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Primero Primera
Identity and stationery for a hotel.

This boutique hotel was the home for two generations of a family. When starting the project we realized that it would be nice to reflect all the memories of this 7 brother family. So we collected personal pictures in which parts of the house are in the background, or important events for them during the time they were living in the building. We based the identity in making collages with the images. For the brand and signage we designed a stencil font that contains special characters that allowed us to mix in a unique way certain characters like the “i” an the “m” in the word “primero”.

Typefaces used: Primero Roman, Helvetica

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Thinking Furniture by Pepe Andreu
Book Design

This book collects the work of Pepe Andreu, a furniture designer who came to the profession by carpentry. Pepe’s furniture and the way he think are full of details of functionality but they are very respectful with the tradition of artisan furniture. It is therefore that the design of the book should be viewed as an object consistent with his view, the form of binding, the pace of the book (not linear) and the typeface and colour choice breathe the idea of the reinvention of the classic.

The first part of the book is interspersed with ideas, thoughts and pieces from his collection (light green). In the last part the collection appears again but this time the furniture appears in lived, in-home environments. These photos are presented on cards with technical characteristics of the furniture. This card system allows us to produce new cards to complement the collection of Pepe as the production increases, thus making the book into a communication tool for the designer with his audience.

For this book we were interested in using an inline font and for the sake of consistency we decided to design a special cut of Akkurat Outline that for this book we called ‘Peppurat.’

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Escolà
Identity and packaging for a wine shop.

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Alma Hotels
Barcelona City Guide Book

Barcelona City Guide for Alma Hotels, a boutique hotel based in the exclusive Paseo de Gracia area. The content created by ‘It Comunicación’ is based on conversations among influential citizens from Barcelona, structured as Q&A’s. To link the image to that of the hotel (based on graphic drawings of the garden trees), a massive illustration of Barcelona was produced, portraying some key buildings, but also some hidden city treasures. This illustration was then used for the cover and inside dividers, giving identity to the publication. This was also brought to life by Rodrigo Diaz Wichmann’s fantastic photography of the conversations in a documentary and unforgiving manner that contrasts nicely with the graphic illustrations.

Fonts used were Alma’s own Helvetica Neue 75 Bold, plus DTL Fleischmann, in display and display italic versions for headlines and text version for the body copy.

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Buenas Migas (Focaccia) Restaurant
Corporate identity

Buenas Migas is a quality fast food chain of restaurants, which mixes Cornish with Genovese gastronomy to produce simple, fresh and tasty but healthy dishes at a value for money price. Their main distinctive trait when compared to their competitors is the high quality of their product, as a result of their artisan approach to their work.

When producing all of the communication materials: ranging from packaging pieces and poster promotions to signage, the main drive for the design was to show their core values of nature and craftsmanship. The idea is simple: everything they do is handmade, so all of the communication is handmade too—all of the products, the posters, the blackboards, the signage, the pricing tags, the service materials and any piece included in the restaurants is drawn by hand. Obviously, the pieces that are produced at a large scale are reproductions, but their initial design is handmade, and there is no serialized process allowed that can take away this truthful spirit to natural drawing, both of the type and the illustration.

A chunky, very commercial Futura Condensed Bold was chosen to complement this handmade approach. The use of this font tempers an otherwise ultra naturalistic view of the restaurant, and offers a commercial counterpoint which combined with the delicacy of watercolour illustrations we hope gives the whole image an edgy mainstream natural feel.

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‘Un año en Pago de los Capellanes’
DVD Packaging

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Andres Sarda: Fashion Love and Art
Book Design

Andres Sarda is a brand of lingerie and swimwear and a pioneer in haute couture and prêt-à-porter in Spain. After 50 years of life, they decided to publish a book containing photos, material fashion, editorials and highlights of its own history. This book consists of chapters, not organized in a linear way, opinion pieces relevant signatures and personal experiences of the designer in these 50 years. They asked us to design a series of pieces for an exhibition and book launch event. All pieces play with the sensuality of nudity in a graphic way, in the invitations and book, the cover paper can be unfolded to see the main image. In the pieces ‘Opi Totem and Bus’ we play more graphically with the number 50 so that it surrounds the picture and interacts with the silhouette of a woman.

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Murmuri
Identity and naming for hotel and restaurants

The identity plays with the repetitive character of the word ‘Murmuri’, using feminine typography but with attitude like the hotel. The graphic result is contemporary but respectful to the 19th century origin of the building. From there and based on that typography the identity of the restaurant and bar were created. The restaurant combines the two M’s and looks like an oriental ideogram, playing with superposition of grids. ‘Bar Marfil’ is the name of the bar and is rescued from a bar in Barcelona from the 50′s–60′s. This place was an icon of glamorous Barcelona. To visualize the identity we used a collage of old pictures saved from that period.

