label=label is a visual study made at HSE Art and Design School in Saint Petersburg. In it, I’ve examined clothing labels as a medium for brand-consumer interaction. As a detail that is not always immediately visible, a label can act as an intermediary between the brand and its target audience. For this study, twenty fashion brands were selected, whose founding history spans from the mid‑20th century to the present day. The main selection criterion was their visual identity. A large number of labels were examined and analyzed in order to identify unconventional solutions in terms of design and concept.

The primary typeface is the neutral grotesque Cofo Sans, which is paired with CoFo Sans Mono for captions and navigation.

You can flip through the book on Calaméo.

To mark the fifth anniversary of Peter Bankov’s Poster School, designers Mikhail Lychkovskiy and Anastasia Temirkhan are proud to launch a heartfelt creative tribute.

Much like the film Paris, je t’aime, our motion poster anthology brings together twelve graphic designers – all alumni of the Bankov Poster School (BPS). Some teamed up with motion designers, while others animated their own visions, each crafting a unique 8-second poster. No clients. No briefs. No limits. Just pure design freedom and gratitude to the BPS and its values: love of aesthetics, weird cats and tasty fish.

Each piece is a personal ode, a moving image, and a moment of reflection – all celebrating the mentor who shaped our creative paths: Peter Bankov, renowned Czech-based designer and AGI member, whose influence echoes through poster festivals from Toyama to Chaumont. With support from Art Innovation Gallery, for one week – from June 23 to 29 – the project was displayed every hour in the iconic Times Square in New York. These animated posters are not only creative works, but living thank-yous, pulsing with the energy Peter taught us to channel into our craft.

Thanks a million to Contemporary Type for the typeface support.

Here’s a list of the participants with the respective fonts in use:
01 Peter Bankov ft. BC Brief and Helvetica
02 Mikhail Lychkovskiy ft. Onlysans
03 Anastasia Temirkhan × Enrico Gisana ft. Acma, Right Didone, and Fugue
04 Alisa Frolova
05 Elena Byalaya × Seo Hyojung ft. Onlysans
06 Yuliya Ratnikova × Tanya Ermolaeva
07 Ira Goryacheva
08 Anatolie Micaliuc ft. Druk
09 Anastasia Nechiporenko × Vyacheslav Vaganov ft. CoFo Sans VF
10 Nelli Kamaeva ft. Mega
11 Nikita Gavrilenko ft. CoFo Kak and CoFo Sans Mono
12 Olga Severina ft. Alfarn 2
13 Anna Striuk × Ivan Buka

In addition, FL Art Grotesk is used for the layout on the sides of allmost all the works.

Bursa Sanat Çalıştayı is an annual art workshop that takes place in Bursa, Türkiye, bringing together art lovers in a format that allows them to discover new ways of contemporary art. The posters and social media graphics combine FH Lecturis with an unidentified sans [edit: it’s CoFo Sans, see comments].

Where do you actually learn that it is possible to turn art and culture into a profession? Tear everything down and start again or diversity-oriented organisational development? What strategies are there for networking and self-determined work?

In three podcast episodes named “2 Years From Now”, Diversity Arts Culture Berlin talks to experts about classism in art and cultural practice, about racism in cultural institutions and the gaps that still need to be filled, about how artists can protect themselves and defend themselves against racism and what mutual empowerment can look like.

Graphic and cover design by Kathrin Windhorst / studiokwi

studiokwi designed an accessible newspaper for RuT, Germany’s first inclusive, intergenerational lesbian housing project and queer socio-cultural center. CoFo Sans is paired with Literata and Atkinson Hyperlegible. The preexisting RuT logo is based on Brush Script.

From the studio’s website (translated):

The project is being developed in cooperation with the municipal housing association Berlin-Mitte mbH WBM. On the first floor there will be a neighborhood café and a hall for cultural and music events as well as rooms for counseling, health prevention and educational seminars. The house will become a contact point for lesbians of all ages and lesbians with disabilities – a meeting place for exchange and living community: for the building community, for the neighborhood, for Berlin's LGBTIQ+ communities as well as for regional and supra-regional art and cultural actors.

