100 Years Joseph Beuys (1921–1986)
Stamp design celebrating the 100th birthday of artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), published on the 10th June by Bundesfinanzministerium / German Post Office. Beuys was best known for his expanded concept of art (everyone is an artist, social sculpture, etc.). A key feature on many art pieces of his were his stamps and signatures which he applied to almost everything, making it his his own and calling for people to see art everywhere. This was central to our design approach. We also played with the fact, that our stamp design features mainly stamps which in turn will get stamped/franked themselves once in the post. This creates a graphic game – an ironic questioning of responsibilities and authorities. An invitation that characterises Beuys's work: to think new, to rethink and to think beyond boundaries and habits. The stamp contains all the important stamps used by Beuys and is a crop of the book cover/fly-leaf of ‘Beuys, Joseph: Drawings 1947-59 I, Conversation between Joseph Beuys and Hagen Lieberknecht, Schirmer Verlag, Cologne, 1972‘ (Foto: Saša Fuis / © VG Bild-Kunst for the works of Joseph Beuys, Bonn 2020). Since he supervised the design of the book cover the caption for this stamp could also be ‘Beuys designs his own stamp’. The stamp was printed by Giesecke+Devrient in Leipzig with 7 Pantone colours and in a print run of approximately 3,3 million. All German postage stamps are selected through competitions in which 7 designers/studios take part at the invitation of the Bundesfinanzministerium (Federal Ministry of Finance). In the past 15 years or so we took part in 14 of such competitions. We succeeded twice and our design was printed. This Beuys stamp now and the stamp for ‘100 Years Women’s Suffrage’ in 2019 (see further down). In May 2022 another of our stamp designs will be published: 100 Years Otl Aicher.

100 Years Otl Aicher (1921–1986)
‘A stamp worth 155 (€ cent) / Otl Aicher, Graphic Designer 1922-1991’. Otl Aicher who was profoundly affected by the experience of the Third Reich, was categorically against any kind of pompous exaggeration. Instead, he stood for clarity and information. Mythical, transfiguring things horrified him. He wasn't interested in styles: “truth lies within a thing, not above it.” The stamp concept grew out of these important aspects of Otl Aicher's way of working and thinking. Visually the design reflects Aicher’s work for the Munich 1972 Olympic Games using the main colour ‘Olympia-Hellblau 72’ and ‘Univers’ font by Adrian Frutiger as implemented on the cover of the ‘Guidelines and standards for the visual design by the Organising Committee for the XX Olympiad Munich 1972’ (republished in 2019 by Niggli/Braun Publishing. Since 2022 is also the 50th anniversary of those games – which Aicher wanted to be cheerful, light-hearted, non-pompous, apolitical and free from ideology (those were the days…) – it also marks another anniversary. A portrait of Aicher (which would traditionally feature on such a stamp) was deliberately omitted (see exaggeration, transfiguration) but also because “a graphic designer is a graphic designer. he is what he can.” In this case the graphic designer Otl Aicher informs, indirectly through us, that what you hold in your hands is a stamp worth 155 cents. We felt that the simplicity and straight-forward nature of this statement was a much more apt celebration of his work than any portrait we could find. We added the words ,Grafiker‘ (‘graphic designer’), which weren't part of the brief, for three reasons. Firstly, for information (see above). Secondly, to better convey the thematic content of the stamp to the general public, the stamp buyers. But finally, and most importantly, because Aicher was a proud representative of our autonomous profession and autonomous job title: “graphic designers are graphic designers as a result of their abilities. graphic designers have no titles,…” / “we decisively, determinedly, unyieldingly reject any state authority as far as graphic design is concerned” / “and who can do that today? people who rely on themselves. and they are not the worst.” You can read about this and more in the book ‘the world as design‘, (chapter: ‘graphic designers’ space to be themselves’, p. 167ff), Ernst & Sohn, 1991/2014). The Berlin & Bonn franking stamps we designed (which will be stamped onto the actual stamps on the first day of issue, today) feature a stamp icon taken from the pictogram system Aicher started while working on the Munich 1972 Olympic Games.

