ist there until 1962. Dur­ing his time in Lon­don he cre­ated over 50 cov­ers for Coun­try Fair, so the chances are quite good to hunt down some of them on Ebay!

Thanks to every­body who joined to cel­e­brate the re­lease of Œ #2 atvoo store. And a spe­cial thanks to the won­der­ful Alm­dudlerdernfor yo­del­ing along!
Pho­tos: Chris­t­ian Smirnow

We´re just back from the press proof of the sec­ond issue of Œ mag­a­zine. It´s printed at print­ing house Heen­e­mann and we´re very sat­is­fied with what we saw. We can´t wait until it re­turns from the book­binder! The im­ages show con­tri­bu­tions by Yves Borg­wardtRachel de JoodeJette Stolte and Jan Mielke,  for a copy and a list of all con­trib­u­tors check out www.​oe-magazine.​de. The issue will be out on No­vem­ber 18th.

This funny sign is a win­ner –Bäck­mans shoe re­pair in Stock­holm, es­tab­lished in 1922.

The web­site we de­signed for one of our favourite Berlin fash­ion de­sign­ers Sonia Boessert ofBoessert/Schorn is now on­line! The de­sign process was a lit­tle ac­ci­den­tal: the grey patch­work-pat­tern in the back­ground orig­i­nally was com­posed to vi­su­al­ize a grid sys­tem we wanted to lay be­hind every­thing and fill with dif­fer­ent con­tent and im­ages. It hap­pend that Sonia liked it so much that she wanted it to ac­tu­ally be the de­sign for her web­site. And as client is king we im­ple­mented this idea.

This is the CI we de­vel­oped for and to­gether with our friend Hanna Pordzik, who de­signs the most amaz­ing things for her new jew­ellery label. Now we are con­vinced that Pan­tone metal­lic colours can look great on un­coated paper!

For the sec­ond time Cor­bisawarded a prize for the best cover in cor­po­rate pub­lish­ing media at BCP. We are re­ally happy that our cover for »The Ro­man­tic Issue« of Elec­tronic Beats Mag­a­zine won this spe­cial prize! The image of the ro­man­tic Ger­man shep­herd was shot by Mikael Kennedy. »The cover is the per­fect adap­tion of this is­sues’ topic ro­man­ti­cism. A strong and ex­cep­tional image that in­ten­tion­ally breaks with the view­ing habits of its tar­get group, the ‘Dig­i­tal Na­tives’.« Yay! Pho­tog­ra­pher: Mikael Kennedy / Art Di­rec­tion: Lisa Borges / Ed­i­tor-in-Chief: Vik­to­ria Pelles / Pub­lisher: Com­man­dante

It’s been a while since we de­signed this wine eti­quette for our client Achtein­halb. So it was a nice sur­prise when the final prod­uct was de­liv­ered by a mes­sen­ger today.
Achtein­halb has a great col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ger­man vine­growerTesch and they get their own bot­tling once in a while. For this 2009 Ries­ling we fi­nally adapted the new Achtein­halb Cor­po­rate Iden­tity to the label. It in­te­grates nicely with the black bot­tles and of course the hon­or­able Mr. Tesch him­self!



We´re happy to fi­nally hold it in our hands, Berlin say hello to a new mag­a­zine which is ded­i­cated to your vivid and com­plex fash­ion scene! In­stead of try­ing to de­scribe what’s going on fash­ion­wise in our cap­i­tal, we thought we’d bet­ter just show it! 10 fash­ion ed­i­to­ri­als pre­sent dif­fer­ent facets with their pure im­ages. De­sign­wise we worked with a lot of paper qual­i­ties for the spreads, to en­hance their look with a match­ing feel. A big thanks to Arne who ini­ti­ated Œ Mag­a­zine and all the peo­ple who helped us with the fi­nanc­ing part. Check out all par­tic­i­pat­ing pho­tog­ra­phers, styl­ists and hair & make-up artists here. We look for­ward to work­ing on Œ num­ber 2!
UP­DATE: If you want to see Œ Mag­a­zine on TV click here!