The word qalam refers to a reed pen used for calligraphy, but since this year it is also a new media outlet showing the world history and culture as seen by people living in Central Asia.

The publication is now available in Russian and Kazakh, but the team is planning to introduce the English language version soon as well. The titles on their website, which was created by Tuman, are set in Heather Type by Letterhead, and Canela Text from Commercial Type is used for subheaders and body copy, and Arial for buttons and selected subheaders. The sans serif used for social media posts is CoFo Sans from Contrast Foundry.

The Qalam logo appears to be custom drawn.

Posterwomxn is a platform and online magazine that amplifies the visibility of womxn and non-binary designers and promotes gender equality within the design industry.

The Posterwomxn online magazine, launched in late 2021, builds on the long-running Instagram account as well as the Posterwomxn newsletter. The website features interviews with emerging and established poster designers, event recaps and exhibition reviews. Art directed by Posterwomxn initiator and editor Svenja Prigge and designed by Jihee Lee, the website spotlights the diverse spectrum of design works by womxn* from all backgrounds.

Coding was provided by Jens Schnitzler of Space Practice. For the typography, we used Magnet Headline by Inga Plönnigs, CoFo Sans by Contrast Foundry, and Literata by Irene Vlachou, Veronika Burian, Vera Evstafieva, José Scaglione.

*Womxn is an inclusionary term used to represent a spectrum of genders beyond the gender binary.

You can view the posters on the website as well as on Instagram and Pinterest.

Imagining Otherwise “encompasses current and past projects at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, and strives toward socially transformative educational and design practices and more equitable futures”. FHNW is the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst) in Münchenstein near Basel, Switzerland.

Design by Mayar El Bakry, with interaction and code by Iyo Bisseck, combining Gabriela by Fernanda Cozzi and CoFo Sans by Contrast Foundry

See The Queens, or STQ for short, combines three fonts by Contrast Foundry for their website: CoFo Chimera Black, CoFo Sans, and the wide CoFo Kak Black.

STQ is a brand new community-built platform connecting drag artists with their audience. Born out of the need to find joy after the pandemic, STQ celebrates and uplifts the incredible performers and artists who bring so much vitality and life to our city. All forms of drag expression are welcome here and we look forward to going on this journey with you.

From AIGA’s Eye on Design blog:

Design challenge: create a wordmark for the more than 20-character long name of a cherished cultural institution. In 2019, Anna Kulachek, art director of Moscow’s Strelka Institute, commissioned Contrast Foundry to do just that for the landmark Khudozhestvenny Cinema. The project addressed a reconstruction of architect Fyodor Schechtel’s 1909 facade and signage, partially lost in the Soviet era when elements of neoclassical decor—including elegant bas-relief chariots flanking the theater’s name—were knocked off. The client liked the first sketches of the letterforms so much that they requested an entire typeface to use in developing the brand identity.

Contrast Foundry’s Liza Rasskazova found her design inspiration in the Moscow Metro. She was especially intrigued by the vaguely Art Deco-ish serif letterforms on the signage at the Komsomolskaya station of the Sokolnicheskaya line, as they were noticeably different from the various sans serifs seen at most other stations.

On the Contrast Foundry website, Liza Rasskazova writes:

I vividly remembered not even the main sign, but the letters above the colonnade in the eastern part of the station’s entrance hall. I was inspired by the elegant letter Я, reminiscent of the R in the New Yorker logo, and the unusual proportions—a very narrow M, a wide A—the widths of the letters tend to unify. That’s when I had the idea to try and make a font based on that lettering and the elusive Soviet art deco.

In September 2022, CoFo Cinema1909 was released for general licensing. In the cinema identity, it is paired with CoFo Sans.

