Volver la vista atrás is a novel by Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez. First published in 2020, it was awarded the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Novel Prize in 2021, and translated to the English as Retrospective in 2022. Shown here is the Czech edition, translated by Anežka Charvátová and published by Paseka as Ohlížení in 2024.

The book design makes use of two typeface families by Storm Type Foundry. The cover and title page (not shown here) feature the then freshly released Populus, in two contrasting weights: the author’s surname is set in the heaviest style, Populus Black, with the round alternates for V, A and E, accessible via Stylistic Set 1. It runs from the bottom edge all the way to the top, dividing the cover into two halves. Vásquez’ first names and the title are added to the left and right, in Populus Medium, likewise in all caps.

František Štorm characterizes Populus as a “‘variation on the Solperian theme’, created after the Areplos update as an attempt at a more robust monolinear counterpart.” It’s inspired by the 1970s when designers conceived large typeface families for photocomposition that ranged from hairline to ultra-bold cuts. One such family is ITC Serif Gothic (1972). With its tiny serifs and the alternate round E, it was likely one of the reference points. On a deeper level, though, Populus takes cues from the work of Jan Solpera (b. 1939), Štorm’s professor at the Prague Academy. Solpera also advised on the design.

The text typeface used for the interior as well as the back cover is Beletria (2019). Conceived by Štorm as contemporary looking book typeface, it comes in three optical sizes and has a sans-serif counterpart called Beletrio.

Particle is both a studio for video and photo, and a creative / marketing shop with locations in Portland and Seattle. Their website is both used for renting out the studio spaces (using a logo set in Volksans) and as a portfolio website for their creative services, using Fluro for the logo.

Brooklyn-based indie rock band They Might Be Giants have released their new album, The World Is to Dig. Alongside the album, the music video to “Get Down” was released.

Creative direction by Paul Sahre. Co-directed and animated by Takumi Segi and Anastasia Kharchenko. Driven by bold color palettes, dynamic typography, and a stream of imaginative, offbeat visuals, the piece captures the band’s signature wit and rhythmic spirit in a visually kinetic experience.

Saffron Brand Consultants, co-founded by Wally Olins, designed the identity for the Setouchi destination on behalf of the West Japan Railway Company (JR West). The goal was to establish this region as Japan’s ‘third destination’, offering a calmer alternative to the Tokyo and Kyoto-Osaka hubs. Following a week-long immersion on the ground, the team built a strategy around the concept of ‘the extraordinary in plain sight’. This project transforms the train ride into a truly contemplative experience, inviting travelers to follow the peaceful rhythm of the Seto Inland Sea.

Visually, the work relies on a minimalist aesthetic that avoids the aggressive graphic codes of major metropolises. The layouts are highly airy, using white space to evoke the serenity of the island landscapes. The color palette, featuring deep blues and sandy tones, ensures consistency across all touchpoints, from stations to digital screens. Far from being a simple advertising campaign, the design offers a poetic narrative where every visual detail highlights a promise of authenticity and discovery.

At the heart of this identity lies a precise typographic choice: the Osmose typeface from the French foundry Blaze Type. This hybrid font blends a solid structure with fluid, almost liquid details, reminiscent of the water and surrounding nature. Saffron customized this base with specific ligatures, such as the overlapping o and u, to symbolize the connection between the islands. By utilizing Blaze Type’s modern design, the agency provides the Setouchi region with a soft, living visual signature that accompanies the traveler from the very first glance. The accompanying Japanese typeface appears to be Kozuka Gothic.

This compilation album with twenty hits by artists such as Jerry Butler, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Ray Sharpe, Marvin & Johnny, The Dubs, and The Innocents was released around 1962 by Mark-FI Records in Hollywood, California.

The cover was printed in two colors, pink and black, with the title shown in Jim Crow. The big “20” at the top left is lettering based on this octagonal open and shaded sans with stripe fill. “Twenty hit oldies” is in Figaro and “by the stars who made them famous!!!!!!!!” in Filmotype Windsor. The side headings are in another Filmotype release, the wide railroad slab Western. The names of songs and artists are set in Consort, using mostly the condensed width.

[More info on Discogs]

Ara of Asa is an interdisciplinary multimedia project that explores the visualization of sound through a collaborative performance and exhibition. The title, derived from native Korean (아침의 파도), translates to “the wave of the morning,” referencing the dual nature of waves as both acoustic vibrations and the rhythmic movement of the ocean. It was presented by Dohoon Kim on November 24, 2024, at Wild Beast, CalArts.

The visual identity is anchored by a dramatic contrast between darkness and light to symbolize the transition from night to morning. This is further expressed through an inverted, mirrored layout where the typography is rotated.

To navigate this split environment, the design uses a rhythmic typographic system featuring Carta Nueva and Ogg Display from Sharp Type. Carta Nueva’s ball terminals serve as a poetic metaphor for musical notes, physically manifesting the rhythm of the soundscape. Across the transition of light and shadow, the typography maintains an organic flow that echoes the fluid qualities found in both water and ambient sound.

