Spring 2013 (#214)

There are very few walled-garden design disciplines anymore, and for studios and freelancers alike, playing the ‘Renaissance man’ card – so long as there’s a genuinely multidisciplinary skillset at play – can yield exciting new possibilities.

Our special report this issue explores one field in which the disciplines of graphic design and type design have been gradually converging for decades, and really coming to a head in 2013: display typography.

With the right attitude, and a not-insignificant amount of creative talent, some truly inspirational typographic creations are born that push the field in new directions – adding an extra layer to commercial commissions and personal experiments alike.

Designers’ continued passion for handmade crafts and techniques, explored in last month’s special report, is still alive and well in this month’s Projects section, which range from painstakingly-built dioramas for a Hyundai digital experience to lovingly hand-screenprinted LPs for a Belgian record label.

And if you couldn’t make it to Dublin for this year’s invariably excellent Offset festival, fear not – there’s a neat roundup of some of the topics covered, plus a speaker’s-eye-view from the second-annual Cheltenham Design Festival. Enjoy the issue.

Nick Carson Editor