From red_mad_robot:

Since 2008 red_mad_robot was the leading application developer in Russia with offices in 10 cities. Now it is a digital partner for full-cycle product development — from idea to market launch, and further. They create award-winning digital products and services for startups and well-established companies. The visual language was redesigned for the reason to show the growth and the strategic position on the market. The new identity reflects the heritage of the company and the modern approach to the business where the present meets with the future. The single-minded system with savvy humour and bold character is a new red_mad_robot. Only here all robots speak one language.

The red_mad_robot team, led by art director Maksim Arbuzov, asked Contrast Foundry for a custom pixel typeface. And so, CoFo Redmadrobot was born, based on CoFo Sans. The typeface was later expanded and released for general licensing as CoFo Sans Pixel.

From Gregory R. Miller & Co.:

This book is the definitive look at Hunt’s work and career. Fully illustrated with more than 350 images, including historical photographs, installation images, images of Hunt in his studio, newspaper clippings and a plate section of significant works from throughout the artist’s career, this book also includes a section on his major public commissions, a recent interview with art historian Adrienne L. Childs and an illustrated biography and chronology by Hunt’s biographer Jon Ott. Essays discuss Hunt’s attentiveness to antiquity, the ways in which his critical reception aligned with his practice and the relevance of his unique studio—a decommissioned electrical substation in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood—to the ethos of his artmaking. This volume is a testament to the monumental works and stature of one of our greatest living artists.

Chicago artist Richard Hunt (born 1935) is one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. Hunt has had over 150 solo exhibitions and is represented in more than 100 public museums. In 2022 the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago commissioned him to make a work for its collection.

The monograph Richard Hunt was published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. / Artbook in 2022. Designer Julia Ma from studio Miko McGinty used CoFo Sans throughout.

The visual identity for YaTalks Conference 2021 contains abstract objects that interact, symbolizing knowledge sharing, communication, and discussion. The overall modularity, futuristic logo, and typographic system order, like the spacecraft control panel and the silhouettes of instruments for studying alien surfaces, inherits the graphic plots of classical and modern sci-fi.

The identity by Shuka is equipped with an automatic generator of motion and static graphics — the tool, that allows quickly creating of various communication media. Together with a broad and flexible color palette it helped distinguish product areas across six areas of different themes.

Creative direction: Ivan Velichko. Art direction: Daria Zudina. Lead design: Evgeny Drozhev. Design by Dmitry Kozlyaev and Dina Isaeva

See more images and the full team credits on Behance.

Views to the City is a photography and poster workshop series by Tampere Intercultural Art, hosted by graphic designer Nikita Gavrilenko and art educator Miia Säppi. The project was funded by Operation Pirkanmaa.

The first series of workshops was held in September and October 2022. In the photography workshop, participants were instructed to take severaltypes of photos while walking in a specified area of Tampere. In the poster workshop, participants used previously created photos for making a collage poster.

For posters and flyers, Nikita Gavrilenko chose CoFo Sans (Regular and Bold) because it works perfect in projects with photography.

Lamoda Community is a platform for people who love fashion and Lamoda, one of Russia’s biggest online retailers, to connect, share knowledge and enjoy experiences beyond smartphone screens.

The set of icons, representing three main divisions in the community such as fashion, beauty, and sports, together with the bright color palette and distinctive patterns of the Lamoda brand, create a fun, welcoming atmosphere for its members.

CoFo Sans is used throughout the designs by Moscow Mule. On the Contrast Foundry website, Maria Doreuli wrote a post about her collaboration with Shuka on the Lamoda logo.

Время магов. Великое десятилетие философии. 1919–1929 (“Time of the Magicians. The Great Decade of Philosophy. 1919–1929”) is a book about the life and work of four German philosophers; Walter Benjamin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger. Written by Wolfram Eilenberger and originally published in German in 2018 (Zeit der Zauberer. Das große Jahrzehnt der Philosophie 1919–1929), this is the Russian edition translated by Nina Fedorova and published by Ad Marginem.