Against and for Method
Book design, layout, typography for Against and for Method – Revisiting Architectural Design as Research, 284 pages, published by gta Zürich at the ETH Zürich. Editor: Jan Silberberger. Contributions by Bernhard Böhm, Johan De Walsche, Kim Helmersen, Adam Jasper, Monika Kurath, Claudia Mareis, Amy Perkins, Wolf Reuter, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Jeremy Waterfield, and Albena Yaneva plus interviews with Adam Caruso, Dietmar Eberle, Momoyo Kaijima, Anne Lacaton and Elli Mosayebi. Project manager and copyeditor: Jennifer Bartmess; Proofreader: Christopher Davey; Printed by Offsetdruckerei Grammlich; Bookbinding: Buchbinderei Spinner; Paper: Munken Print Cream 15; Typefaces: Times New Roman and Helvetica Monospace 821; Bookmark-photo: ©Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend. ‘Against and for Method’ is inspired by ‘Against Method’ (Wider den Methodenzwang) by Paul Feyerabend, and we wanted our design approach to play with the ideas of method and ‘un-method’ discussed. Typographically, we aimed for a straightforward, academic, methodically-designed book – a bit like a Word document or a Wikipedia article. We used Times New Roman for the main copy (regular) and also for the book title (bold/bold italics), chapter titles (regular) and page numbers (bold). The supporting typeface is Helvetica Monospace 821 which is used for essay subheaders, footnotes and footnote reference numbers (all regular), simple tables (regular/bold/italics) and running headers (bold). As the book has no images (and we didn‘t want to ‘invent’ any) we treated the text as image starting with the introduction on the front cover. Method at the expense of tradition. Our design includes a loose private photo (printed on regular photo paper Fujifilm paper and printed at Cewe online photp printers) which was placed randomly in each book. We wanted this to feel like an accident or something left behind, having perhaps been used as a bookmark by a previous reader. For careful readers the mystery will be revealed in footnote 18 of the introduction: ‘The bookmark within this book (if it is still there upon reading) shows a photo, taken by Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend, of Feyerabend scrubbing dishes.’ As Paul Feyerabend played a vital role as the starting point for the writing of this book and also refers to him and his book ‘Against Method’ from 1975 in the title, this seemed to create the right tension between methodical/unmethodical, official/unofficial, theoretical/practical through which to show our appreciation to the man. And also to give the purposeful seriously (associated with methodical) looking book a subtle and playful/chaotic (associated with unmethodical) counterpart. The book was also bound with a rainbow-coloured thread. Usually a book is sewn with threads of a single colour (white, black, etc.). We used rainbow-coloured threads which led to a a seemingly random (yet highly methodical) result. It also means that none of the books are the same, since different colour combinations occur in each volume. The book was awarded with the ‘Best German Book Award’ by the Stiftung Buchkunst in Frankfurt and also made it onto the shortlist of the DAM Architectural Book Award of the German Architectural Museum in Frankfurt/Main.

Das gewöhnliche design (The ordinary design)
This facsimile was edited and designed by us and Florian Walzel and published by Slanted Publishers. „Das gewöhnliche Design“ (The ordinary Design) is a hidden classic of german design history, something the vinyl era would have called a B-side hit. As early as 1976 a group of students and young professors at the Faculty of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt questioned the way design objects were generally perceived, talked and written about. Frustrated by the contrast of their self-perception as comprehensive designers and the prospect to have future careers as mere product stylists, they were looking for an alternative understanding of what constitutes good design. In the widely known book (and exhibition) ‘Super Normal’ by Naoto Fukasawa & Jasper Morrison which was published Lars Müller Publishers in 2007 Gerrit Terstiege writes: 'Almost exactly thirty years before the first ‘Super Normal’ exhibition in the Axis Gallery in Tokyo, ‘Das gewöhnliche Design’ exhibition took place at the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt… Explicitly selected to counteract the dominant role and overly solemn approach to Jugendstil in Darmstadt at the time, the 110 objects seem, at first glance, to prefigure the ‘Super Normal’ project. Although ‘Das gewöhnliche Design’ must be considered one of the earliest attempts to anchor appreciation of mundane qualities in design discourse, the catalog became a rarity and is now available in only a few libraries. Slanted’s reprint of ‘Das gewöhnliche Design’ with an introduction of the editors Frank Philippin and Florian Walzel returns this work to a wider audience. In a time that dedicates its cultural attention almost exclusively to novelty and exceptionalism the every day utility is the silent opponent of „design“. Thanks to Gerd Ohlhauser for the active support and accompaniment of the project and the Association of Friends and Sponsors of the Design Department of the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences e.V. for the funding.

225 Years Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)
‘That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.’ Stamp design celebrating the 225th birthday of poet, writer and literary critic Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), published on the 1st December 2022 by Bundesfinanzministerium / German Post Office. We decided to let Heine (poet, writer and lite