n°57 — Julia Born
end of 2025
More infos to come
n°57 — Julia Born
end of 2025
More infos to come
n°24 — A theater identity: The Schauspielhaus Zürich by Cornel Windlin. Authors: Étienne Hervy and Thierry Chancogne
Authors: Étienne Hervy and Thierry Chancogne
36 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
23th September 2020
ISBN: 979-10-95991-17-5
ISSN: 2558-2062
Authors: Étienne Hervy and Thierry Chancogne
36 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
23th September 2020
ISBN: 979-10-95991-17-5
ISSN: 2558-2062
Designed by Cornel Windlin (with Gregor Huber), the communications of the Zürich Schauspielhaus for the 2009/10 and 2010/11 seasons appeared just as the collaboration between the designers and the theater ended: with the Grand Prix of the Brno Biennial in 2010, where they won first prize in the international competition, with an exhibition in Chaumont the following year at the same time as the Swiss Federal Design Award, a brief appearance in specialist magazines and on specialist sites, and then nothing at all. Once again, Cornel Windlin retreated into the shadows, leaving behind work which asserted itself through both its amplitude and completeness in the heavy silence which remained, and through the multifaceted mass of the media imagery that it reactivated. A series of seasonal posters, event posters, annual and monthly programs, booklets dedicated to each piece, invitations, flyers, graphic materials from the program for younger audiences… everything is here, set in a precisely tuned bold Unica77, digitized by the Lineto foundry with the original team of designers (along with Windlin), all coming together in that blindness inherent to times of eclipse, where the black disk chosen by Windlin as the identity of the Schauspielhaus stands out. Now, a decade later, the idea is to propose a meticulously organized reception, informed by Cornel Widlin and placed in a cavalier perspective by the analysis of Thierry Chancogne.
n°01 — A collection: Rouge-gorge, Éditions Cent pages by SpMillot. Author: Thierry Chancogne
Author: Thierry Chancogne.
20 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
25th Octobre 2017
ISBN: 979-10-95991-04-5
ISSN: 2558-2062
Author: Thierry Chancogne.
20 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
25th Octobre 2017
ISBN: 979-10-95991-04-5
ISSN: 2558-2062
Available only with the Season 1 subscription
16 — A reproduction: what El Lissitzkzy wants. Author: James Langdon
Sold out — Only available with season 2 subscription
Author: James Langdon
12 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
+ 1 A2 poster, CMYK + 1PMS
7th November 2019
ISBN: 979-10-95991-15-1
ISSN: 2558-2062
Sold out — Only available with season 2 subscription
Author: James Langdon
12 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
+ 1 A2 poster, CMYK + 1PMS
7th November 2019
ISBN: 979-10-95991-15-1
ISSN: 2558-2062
I am rarely convinced when I see graphic design that was originally printed in two inks reproduced in four- colour process. Before the advent of commercial colour offset printing, the elementary colours of printing — from Gutenberg to Tschichold — were black and red. In the early twentieth century, black and red were used by graphic designers not to attempt to recreate the spectrum of colours that appear to the human eye, but as graphic forces in themselves. To make a distinction. To create dynamism. To embody ideology on the page. In particular, the combination of black and red on white paper has become synonymous with Suprematism and revolutionary Russian graphic design.
A contemporary imaging workflow can enable extraordinary reproductions of these historical aesthetics. A high- resolution digital photograph of an original black and red printed book from the 1920s can be processed using a colour profile to calibrate its appearance across design, colour correction in computer software, proofing, and printing. This workflow can ultimately achieve a beautiful and precise image of that graphic artefact as it looks today, down to small details of its patination, its discoloration by exposure to sunlight, and the many more other subtleties that define it as an archival object.
But such a reproduction exhibits a strange technical anachronism. What about the constraints that originally shaped the design of that bookk — the implicit connection between the two colours of its graphics and the architecture of the one- or two-colour printing press on which it was printed? Are they not important? Can they even be reproduced?
I compare printed reproductions of the proud black and red cover of the book ‘Die Kunstismen’ (1925), designed by Russian artist and designer El Lissitzky. Published between 1967 and 2017, these images treat the material characteristics of the original book’s colour in different ways, appealing to contradictory notions of fidelity.