Günther Förg. Le Moderne is an exhibition that was shown in 2024 at Almine Rech in Paris. I designed the catalog using Helvetica. Nicolas de Chérisey, the gallery’s director, comments on the artist's work:

Günther Förg drew inspiration from the formal vocabulary of modernism, both in painting and architecture. His abstract works, often monochrome, were sometimes structured by geometric lines and flat colors, recalling the principles of order and simplicity associated with architectural movements such as the Bauhaus or the International Style. But while Förg adopted the formal principles of modernism, he nonetheless deconstructed its ideals of perfection, order, and purity.

Balmer Hählen designed the visual identity of the AGI Congress 2024 / AGI Open 2024 in Basel, using Nouvelle Noire’s typeface NN Pivot Grotesk.

Innocents and Others was written by Dana Spiotta and first published by Scribner’s in 2016. The cover of their paperback edition was designed by Strick & Williams and uses the typeface Garage Gothic by Frere-Jones Type.

From Spine Magazine:

Innocents and Others, by Dana Spiotta, is a coming of age novel set in the 1980s about two female filmmakers, tangled together through friendship and work. The book re-examines questions that have been on the table since John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”; how do women see themselves, how do they see themselves as others watch them, and how does the fact of being seen impact female identity.

Tangible Design Festival presents its event as follows (translated by the contributor):

Tangible is a festival dedicated to all forms of design expression, offering a close look at local specificities. Supported by several partner organizations/designers from the Aix–Marseille–Provence metropolitan area and coordinated by the Fotokino association, it is conceived as a shared program promoting the visibility, promotion, and dissemination of design practices in the region.

Each year, a call for participation invites organizations and professionals to propose and organize events that will enrich the program. Open to all forms of expression (object design, graphic design, urban design, textile design, social design, crafts, etc.), the festival draws on the vitality of the local context while exploring links with related practices: research, crafts, art, and applied arts.

Poster and program flyer for Forum Neues Wetter, a series of talks in Grimma, Saxony, organized by the office for spatial design laufende quadratmeter (lfm2, Christian Göthner) and artist collective Situation Room (Sven Bergelt and Kai-Hendrik Windeler).

DIN A2 (42×59,4 cm), folded to A5, printed with two HKS spot colors.

Custom title lettering combined with the headline typeface Gamuth by Max Esnée and the body typeface Friedl by Camelot Typefaces.

Italian 2 Foglio (39.25″×55″)

C’era una volta il West is the original Italian title of Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti Western, known in English as Once Upon a Time in the West. The film starring Claudia Cardinale as Jill McBain and Henry Fonda as Frank was promoted in Italy with a series of posters that emphasize the cinematic aspect: each poster features a pair of juxtaposed black-and-white stills, shot by Angelo Novi.

Designer Folco Lucarini arranged the title in two crossing lines that levitate in the large whitespace above the scenes, further adding to the drama. The font in use is Playbill, which has become something like a typographic shortcode for the Wild West, together with other Italiennes, Egyptiennes, and related styles. The credit block is added in Letraset’s Compacta, likewise in all caps.

The posters were printed by Litoroma.

Italian 2 Foglio (39.25″×55″)

Locandina (13″×28″, cropped at the top)

After escaping to Australia from the Vietnam War, Thi Le became an extraordinary chef and restaurant owner. This book tells her story, that of an innovative chef navigating two cultural worlds. We wanted the design to celebrate her vision and reflect her strength and gritty resilience, as well as her joyful energy and experimental passion.

Thi is very urban and contemporary, with a strong sense of design. Her minimalist restaurant interiors frame the colour and zing of the Vietnamese food, and we wanted the book to do the same.

The palette of colour pops – acid yellow, flag red, cobalt blue – evokes the hues of a Vietnamese produce market, set against the cooler Melbourne tones. The small design icons are used almost like ephemera, reminding us of the heritage of the food – shiso leaf, lotus, paper-fan. The photography is real and unadorned, almost photojournalistic, with black-and-white incidentals woven through the full-colour to bring a reflective quality. The styling is unpretentious and utilitarian, framing the beauty of the recipes. The sans-serif typography brings a sense of disciplined design and construction, aligning with Thi’s food as intelligent and artfully considered.

The cover captures the edgier, urban-professional version of Thi Le. This documentary-style portrait promises a personal story and a behind-the-scenes peek. It positions the book as more than just a collection of recipes – it feels embedded in the life of a professional restaurateur, offering insights and revelations. This mix of grit and poetry, heritage and urban edge, is what makes the project so distinct.

Fonts from the Flea Market 1420

Albert Boton’s Zan in use on the German sleeve for a 1973 single by Mac and Katie Kissoon, a Trinidad and Tobago-born pop soul duo consisting of brother and sister.

[More info on Discogs]

Final letterpress printed poster, 89.5×128 cm, 2025

A visual cut-up between a poster of Karl Bickel (Alter/Invalidität, 1925) and Dafi Kühne (Wilkommen, 2018) for an exhibition on a juxtaposition of the two different approaches and contexts.

The cut-up poster has been letterpress printed from etched and hand-cut linoleum to reproduce mainly the complicated Bickel hand – which was originally printed in stone lithography.

