Hasta La Ideas

The London Olympics raised eyebrows and graphic designers’ hackles with its craggy, hot pink, seizure-inducing logo monstrosity, more evocative of Jem and the Holograms than global togetherness. Rio is eschewing the truly outrageous route with a smooth and snappy visual identity helmed by Beth Lula, branding director of the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee. The colorful, undulating Rio 2016 Olympic logo (see video below), unveiled last year, was created by Rio design agency Tátil to communicate “passion and transformation,” and in turn inspired a custom typeface. Recently unveiled in London, Rio 2016 (pictured) is the work of font foundry Dalton Maag‘s Brazilian team working with consultants such as homegrown type whiz Gustavo Soares.

Fabio Haag, creative director of Dalton Maag Brazil, led a team through 23 studies—and 5,448 different characters—in the course of the eight-month design project. The original concept was to develop the font based on the lettering of the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic brands, using only three letters and four figures. “To design a complete font based on a few letters in a logo with a single letter combination was very challenging,” said Haag in a statement issued by the organizing committee. Tasked with capturing in a font the gestural energy and expressiveness of the Rio 2016 logo, the team experimented with handwriting and ended up with letters that are written in single continuous strokes, with fast and fluid motions, suggesting the movements of the athletes in action. According to the organizing committee, “The variety of the curves in the different letters has a unique informality, inspired by the joyfulness of the Brazilian people.”
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It may be impossible to improve upon an A.M. Cassandre poster, but Spanish design studio Atipo has outdone itself with this tribute to his famous “Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet” triptych (above). Once you’re savored the last drop of loving homage, treat yourself to Cassannet, Atipo’s Art Deco-flavored font based on the lettering in Cassandre posters.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Barcelona graphic design company Lo Siento has created a set of sculptural letters that can be read from all sides (+ movie).

The studio had been working on several projects relating to architecture when they decided to try out “four-dimensional” typography.

The designers constructed the letters from pieces of white card.

When the letters are strung up, the reader can walk around and through words and read them from any direction.

The movie is by Marcel Batlle and Lander Larrañaga.

Photographs are by Lo Siento.

See all our stories about fonts »

Here’s more text from the designers:

4D Typography is the result of the intersection in an orthogonal way in space of two extrusions of the same character, which allows the spectator to read it from two different positions in space at least.

An observer searching to enjoy a particular architecture is forced to move around and through it. The change in perspective generates new spaces in which light acts in different ways. In this case, it is the typography that makes the effort of abandoning its two dimensions to approach the architectural sense. It does not resign with a third dimension; a fourth one is necessary to complete the reading possibilities. By hanging the typography, the reader is allowed to surround the characters in order to understand all their shapes.

This idea started after Lo Siento carried out several identity projects regarding architecture. This was when the study decided to investigate and develop several volumetric languages starting from basic graphical concepts. One of these languages was 4D typography. It became a personal project from the studio and we decided to develop the whole alphabet. The creation of this alphabet and mistakes that were made during the creation process lead to new ideas for future projects.

Project name/title: 4D paper lettering
Year of work produced: 2011
Work type: Typography / Alphabet
Client: Losiento / self-initiated project
Art direction/Design: Gerard Miró / Lo Siento
Photography: Lo Siento
Work description: Four dimensional alphabet lettering made with paper. Each piece can be read from all 4 sides.

Hand-cut lettering by Australian artist Bianca Chang

By Nestor Bailly

Transforming stacks of paper into something beautiful, Australian designer and paper artist Bianca Chang hand-cuts typographic designs into thick chunks of blank sheets. As she films the process in stop-motion, beautiful patterns emerge in a simple but quite fascinating story of each letter’s creation.

Inspired by tone-on-tone signage and the shadow play of three-dimensional letterforms, the paper sculptures manipulate the medium’s unique properties while exploring purity of form. Chang hand-plots and cuts hundreds of sheets of 80gsm 100% recycled paper using only a pencil, ruler, compass point and blade. Her back-to-basics technique creates work that speaks for itself and turns a normally disposable medium into enduring works of art. We caught up with the artist to learn more about her process.

Why did you decide to work with paper? What motivated you to work exclusively by hand?

Paper is a material that I’ve always worked with since a young age—I think almost everyones’ first experiences of creating images and objects would be with paper—drawing, painting, folding, cutting, pasting. So it wasn’t so much an active decision to use paper, I just never grew out of working with it. My work is a continuation and evolution of very basic techniques. I also loved the idea of transforming something as ubiquitous as paper into something different—by cutting and stacking paper I can manipulate the materiality of the medium and explore form in a very refined way. The push to work exclusively by hand is a product of being a graphic designer. I work all day in front of a screen so it is really therapeutic to practice my fine motor skills for a change. I like slowly working towards a finished artwork—it certainly isn’t an activity of instant gratification and personally it it makes the completion of a piece that much more rewarding.

What do you love about typography? Who/what are your biggest influences, what are you passionate about in the field?

In terms of graphic design, I’m quite interested in the management of type. The work I enjoy most is publication design—using type effectively in a book is quite detail-oriented and rewarding work. I like to look to the work of designers like Bruno Monguzzi, Jost Hochuli, Helmut Schmid and Willi Kunz. In terms of my works in paper, typography is a means to an end. For me, type offers a system by which I can generate new forms. My album cover for Nuojuva’s Valot Kaukaa is an example of this—I created an abstracted alphabet to determine the design. In this way, a typeface offers a set of interrelated forms with elements of repetition, subtle variation and rhythms of positive and negative space.

Chang, who works for Mark Gowing Design in Sydney, showcased recent work at the 2011 A4 Paper Festival there, and we can only hope to see her work travel in the near future. Check out The making of A to see the process play out on video.

Portland-based UPPERCASE stockist Land also has a show by sign painter Ira Coyne.