Source: Issue 03. Issue C—Color. Gratuitous Type.
Elana Shlenker is an independent graphic designer and art director residing in Brooklyn. Gratuitous Type features many interviews from creative folk from around the world. If you’re a lover of type, print and new design done right then you must check out one of the three published issues.
Gratuitous Type appropriates conventions of pornography magazines to frame its otherwise innocuous subject matter. Extending this concept to its covers, each installment plays with strategies of censorship. For this issue, a dust jacket printed with a one-color image obscures its full color companion below, while a die cut “C” offers a suggestive glimpse of what’s underneath. More info here.—Elana Shlenker
As mentioned by Elana, the dusk jacket, noted—as a cover letter in the magazine—features a striking cameo by the GT Haptik family in the form of a die cut of the letterform C.
GT Haptik is a Grotesque typeface with a very special characteristic: Its uppercase letters and numbers are optimized to be read blindfolded and by touching them. Because of that its glyphs are monoline and geometrical. Optical criteria become secondary. This gives the typeface a weird but also very charmful touch.—Grilli Type
FontFont's Super Grotesk, designed by Svend Mital, graces the cover as it makes up the logo. The medium weight also dominates other display fonts as the main heading inside the publication. Beyond display, the medium and regular weight mingle appropriately with other body text, performing so well during the transcription of the interviews.
The typeface FF Super Grotesk is based on a 1930s design by Arno Drescher which was the most widely used lead-type sans serif face in East Germany – the GDR’s equivalent of the unavailable Futura. Today, the typeface can only be found in old specimen books and early East German printed matter, both of which served as source material for FF Super Grotesk. The original character set was augmented with special symbols and characters, alternatives for lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’, and oldstyle figures.—FontFont
The semibold Larish Alte by Radim Pesko is also used as display, specifically for the secondary headlines or subjects in longer line lengths. Based on prints and books by Rudolf von Larisch—who taught lettering and calligraphy at the turn of the twentieth century—this headline, roman font is a must-see with a beautiful, left angle axis (diagonal stress) and serifs that resemble those of transitional letterforms.
Temerity by Dries Weiwauters is also featured in the body text. It holds its own in the small sizes and in roman and italic styles. This serif is the perfect partner to the FF Super Grotesk; as you move from page to page they switch between filling the page on their own or supporting the other in the captions and vice versa. It is a beautiful dance between these two.
I have to applaud Elana for publishing Gratuitous Type. It offers you a chance to be a part of the print and type world in a colorful, unique and uber-modern presentation. Purposefully-choosen typefaces perform so well while dressed in flashy colors. The offset printing also provides serene, photographic instances. I also enjoy the copy overflowing onto the photographs. Elana really elevates your senses by employing color and dynamic letterforms. I hope to experiment with these methods in my upcoming print endeavors (as well as on-screen projects).