Russell Perkins is a contemporary artist working across various media. His artworks deal with economies of risk, chance, and uncertainty. He often collaborates with experts from other fields, including forensic scientists, professional poker players, financial market participants, and singers specialising in extended vocal techniques. Perkins’ website provides an overview of his work through a calm and clean design, allowing visitors to freely explore the artist’s portfolio and delve into various exhibitions. An index, functioning as the central navigation point, can be displayed at any given time. Transitions between pages are characterised by seamless fade-ins and linking elements that retain their previous positions, mirroring the dense interconnections within Perkins’ body of work. Various elements on the website respond to user interactions by changing their appearance through custom front-end image processing.

Nike Generation Mono is a custom version of the typeface Generation Mono commissioned by Nike. The typeface features rounded edges and optimised shapes for its use in the refreshed visual identity of Nike Air. The proprietary Air technology, as explained on Nike’s website, is their most revolutionary, ubiquitous, and versatile cushioning platform. Since its debut in the midsole of the 1978 Tailwind, Nike has used Air in every category of footwear, from basketball to toddler shoes. The new wordmark set with the customised Generation Mono was first shown at the Paris “Nike On Air” event in 2024 when presenting the latest iteration of the Air technology.

Salon skug is a live event series organised by the Austrian subculture magazine skug, based in Vienna. Every two months, the salon hosts an insightful panel discussion about socially relevant topics with experts from the field before presenting emerging music acts. The A1 posters for each edition of the event series are as unique as the evening’s program itself. Their designs are based on the particular sound of that evening’s performing artists, ranging from gloomy dark wave to joyful swing. In many cases, these posters feature the first uses of a yet unreleased typeface of ours, which further contributes to a unique visual appearance for each salon.

Safe Harbor is a poetic artwork by Russell Perkins presented as an audio recording and a graphic score. The poem consists of rearranged words from the so-called safe harbor statements recited in the publicly accessible “quarterly earnings” conference calls of every company on the S&P100 index. These disclaimers ensure legal protection when presenting information on recent performance and future prospects to shareholders. The graphic score developed for this artwork visualises the text’s poetic and musical qualities and is printed on 24 large-sized sheets of security paper. It combines a systematic typographic layout, subtle pattern design for the background and appropriated candlestick patterns, a visual notation system commonly used to show stock performances. The artwork was first exhibited at Artists Unlimited in Bielefeld in 2023.

Lucifer features contemporary aesthetics while being deeply rooted in a lesser-known part of Swiss design history. The typeface has an almost menacing appearance. Its sharp, expressive serifs and overall organic look are inspired by the hand-lettering of Swiss designer Robert Stöcklin in his poster for the Schweizer Mustermesse Basel in 1924. The distinct formal quality of his design is quite different from what is usually associated with Swiss type design due to the modernist design movement known as “International Typographic Style” or “Swiss Style” which pushed many noteworthy designers like Stöcklin into the background. Lucifer gives recognition to the lesser-known work of Robert Stöcklin as a type family that features many of the unique visual qualities of its reference material while being optimised for the demands of contemporary design professionals. Lucifer’s expressive aesthetic excels in wordmarks, headlines, and poster designs. At the same time, the type system works just as well in various kinds of running text, which makes it a respectable, unique workhorse type family. Lucifer consists of 8 styles, which are Regular, Medium, SemiBold, and Bold accompanied by their respective italics and is also available as a variable font. It supports a wide range of Latin-based scripts, including Vietnamese and Pinyin (Mandarin Chinese), to ensure its usability in a broader international context.

The Future Tense is a sound installation by the American artist Russell Perkins which took place at Les Réserves du Frac Île-de-France in Romainville for 24 hours from 19 – 20 June 2021. The artist worked with the first movement of Johannes Ockeghem’s requiem (1420 – 1459), the oldest surviving polyphonic funeral mass. With the help of artificial intelligence and GPS movement data recorded during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the piece, and with it the labour of grieving, got extended indefinitely, without ever reaching a harmonic resolution. Perkins’ highly conceptual artwork is made accessible through the publication which includes two essays by Anabelle Lacroix and Lucas Morin and was published in English and French by Fondation Fiminco. The design of the publication, in particular the experimental typesetting, reflects crucial themes within Perkins’ sound installation by referring to cathedrals, polyphony, fragmentation, repetition, choirs, and space for mourning.

