n°17 — An acronym: ACAB. Authors: Ariane Bosshard, Jérôme Dupeyrat, Olivier Huz and Julie Martin

Sold out — Only available with season 2 subscription
Authors: Ariane Bosshard, Jérôme Dupeyrat, Olivier Huz and Julie Martin
20 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
26th November 2019
ISBN: 979-10-95991-15-1
ISSN: 2558-2062

The acronym ACAB, often seen in urban space in the form of graffiti or stickers, first appeared in the U.K. in the 1970s, linked to punk culture, and later found a certain popularity during the social movements of the 1980s. Meaning “All Cops Are Bastards”, over the last 20 years it has become widespread in public spaces internationally, in the wake of a number of political movements, from alter-globalization groups to the French gilets jaunes, or Yellow Jackets, along with black blocks and TAZs, even spawning different variations, such as “All Capitalists Are Bastards”, “All Colors Are Beautiful” and “All Cats Are Beautiful”.

Observing how ACAB (or its numerical version, 1312) is written, allows one to traverse multiple political landscapes, as well as a number of visual cultures (anarchist, punk, hip-hop, LOL) to which this acronym has spread. It is through this scriptural, graphic and visual movement that it has become both a sign of recognition and a polysemic statement.

n°23 — Jan Tschichold: The Master approving of his own work. Author: Žiga Testen

Author: Žiga Testen
24 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
9 September 2020
ISBN: 979-10-95991-17-5
ISSN: 2558-2062

Design history as an independent discipline and field of study appears to be in trouble. Design historians complain about its diminishing influence within universities due to the ongoing instrumentalisation of higher education. The Eurocentric canon built upon values and methods adopted from art and architecture history has been contested by decolonial theories. And finally, it appears that the trust in the institution of ‘history’ itself and its meta-narratives has eroded.

A discipline that was once considered to provide reflection on what came before and guidance on what could come to be—under the auspice of a grand narrative of continuous progress—has been replaced by modest narratives, social anthropologies, and claims of the ‘end of history’.

In this article, I rummage through the ruins of design history and try to unpack what it was that we once considered design history and our design history canon, how we wrote about it and to what end. In particular, I focus on this one image: a portrait photograph of a well-known historical figure, the designer and typographer Jan Tschichold. How is it used? And what stories do we tell about it?

n°08 — A residency: Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé at Villa Medici. Author: Thierry Chancogne

Interview with Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé by Thierry Chancogne
20 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm,
+ 1 A2 poster, black and white (reserved for subscribers or on demand)
07 February 2018
ISBN : 979-10-95991-05-2
ISSN : 2558-2096

Typo-topographic records

While still a student in the Ésad Valence, Coline Sunier, along with Grégory Ambos, created a striking front cover for the booklet associated with the Zak Kyes programme, Forms of Inquiry, using a series of jewels sampled from the more or less heraldic graphic patrimony of highly local emblems.

When she founded her studio with Charles Mazé, the duo continued the work of collection, which is at the same time one of the etymologies of reading, and one of the characteristics of the conceptual aesthetic of the list that emerged in the 1970s—first, in the re-casting of the Ésad Valence’s identity in 2012-2013; then in the work created during a residency at the Villa Médicis, Come vanno le cose?, dedicated to records of 1,512 graffiti found on the walls of Rome illustrating the portrait of a mysterious survivor, perhaps imagined, of the Red Brigades; and more recently in the identity developed for the Centre d’art contemporain in Brittany.

The collection of signs of power and the traces of resistance profoundly inscribed in the always political matter of the spaces is often accompanied by an attempt at typographic translation bringing to mind the work of typification in the personal writings of Fernand Baudin, created for the catalogue of the eponymous prize in 2012.

n°02 — A technical platform: Colorlibrary.ch by Maximage. Author: Manon Bruet

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Author: Manon Bruet
12 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, black and cyan + 1 A2 poster, 3 PMS
+ 1 A2 poster, CMYK (reserved for subscribers) (sold out)
8th November 2017
ISBN: 979-10-95991-04-5
ISSN: 2558-2062

The Workflow research project, run by Tatiana Rhis, Guy Meldem, and Julien Tavelli and David Keshavjee (Maximage) at the Écal, is interested in current technologies of the printed object. It consists of a series of experiences that attempt to circumvent currently available production technologies, provoking coincidences and accidents with the goal of obtaining new outcomes.

More than simply questioning the possible circumvention of tools, Workflow explores technicality, modes of functioning, and flaws. In this way, the programme pursues the field of experimentation opened up by the Swiss studio Maximage since 2008. In the context of their degree project at the Écal, Julien Tavelli and David Keshavjee already combined manual and digital techniques so as to develop their own production tools, and notably their own printing methods. From their experiments have emerged, among other things, the Programme typeface, and the Les impressions magiques publication, that appears today as a manifest object of their approach.

One of the first results of the Workflow programme has been the creation of a series of colorimetric profiles that allows the conversion of digital images for printing with one, two, three, four, or five accompanying colors, whether they are basic (CMYK), pastels, fluorescent, or metallic.

The work on these profiles has two aims. It serves to increase the awareness of students at the Écal with regard to the management and theory of color, but it also allows, for the first time, the automation of operations and settings that have until now been done on a case-by-case basis through the manual use of image-editing software and CAD.

Advocating an “innovative” and “professional” solution for the treatment of color, the Écal and the Workflow programme launched the website colorlibrary.ch in 2016 and offered the profiles for sale. The platform appears as an online library that presents a large variety of profiles with different colorful combinations. The different profiles are displayed on screen, applied to images by Iranian photographer Shirana Shahbazi; they seem to replay the codes of Photoshop type images–from the butterfly to the eye, the still life to the waterfall.

Beginning with an analysis of the structure of this platform, the aesthetic and terminological languages that it summons, and their limits, we will open a number of fields of investigation, more widely linked to the question of the tools and modes of production of images.