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Blau Restaurant
Menu design

Blau is a Mediterranean cuisine restaurant in Barcelona. For the menus, we based the idea on creating kinetic effects with the patterns inside the shape of the dishes. All the dishes are silkscreened on wood. We used the typeface: Calend (by atipo).

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Andres Sarda
Various Projects

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No Somos Hormigas: We Are No Ants
Book Design

This book dwells on the following idea: as a species, mankind is nowadays better off than ever, but there are certain issues unresolved which we have the obligation to address. It then shows a few initiatives, which are taking place, that to the author’s understanding are heading in the right direction towards social equilibrium and human relation with the environment.

The book is a compilation of strong concepts that are backed up by visual display of data. We had to create a visual language that was engaging enough, strong enough, and vindictive enough, but which kept the positive message that the book provides, while still being true to the statistics that illustrate each concept.

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Arte y Mecenazgo
Type Specimen

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Arte y Mecenazgo
Identity

An art foundation asked us for an identity. This foundation’s aim is to connect collectors, founders, galleries and artists in many different ways. As an important part of this project we created a typeface. The result consisted in designing a classic outline font using a geometric and rational approach often used in Sans Serif outline fonts but never in Serif. Based on the structure of a Didone typeface we designed a display and headline weight that could allow us to compose in a very classical way but with an edge, or be more daring in the composition and typesetting.

Some of the results of the type applied can be seen in these boards as well as a special edition type specimen designed for the board of trustees of this particular foundation. These pages also offer examples of the application of the typographical identity, event invitations and graphics.

A Few Words from the Editor

What better way to kick start the new year, than with a very generous selection of work (as is the SI way) from Mucho a studio that may come as a pleasant surprise to many who may not have been familiar with their work before. Project information and typefaces used are notably absent from today’s feature, but they’re on their way don’t you worry! :)

Big thank you to Pablo, Marc, Ximena and the team for making this feature possible and for supporting SI :)

About the Studio

Founded in 2003 by Marc Català and Pablo Juncadella having worked at Grafica (Madrid/Barcelona) and Pentagram (London) respectively, Mucho is a visual communication and graphics studio based in Barcelona, Spain.

Ideas are at the heart of every project they undertake and all work is done with the intention of it being unique, with a constant effort to avoid repetitive formulas. Mucho values the visual ambition of projects as much as the commercial will, and considers excellence its permanent objective.

The studio specializes in art direction, strategic and corporate identity, editorial design, packaging, graphic communications, digital design and motion graphics for small clients through to large brands.

mucho.ws

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El Camino

Husky Rescue and El Camino are both projects by Marko Nyberg, an artist and a producer. Husky Rescue is a well-known music group with a strong visual language, which we wanted to remain on the foreground throughout the website. El Camino Helsinki is Marko Nyberg’s audio design studio. Tsto based El Camino’s identity around an embossing stamp and a custom typeface, which was used for both projects. The forms of the typeface were shaped from ten geometric modules, resulting in a geometric sans with characteristic faults.

Typefaces: Custom, Neuzeit Grotesk

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Minni f. Ronya

Minni f. Ronya is a ready-to-wear women’s label from Helsinki. A mix of functionality and spontaneity, the label pays attention to detail in fit and finish while introducing wild printed patterns and avant-garde shapes in ultimately wearable garments.

Typefaces: P22 Underground, Linotype Brewery

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Flow

The identity for Flow Festival builds on the idea of the festival crowd as an urban tribe, united by a metaphorical mantra of a visual wordplay set in the bespoke Flow-typeface influenced by contemporary central European trends of postmodern craftsmanship. We see the font as smart, approachable, and humorous. Together with the amulet-like illustrations of Santtu Mustonen, the repetition of letters and images resembles the rhythm of music and creates the core visual language and imagery for the project. This arrangement of elements was used across all media platforms, from web and print to motion graphics, and from venue signage to office stationery.

Illustrator Santtu Mustonen, digital agency Byroo, video production Beige/Harmaa, and musician Matti Pentikäinen worked as Tsto’s key collaborators.

Typeface: Custom

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Regina

Regina is a three-piece band consisting of husband and wife duo Mikko and Iisa, and a third wheel also going by the name Mikko. Soita mulle is their fourth album and is heavily influenced by the youth and indie music of the 90′s. The band gave us a few iconic music videos of that era as a reference point. Being Boring by Pet Shop Boys struck us the most. The video is directed by fashion photographer Bruce Weber. After digging more into Mr. Weber’s body of work, we came across the 90′s Calvin Klein advertisements shot by him. So you may notice the slight resemblance between Calvin Klein’s Eternity and Regina logotypes. The photo is by Megan McIsaacs.