The publication “Beyond Concrete. Strategies for a Post-Fossil Baukultur” deals with the question of how we will plan and build in the future. As resources are finite, the building industry needs to adapt and aim for more sustainable solutions beyond the professional comfort zones. Beyond Concrete provides an overview of the current environmental challenges of building and possible strategies to deal with them. The publication is structured in three sections: The first one brings together studies on historical backgrounds, scientific foundations, and an overview of developments in building materials. The second part explores the potential of reusing individual components and buildings. The third and last section of the book showcases the projects of three architects whose work is currently pioneering the industry, thus providing a positive view of a sustainable and constructive future. This renewed perspective on the building culture is also reflected in the edited images on the back cover and in the introductory image sequence as well as in other aspects of the book design. The publication was designed in close collaboration with Bosco Ferreira and was the #1 bestseller of Triest Verlag in 2022.

Hofmann is based on a grid system by Armin Hofmann, hence the name of this display typeface. The grid system was, to our knowledge, never used to create an applied design. It was more of an experimental design tool for visual studies. In the same spirit, this typeface is an experimental exploration of the possibilities and limits of creating a typeface with the help of Hofmann’s design tool. The result is a display typeface with a distinct visual appearance. While it is not suitable for any environment where crystal clear readability is demanded, Hofmann lends itself to creating unconventional wordmarks, offbeat typographic posters, and eye-catching titles. The typeface was first released in 2020 and received a comprehensive update in 2022.

Every once or twice a year, the literature association literatur:vorarlberg, located in the westernmost state of Austria, Vorarlberg, publishes its very own magazine V#. The publication provides a platform to present and support the work of regional authors. Each issue is dedicated to a particular theme or topic to which authors are invited to contribute their texts. In autumn 2022, the association published the special issue “V#38 Täuschung” for which young and upcoming authors were asked to explore the theme of illusion. A wide spectrum of texts was produced and presented alongside hand-drawn optical illusions. The publication was printed with the spot colours blue and orange to achieve a particularly intense colour contrast. This enhances the effect of the optical illusions and contributes to an overall playful appearance of the special issue.

“Baslerische Landsitze – einst und jetzt” is an annotated and expanded reprint of the art portfolio “Blätter der Erinnerung an Baslerische Landsitze” by the art historian Daniel Burkhard-Werthemann. The original portfolio was published in 1938 and portrays 56 country estates in and around Basel through lively, historical commentaries of Burkhard-Werthemann and detailed, hand-coloured woodcuts by the graphic artist Johann Hagmann. It gives a fascinating insight into the life of many influential families of Basel in earlier times, their strong interconnectedness, and their relationship to the rural population. The reprint enriches the portraits of the Basel country estates with an introduction and commentaries on the estate’s history after 1938 by René Salathé, texts by Clewin Zaeslein and Margaretha Schwab-Plüss, photographs by Julian Salinas, and a newly drawn map that includes a glossary of all relevant family crests. The publication was designed in close collaboration with Bosco Ferreira.

The logo system was developed for the Vienna-based fashion designer Alexandra Zedtwitz. The incorporation of the motif of a snake was an integral part of the design brief. In addition, the design should evoke the feeling of a strictly reduced, almost minimalistic kind of elegance. The quality to achieve was reminiscent of modernist design in which the ideal form, though not necessarily neutrality, was reached through the very direct use of clear, simple shapes. The logo system consists of three parts: the signet of the snake, the wordmark in full length, and the shortened version that spells only the initials “AZ”. The typeface is a customized version of Farmacia, one of our retail typefaces.

The Visual Communication Institute [today: Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE)] of the Basel Academy of Art and Design commissioned a campaign to promote their two Master programmes: Master of Arts in Visual Communication and Iconic Research (MA) and International Master of Design UIC/HGK (MDes). The institute called itself “The Basel School of Design” to point at the heritage of the world-renowned Kunstgewerbeschule Basel, where graphic designers like Emil Ruder, Armin Hofmann, and Wolfgang Weingart taught their craft. The school was known for its process-oriented approach and a design methodology that focused on generating a considerable amount of variations, mostly in black and white. This design tradition was and is still present in the design education at the academy. In the preceding year, the campaign reflected this circumstance through a series of abstract illustrations. In 2020, the campaign design focused on the identity of the institution and dealt with the fact that there is no independent corporate design for this institution. Therefore, many variations of possible wordmarks were created and put together in a playful composition. While the layout might seem completely unstructured at first sight, the onlooker can identify different sequences that show the intermediate steps in the various approaches. The concept and design were developed and realised by Hoang Nguyen during her time at the design department of the Basel Academy of Art and Design.