Watch the production video for the documentation of the process:

Original poster #1, Alter/Invalidität by Karl Bickel, 89.5×128 cm, stone lithography from 1925

Original poster #2, Welcome! by Dafi Kühne. 64×88cm, letterpress print, 2018

I was tasked with transforming Eleanor Heartney’s essay “Postmodern Heretics” into a standalone zine. The essay, originally published in Art in America in February 1997, examines the Catholic influence on postmodern art, specifically the transgressive art movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The design of the publication takes cues from Catholic visual vernacular to mirror the essay's themes. The zine opens like a triptych, and each page utilizes a cross-like proportion. The paper stock, color palette, and typography all take inspiration from biblical layouts, and other subtle design gestures throughout the piece call back to themes of the church.

Made as student project at ArtCenter College of Design.

Wilson Pickett was a busy man in 1968: The Midnight Mover was his second album released that year, after I’m in Love. The cover design is by Marvin Israel, who had served as freelance art director for Atlantic Records from 1957 to 1963, and also worked with the label on several of their albums in later years.

Israel was a regular customer of Photo-Lettering, Inc., the leading typesetting studio in New York. For The Midnight Mover, he picked Plywood, a face for which Reybach just contributed the first Use – another album from 1968, Sam & Dave’s I Thank You.

The design of Plywood didn’t originate at Photo-Lettering, Inc., though. Like Halloween, Aztec, Cabaret, Razzle Dazzle, and Echo, it’s based on an alphabet sourced from a book published in 1931 in Paris, titled Publicité Vignettes Lettres Chiffres Monogrammes et Rehauts Modernes. With this design and alphabet sampler, “Guérinet publishers captured the fading glory of ‘Modèles de lettres’ from the Romantic period with their Art Déco-inspired collection”, writes Michel Wlassikoff.

The basis for Plywood is one of several “unpublished modern alphabets with numerals”. The open bold geometric sans with triple split shade is titled La Tiercée (“The Trifecta”) and credited to P. Picaud. The designers at PLINC didn’t do much more to it than add some punctuation glyphs (see the ampersand, for example) and give it a more prosaic name. Plywood was added to their catalog in or before 1965. I wouldn’t be surprised if was the inspiration to other faces with a similar effect that were issued by PLINC in the following years, see Montgomery Pousse Cafe, Push Pin Myopic, and Accelera.

[More info on Discogs]

The basis for Plywood: La Tiercée by P. Picaud as shown in Publicité Vignettes Lettres Chiffres Monogrammes et Rehauts Modernes, Les Editions Guérinet, Paris, 1931

Detail from the album cover. The W without notches at the bottom and the “lazy S” give away Plywood’s Art Deco roots. Note that the LS pair was spaced so that the “plies” form continuous lines. Unfortunately, the face was used with stretched letterforms, as one can see in the out-of-the-round O.

A 1950 spoken-word album by Decca Records containing vinyl record interpretations of two Christmas stories by Charles Dickens: “A Christmas Carol”, directed by George Wells and featuring Ronald Colman as Scrooge, and “Mr. Pickwick’s Christmas”, with narration by Charles Laughton.

For the titles of the stories, the elusive Streamline Block unexpectedly makes an appearance for “A Christmas Carol”, while Warren Chappell's Lydian is used for “Mr. Pickwick’s Christmas”, under which the similar Valiant can be seen for Charles Laughton's name. The secondary text is set in Futura and its condensed style (or, perhaps, a local copy of the same typeface.)

[More info on Discogs]

The exhibition 다시 쓰는 떡전골 Rewriting Tteokjeongol by 송지형 Jihyung Song took place from October 5th to 31st, 2024, in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi, South Korea. A series of posters as well as a booklet were designed on this occasion by 박채희 Chaehee Park, typeset in HAL Timezone Mono, published by HAL Typefaces, and 지백 Ji-Baek by 박진현 Jin-hyun Park.

A brief description of the exhibition, provided by the designer:

As the name suggests, Byeongjeom in Hwaseong City is a braille letter for rice cake shops. Since there were many rice cake shops where scholars coming from the provinces to take the civil service exam would fill their hungry stomachs, it was called Tteokjeongol. Tteokjeongol was a midpoint where people from outside and inside the country could come together and benefit each other.

The exhibition will be held in four non-exhibition spaces in the Tteokjeongol area near Byeongjeom Station. The exhibition consists of three general commercial facilities and one private space, and new videos, flat works, installations, audience-participatory installations, and audience-participatory performances will be presented.

This exhibition experiments with the practice of art as an “Exchange of inheritance,” a theme the artist has dealt with for a long time, at Tteokjeongol in Byeongjeom.

How to Draw Sci-Fi Heroes & Villains is a 2023 guidebook written by Prentis Rollins of DC Comics fame and Jacqueline Ching, aiming to teach beginner artists how to design, draw, and conceptualize science fiction and fantasy heroes and villains.

The main typeface is Ray Larabie’s snazzy yet futuristic Anklepants, paired with an interesting sans serif with geometric proportions: it’s Charles Daoud’s Dual, used with some of its many alternates.