From our interview with book designer Maria Kosheleva:

We used CoFo Robert for body text, and applied CoFo Sans to quotations. Only then we started searching for a display headline typeface which, one the one hand, would be delicately implying the historical context, and on the other, would emphasize that the book was written almost a century after the events it describes.
We stopped at Grafier: the form of its serifs makes you think of Clarendon, active chopped stroke terminals refer to Blackletter typefaces, while serifs merging into one line remind that the typeface was designed in the digital era.

Read the entire article on type.today.

Shame! and Masculinity, Ernst van Alphen (ed.), 2020

Published by Valiz in Amsterdam,

The Valiz PLURAL series focuses on how the intersections between identity, power, representation and emancipation play out in the arts and in cultural practices.

The volumes in this series aim to do justice to the plurality of voices, experiences and perspectives in society and in arts and design. The volumes address historical, present and future meanings of these positions and their interrelations, layering and diversity. PLURAL brings together new and critical insights from cultural and social researchers, theorists, artists, arts professionals and activists.

Designed by Lotte Lara Schröder, illustrations that play with irregular shapes and cropped photography are paired with convention-breaking typefaces: Zipper, Amelia, and CoFo Chimera which is paired with another Maria Doreuli typeface, CoFo Sans, for the author names and interior captions and other secondary text.

The series was selected by the Student Jury (not yet published online) as one of the Best Dutch Book Designs 2020.

Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms, Katy Deepwell (ed.), 2020

Design Struggles: Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives, Claudia Mareis, Nina Paim (eds.), 2021

Exhibition catalogue for the extensive solo project of an Estonian artist at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

Jaan Toomik is a world-famous video artist, painter and film director, often described as Estonia’s most brilliant figure on the world art scene. Toomik’s personal as well as group exhibitions took place on such institutionally important venues as Georges Pompidou National Centre (Paris, 2012), mumok (Vienna, 2009), National Gallery of Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2000), Hamburger Bahnhof Museum (Berlin, 1999 — 2000), 22nd International Biennial in San-Paolo (1994), Manifesta 1 (1995), 47th and 50th Venice Biennial (1997, 2003), 4th Berlin Bienniale for Contemporary Art (2006) et al. Since 2000 Jaan Toomik teaches at the Estonian Academy of Fine Arts, the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts, and is chair for the Department of Painting.

The typography of the catalogue is divided into separate bilingual sections, marked by using a different typeface from the Contrast Foundry catalogue; either set entirely using a single wight of CoFo Sans, or using a single weight of CoFo Robert for body copy, captions, notes and page numbers.

Ustajte prezrene na svijetu: Tri eseja o Rosi Luxembourg (“Rise up, despised of the world. Three Essays on Rosa Luxemburg”) is a monograph of Rosa Luxemburg, written by Ankica Čakardić and published by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe.

The monograph “Rise up, despised of the world” already announces with its combative and engaging title the tone and baseline that will flow through the chapters: the contemporary actuality of all that Luxembourg has struggled with in its life and activities. — Vox Feminae (translated via Google)

Designer Sven Sorić chose CoFo Sans for the typography, as it offered “just what we were looking for — a great grotesk done by a female type designer with Eastern European and Cyrillic characters.”

The publication is available as a free download (in Croatian).

Birds Records is the first non-profit label that saves birdsong.

BBDO Moscow worked together with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and local audio streaming platform Yandex.Music to create Birds Records, the first non-profit label that saves birdsong.

In North America alone, over the past 50 years, the bird population has declined by over 3bn – almost a third of the total number of individual birds. Scientists have long suspected that the planet’s ecosystem is in a critical condition, but no one had thought it was so calamitous.

The tracks from Birds Records use samples of birdsong, and all the money received from listening to them and selling merchandise will be sent to the WWF Russia, to boost bird numbers and protect the habitat of endangered species.

The website is available in Russian and English versions. CoFo Sans is used for both, in Cyrillic and Latin. PP Monument Ultrabold appears for the logo and the header animation.