Typefaces: Futura, Custom

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Vuoden Huiput

With Vuoden Huiput (The Best of the Year in Finnish advertising and design) we wanted to experiment with the relatively dubious and unpredictable nature of crowdsourcing and the visual language of anonymous internet users. Together with a programmer we created an application that transformed any written word or sentence into a rebus, an allusional device that uses pictures to represent words or parts of words. In English, a rebus often uses homonyms, as seen in the classic IBM logo consisting of a picture of an eye, a picture of a bee and the letter M. However, homonyms are rare in Finnish language, therefore a rebus was constructed from a list of some 5000 words with the most used syllables and matched with an image search result from Google. The combinations of images and letters may seem just a visual gimmick at first glance, but challenged the audience to look beneath the mere surface.

Typeface: Sofia

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Duotone

Duotone is a photography bureau founded by photographers Taavetti Alin and Juho Huttunen. The brand was based on the dualism found in the focusing lenses of vintage cameras.

Typeface: Sofia

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We Are Helsinki

We Are Helsinki is a free city magazine. It is published six times a year and distributed to nearly 200 distribution spots in Helsinki. In connection with our redesign of We Are Helsinki, the magazine grew in content as well. New sections include the Product Placement spread (a conceptual photographic story connected with the different theme of each issue), the Portfolio section, articles by think tank duo OK-Do, and a follow up series on Helsinki World Design Capital.

Typeface: P22 Underground, Custom, Linotype Gneisenauette

From the Editor

This week on SI we continue the Scandinavian theme, moving from Heydays in Oslo last week to Tsto in Helsinki this week. It would have been nice to have gone full circle and include Stockholm and Copenhagen, but I guess that will have to wait until next time wont it? ;)

Tsto is a (one year old) creative agency founded by six designers. Their approach is thorough and hands-on, they tackle projects by first taking it apart to its bare essentials, and then building it in a new way that best serves the client. This design philosophy allows Tsto to go deeper than the surface, to the essence of each case.

Besides having a great selection of work, Tsto have a equally impressive website to showcase their work on. It’s colourful, functional, distinctive and just like Heydays’ website last week, it’s built entirely on WordPress!

It’ll certainly be interesting to see what this studio produces next year (provided we’re all still here) ;)

Kiitos to Antti and the rest of the lovely crew @ Tsto for supporting SI, providing all the high-res imagery and I hope you (discerning SI reader) enjoyed what you saw in today’s feature :)

tsto.org

If you’re new here, don’t forget to Subscribe & follow SI on Twitter for your weekly dose of visual crack. ;)

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Home Work Social Visit Listen

Posters x 6
Books x 2

A project to record certain aspects of what was happening in my life over five years. I made lists of where I lived, worked, socialised, traveled to, and what I listened to in that year. I also illustrated detailed maps of places in Scotland, where I’m originally from, that I had visited in those years. The texts and maps were used in various ways to create a series of posters and books. These where shown as an exhibition at Filesharing
in Berlin.

Font: Helvetica Neue, Bold

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You Me Him Her Them Us / In Out Up Down Left Right

Record Sleeves x 2

Font: Helvetica Neue, Medium

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Colouring Numbers

Booklet

As series of extruded number illustrations form multiple graphic shapes between their lines. This became a simple children’s colouring book. As they shapes were filled in with various coloured pencils and pens the booklets took on a further graphic richness.

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4 Fictional

Record Sleeves x 4

Font: Custom

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5 Mylo

Posters x 2

Two posters to celebrate the birth of my son, Mylo. His birthday is on 7/9/06 and the graphic shows his name with the date overprinted. In the second version of the poster his name and the date change position, colour, and being printed either solid or outline.

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One Two Three

Booklets x 2

I printed two versions of a custom typeface in English and German. The text was ascending numbers counting up, one, two, three, etc. This was a simple way to use most of the characters in the typeface with out any specific narrative. The solid version of the typeface was used for the English and the line version for German.

Hector Pottie is name that many of SI’s readers should be familiar with – not only has he worked at Cartlidge Levene for many years, MadeThought, Moving Brands and was the former Creative Director at Marque – but his personal work can be found in at least one design book on your shelf ;)

Today it gives me great pleasure to finally “immortalize” his work online with this special feature showcasing a fine selection of Hector’s personal work from past to present. Some of these pieces date back as early as 2003 and maybe even earlier, nevertheless it’s evident that a lot of craft and consideration went into each piece of work because nothing seems to have aged a day :)

Hector currently doesn’t have site of his own, but you can find him on Twitter and LinkedIn

Big thank you once again to Hector for giving SI the honour of featuring his work online for the first time. It certainly won’t be his last time either… ;)

If you’re new here, don’t forget to Subscribe & follow SI on Twitter for your weekly dose of visual crack. ;)

LL Brown Typeface & Specimen
Design Aurèle Sack

“LL Brown started to be designed in 2006-2007. Its design was meant to follow the tradition of english and german grotesks from the early 20th century. It is not a redesign, but it’s instead to be considered as a contemporary typeface using the strengths and shapes of Johnston enhanced with a new and modern personality. It is available in 4 weights, four italics and four backslanted. It will be distributed and made available by lineto.com in a few months.”