“Gestalten in Metaphern” was created as part of David Gobber’s master’s thesis at the Basel Academy of Art and Design. The thesis project investigated the metaphorical nature of many design concepts by building on the following premise: Given that design decisions are not purely arbitrary but rather based on conscious as well as unconscious thought processes, an analysis of the way we think should enable us to shed a light on how we design. There are different theories of cognition that could help us in this endeavour. Among those, the conceptual metaphor theory is quite promising. It helps to describe and analyse a prominent type of thinking in graphic design: The so-called metaphorical thinking which essentially refers to all instances of “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another”. In “Gestalten in Metaphern”, which means as much as “Designing in Metaphors” in English, David Gobber explored different design concepts and analysed their metaphorical structure. He collected and described some of the most common metaphorical concepts but also looked into the creative potential of more unconventional ones that were purposefully used to create truly original results. In this context, projects of designers such as Julia Born, Irma Boom, Fons Hickmann, Claudiabasel, Ralph Schraivogel, and many more were discussed to illustrate the crucial role of these unconventional metaphorical design concepts. The outcome of this study was the development of a method that helps to inspire an initial design concept, based on which an original piece of graphic design can be developed. The conceptual metaphor theory was boiled down to a pragmatic tool for creative people who are struggling against the paralysing void of the empty sheet of paper in front of them.

In 2019, the Visual Communication Institute [today: Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE)] of the Basel Academy of Art and Design commissioned the first campaign to promote their two Master programmes: Master of Arts in Visual Communication and Iconic Research (MA) and International Master of Design UIC/HGK (MDes). The institute called itself “The Basel School of Design” to point at the heritage of the world-renowned Kunstgewerbeschule Basel, where graphic designers like Emil Ruder, Armin Hofmann, and Wolfgang Weingart taught their craft. The school was known for its process-oriented approach and a design methodology that focused on generating a considerable amount of variations, mostly in black and white. This design tradition was and is still present in the design education at the academy. For that reason, it was decided to show various visualisations of the commissioned topic of “friction” in the campaign design. Those abstract illustrations were positioned on a rigid layout, which again points towards the prominent grid systems that are often understood to be characteristic of Swiss graphic design. The concept and design were developed and realised by Hoang Nguyen during her time at the design department of the Basel Academy of Art and Design.

“U.S. History through Postage Stamps” is a book that shows 267 U.S. postage stamps which Hoang Nguyen has archived since 2002. The main part of the book consists of a selection of 125 enlarged U.S. postage stamps reproduced in black and white. Their motifs show various events from 1587–1968 in the history of the United States. This chronologically ordered series of stamps gets interrupted on four occasions by close-ups of several colourful postage stamps. The book concludes with an overview of all the stamps she collected during her childhood. This overview is given in two distinct ways: firstly, by reproducing all postage stamps in their original size accompanied by general information about their motifs and secondly, by providing a detailed list with various technical information of all the postage stamps depicted in this publication. The book “U.S. History through Postage Stamps” not only shows the masterful illustrations of these stamps in detail but also offers an insight into the self-image of the United States and invites the reader to critically reflect on the often quite propagandistic messages that were spread with these small pieces of printed matter.

The transdisciplinary symposium “Poetry of the Real: Imagination – Friction – Transformation” was organised and held at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel in 2018. It featured various talks and workshops dealing with the transfer between extended arts practices and contemporary discourses. The poster design of this symposium was created by AGI member and chairman of the Visual Communication Institute [today: Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE)] at the Basel Academy of Art and Design Prof. Michael Renner. A central, yet not so prominent, visual element of his design ended up being the key visual of this booklet. It also became the inspiration for the circular typesetting visible on some pages. The concept and design were developed and realised by Hoang Nguyen during her time at the design department of the HGK FHNW.

The publication “All About Space (Vol. 2) — HOUSE 1 Catalogue” is the second volume in a book series on ALICE, Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace, which is affiliated with the School of Architecture at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). It focuses on the so-called HOUSE 1, a prototype structure developed and constructed throughout the academic year in a collaboration that involved 250 first-year students and architects. The HOUSE 1 Catalogue itself is structured in three sub-catalogues: the Theory Catalogue, the Construction Catalogue, and the Inhabitation Catalogue. The first one is a collection of different types of texts written by guests of the ALICE Studio, various reference literature, and quotes contributed by the involved students. This first part can be understood as the intellectual fundament on which the HOUSE 1 project is built. In the second part, the rich pool of reference material is presented which inspired the conception, design, and construction of HOUSE 1. The publication ends with the Inhabitation Catalogue consisting of 12 short stories. They feature fictional characters through which the various ways of inhabitation of the developed structure get explored. The design was developed and realised by Hoang Nguyen with and for Hubertus Design.