This was long over­due: Berlin-based pub­lish­ing house Gestal­tenfi­nally opened a shop/ex­hi­bi­tion space! But the wait­ing was worth the while: Sit­u­ated in So­phie-Gips-Höfe in Mitte, »Gestal­ten Space« spreads over more than 300 square me­tres and of­fers all the great books by Gestal­ten, cov­er­ing every­thing rel­e­vant in the in­ter­na­tional de­sign scene. Be­sides, you can buy se­lected prod­ucts by de­sign­ers & artists who have been pre­vi­ously pub­lished by Gestal­ten. The gallery space is in­auger­ated with the ex­hi­bi­tion »Cut­ters Edges« dis­play­ing con­tem­po­rary col­lages by 50 in­ter­na­tional artists.

This week­end, I vis­ited the book fair in Leipzig. Be­sides pre­sent­ing an over­whelm­ing amount of lit­er­ary nov­el­ties, the fair is also ded­i­cated to book art. At the yearly ex­hi­bi­tion »Best Book De­sign From All Over The World« arranged by Stiftung Buchkunstyou can ad­mire re­ally beau­ti­ful books. Great lay­out, fan­tas­tic ma­te­r­ial choices (es­pe­cially the Asian peo­ple know how to work with paper), so­phis­ti­cated bind­ings and other extra de­tails lifted my spir­its. 14 books were re­warded, check out the win­nershere!

Pan­ther Club is an in­de­pen­dant pub­lish­ing plat­form from Lon­don that pro­duces lim­ited print edi­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with in­ter­na­tional artists and il­lus­tra­tors. Orig­i­nally, they started out as a blog cov­er­ing the field of Graphic Arts and il­lus­tra­tion.The blog is a fun source for in­spi­ra­tion where you’ll find a mix­ture of works by new tal­ents as well as in­ter­est­ing ma­te­r­ial from past decades.
1. Pan­ther Clubs sec­ond print
se­ries »Diony­sus, The Ec­stasy & Mad­ness«
2+3. Col­lages by Vir­ginia Echev­er­ria

We helped a Berlin-based group of ar­chi­tects with de­vel­op­ing their brand and cre­ated a cor­po­rate iden­tity. We chose to work with colours, some­thing rather un­usual amongst ar­chi­tects. We wanted to match the fresh at­ti­tude of the ar­chi­tects in ques­tion but most im­por­tantly we needed a way to make a clear dis­tinc­tion be­tween the mem­bers of S3A, who not al­ways act as a group but also as in­di­vid­ual ser­vice providers.

To­gether with more than 30 pho­tog­ra­phers, styl­ists, hair & make-up artists and mod­els we were part of a fun pro­ject dur­ing the last weeks. We took care of the vi­sual con­cept and lay­out of »Œ Mag­a­zine«, which is a new fash­ion mag­a­zine that fo­cuses on Berlin’s fash­ion scene. The mag­a­zine is non-com­mer­cial and is in parts fi­nanced by crowd­fund­ing.Check out the pro­ject’s cam­paign video here on We­Fund and if you like it, feel free to sup­port a good cause!
Con­tribut­ing hair & make-up artists: Alexan­der Solter­mann,Hen­ri­ette HöftManuela Kopp,Miriam Jochims


The Bon­niers Cook Book from 1960 is the Swedish Holy Grail of cook­ing – every­body’s granny had it. It is a culi­nary and vi­sual trea­sure and you can spend a lot of time learn­ing how to mod­ern­ize your kitchen (to a mid­dle of the 20th cen­tury stan­dard), in­ter­pret­ing di­a­grams about how to blend sauces and ad­mir­ing table dec­o­ra­tions. I even dis­cov­ered a piece of Rörstrand chi­naware I have at home! The cover art is by Bo Lassen, un­for­tu­nately I do not know other works by him.