I know a good type specimen when I see one and I’m not to afraid to say that this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is one of my favourites of 2010. I’m almost not surprised that this typeface (and specimen) will be made available on lineto.com soon, after all, they did bring us such gems as the Akkurat Specimen and the Replica Specimen, both of which sold out very quickly!

Aurèle Sack is a graphic designer specialized in type design and editorial design. He focuses mainly on projects within the cultural field. After graduating from ECAL in 2004 (with a sans typeface called AS Gold) he worked in Zürich and New York. He currently lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. Around 2006, working for NORM (Zürich), he created Omega Corporate Typeface, Gallery Typeface and Purple (a serif face published at Lineto). In 2008, Fleurie (typewriter face) was designed with Flag (Zürich). In 2009, he made AS Garamond in collaboration with Jonas Voegeli (Zürich) for Das Magazin.

Thank you to Aurèle for the hi-res images and info.

Naturalis x7 Brochure
Design SEA

“The latest of SEA’s Naturalis brochures for GF Smith unveils Bruno Maag’s new Design Aktiv Typeface. The brochure takes the form of a conversation with Creative Review editor Patrick Burgoyne about the project and Bruno’s feelings towards Helvetica.

The booklet is set in Aktiv Grotesk and was printed by Fulmar Colour using a mixture of Hexachrome and special inks on Naturalis Smooth Absolute White paper. “

This whole issue of Aktiv being a “Helvetica Killer” has sparked much debate on the CR blog all week. All I have to say about the matter is this: If Aktiv is to stand any chance of overtaking Helvetica, Bruno needs to give Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer a call ;)

Thanks again to Alex @SEA for the images.

Design Golden

As promised, here is the big exclusive I’ve been talking about all week, a bumper selection of old and new projects by Golden, a UK-based design agency founded by Rob Brearley, Steve McKevitt and Francis Carolan.

Enjoy them while you can because Golden currently have no plans to launch a portfolio site. Why is that you ask? They prefer to showcase their work through other avenues – posters and books, for instance – leaving their site as a blank canvas for other Golden initiatives. Your heart may have sunk upon reading that but look at the bright side – I’ll be checking in with Frank every now and then to see what Golden have been up to ;) .

Have a great weekend people and keep a look out for more images on Flickr…

Munich Re Corporate typeface — Art direction and consulting
Design Keller Maurer Design

“We were commissioned by Munich Re to artdirect and manage the development of a new corporate typeface. Working closely with the type designers Kai Bernau and Christian Schwartz the sans serif Munich Re was created over a period of nearly one year. The resulting typeface includes eight weights and many technical features that help improve Munich Re’s diverse and often complex typographical applications. Our knowledge of the client’s requirements helped to develop a highly functional and on-brand typeface.”

You probably don’t remember this, but way back in December 2008 I did a post on Keller Maurer Design. As you can see from the image; that was their old website – a holding page which remained untouched for over a year. That is, until now.
Marcus (one of the founding partners) got in touch the other day with news that they had finally updated their site; to say you’re in for a treat would be an understatement!

I still have more hi-res images to feature on this site, so watch this space.
Thanks again to Marcus for being so amicable.

Design Aurèle Sack

Amazing to think that this is the first time I’ve ever come across Swiss designer Aurèle Sack. Terrific work!

Arnhem Mode Biënnale Identity
Design Coppens Alberts

“The make up of the letters being separate dots, the typography lent itself for multiple purposes. Laser techniques were used on the stationary creating the effect of transparency and tangibility. Likewise, the title of the exhibition was made up of individual round, white stickers on a dark outside wall and the exhibition texts were created by black pins in white polystyrene foam blocks.

The invitations for the opening of the Biennale, also designed by Coppens & Alberts, were printed on ribbon.

Commissioned by Stichting Arnhem Mode Biënnale, 2005 “

Coppens Alberts is an Amsterdam-based design studio established by Patrick Coppens (NL) and Christine Alberts (CH). They focus on editorial design for web and print, graphic identities and customized typefaces.

Excellent portfolio, considered typographic rigour and very Dutch if you don’t mind me saying ;) May I also add that navigating around their website is certainly “interesting,” but don’t let that put you off because they have some lovely work definitely worth checking out.