Order Subscription, 31st to 38th issue

Issues 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 & 38
8 × 20 pages and sometimes more
21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
Design: Syndicat
2021-2022
Order Subscription, 31st to 38th issue
Issues 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 & 38
8 × 20 pages and sometimes more
21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
Design: Syndicat
2021-2022
n°30 — Types of types: the typographic specimen by Lineto. Author: Olivier Lebrun
For Lineto (https://lineto.com) the Specimen plays out through forms and formats in order to promote the foundry’s typefaces: books, posters, envelopes, pamphlets, letter transfers, print ads, and video clips as well as inflatable structures and bootlegs of logotypes. When Reala published LL Biff in 2000, the specimen employed graffiti culture and its modes of distribution, along with a combination of two references: “Medium is the message”*, “Style is the message”**. For Lineto the citation is a form that allows them to distribute their typographic catalogue while promoting diverse cultural fields: “Ignorance of your own culture is not considered cool!”***
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.