The cabaret festival “Spektakuli 2017” was organised and curated by Matthias Egersdörfer and Martin Puntigam, who are both known for their dark humour and cultivated art of bashing others. They invited various colleagues with similar qualities to the Miller’s theatre in Zurich. The program of the 23rd edition of this festival was therefore not only humorous and enjoyable but also politically demanding and in many ways a great source of critical thinking. The festival was not just a comfortable event for simple entertainment but also had its controversial parts. Following this theme of provocation paired with humour, the design features the initial letter of the festival name “S” as a sharp-edged shape that fills the format. Red circles that are reminiscent of clown noses complete the key visual which was used for the poster design and other printed matter such as the newspaper. The concept and design were developed and realised by Hoang Nguyen with and for Hubertus Design.

The renowned “Secondo Theatre Festival” was initiated in 2005 by different migrants and Swiss citizens who are active in the cultural sector. After several years in Aarau, Switzerland, the 9th edition of the festival took place at its initial location, Zurich. The main focus of the festival has always been the topic of migration. In the 9th edition of the “Secondo Theatre Festival”, the event was metaphorically set in a camp. It is the first and still a small camp, hence the title “Camp_0”. This site was understood as an open space that invites everyone to encounter each other. To reflect this core idea of a space in which people can meet, create new connections, and exchange ideas, the poster design features different elements that touch, overlap, and intermingle. The main graphic element spells “Camp_0” if read from bottom to top. However, it is also a visualisation of the curling path which hints towards the topic of migration. The concept and design were developed and realised by Hoang Nguyen with and for Hubertus Design.

“future sense” was a lecture series organised by the Basel Academy of Art and Design, inquiring into the question of how artists and designers can contribute to a sustainable future. The key visual is an abstract individual sensing their surroundings and possible approaching futures through antennas. They represent the necessary sensitivity to act sustainably and responsibly. The typography of the symposium’s title further illustrates this metaphor of sending and receiving information about the environment in/with which one is operating. The visual was first developed for its application in the poster design and then adapted for several pieces of printed matter accompanying the lecture series and exhibitions. Several respected figures and experts in their particular field such as Dr. Claude Martin (Member of the Club of Rome and former General Director of WWF International), Prof. Dr. Harald Welzer (Co-Founder and Director of FUTURZWEI and Professor for Transformation Design, University of Flensburg), and Eyal Weizman (Founding Director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London) held lectures in this context. The design was developed and realised by Hoang Nguyen during her time at the design department of the Basel Academy of Art and Design.

The project “SWISSTOPIA AUTOMATA” was created as the practical part of Hoang Nguyen’s master’s thesis “Visualizing Utopia: Switzerland after the Labour Society”. It is an investigation into the utopian future of Switzerland and how it can be visualised. More concretely, it is a study of a utopian society in which labour does not play such a central and in many ways problematic role as it does today. The problems linked to labour are manifold: May it be that many kinds of work are not recognised as “proper work” or the increasingly precarious conditions in which many people have to do labour to secure their livelihood. The fictive report “SWISSTOPIA AUTOMATA” points towards these injustices by creating images of a possible future of Switzerland beyond labour. It mixes real and fictive elements to provide a graspable portrait of a utopian Switzerland, called SWISSTOPIA. The report consists of three main parts: The first one illustrates the historic developments that led to SWISSTOPIA. It covers various actual and fictive events from the initiative for the introduction of an unconditional basic income in 2016 to the COVID-19 pandemic in written form and through recontextualised images, altered captions, and other pieces of media. In the second part, the various kinds of automation developed in SWISSTOPIA are shown. They are the supposed centre of this report and are proudly presented as products of Swiss innovative capabilities, hence the report’s title “SWISSTOPIA AUTOMATA”. The third part focuses on the renewed ways in which the former workers and other parts of Swiss society are living. In a way, this last part is the visualisation of a very classic utopian idea that is known for a long time, yet was never realised. It is the right of a dignified and self-determined existence that realises itself through leisure for everyone.

The annual campaign “Next Generation” of the Basel Academy of Art and Design invites students of the graduation year to present themselves with their work, attitude, and future plans. The chosen motif for the campaign of 2018 shows graduates from different disciplines coming together to exchange ideas and celebrate together. The motifs were staged by Hannah Weinberger and shot by Diana Pfammatter. In addition to the photographs, the campaign design consisted of typographic elements such as the large titles “NEXT”, “INFO”, “OPEN”, “APPLY” and laminar typographic patterns with the names of the academy’s institutes. The visual elements were superimposed, nested, and interwoven within each other and functioned as the key visual of the campaign. Art direction, after the initial photo shooting, and graphic design were done by Hoang Nguyen during her time at the design department of the Basel Academy of Art and Design.