Feature
Excoffon’s autograph
Why is Mistral the typeface of choice for so many of Montréal’s small businesses?
Straight to no. 1
A great commercial stock image is like a three-minute pop song: the best have a simple repetitive emotional intelligence.
Buy this book
Jürgen Holstein’s volume of rare Weimar-era jackets and covers is an extraordinary labour of love
Typostalgie
Nostalgia for Germany’s old East has led to renewed interest in certain pre-1989 typefaces
A designer’s paradise?
One political party. One client. Yet the GDR’s designers enjoyed a surprising degree of freedom
Storytelling giant
Everything Christoph Niemann makes, from visual blogs to picture books, reveals his witty, literate personality
Paper offerings for the dead
Paper replicas of consumer objects are burnt as offerings to the dead at Ching Ming
7 types of design inquiry
From folklore theory, via shamanism and the ‘magpie instinct’ for shiny things, graphic design’s quest to understand itself takes many different forms.
Change through making
Jack Schulze and Timo Arnall see more and more designers making it all up as they go along