Klaas van Kreis - typosynthesen

Earlier this year, I participated in a course called “Typo-Regeln”, which loosely translates as typographic rules. The goal of this course, which by the way was a collaboration with the University HTWK in Leipzig, was to create 6 identical handmade books which deal with typographic manifestos from famous typographers and likeminded organizations in an unconventional way. The texts were given to us by our teachers, as well as some basic rules like the size of the book and the number of copies. I really have to admit that my classmates had some “badass” ideas and I enjoyed every minute of this course. A bunch of typo-afficionados talking about all those nifty details in our works. I decided to take a pseudo-analytical approach to this work, and created some statistics where I compare the texts on many different levels with each other. I based my data on search-engine algorithms and started to compare the texts on their length, number of words, amount of theme-related technical terms (keywords), nature of the topic, etc. Once designing the book, I decided to start each manifesto with a bunch of graphs and lists that show different results to the reader. I also decided not to bind the book, as an open form with a paper-fastener would give the reader the opportunity to compare the texts visually in a non-linear way. The texts don’t have a pagination as it wouldn’t suit the concept. Instead I organized them with indexes in between.

TECHNICAL DATA

TITLE: ›Typoregeln‹
MEDIUM: 6 handmade books
TECH. SPECS.: paperback with paper-fastener, digital laserprint, xyz pages, DIN A4 (16 × 24 cm)
PAPER: Schneideröhne Recyconomic Trend White 80 gr/m²
SPACE OF TIME: 2010
MENTORING: Prof. Ulrike Stoltz & Prof. Christian Ide
UNIVERSITIES: HBK Braunschweig & HTWK Leipzig

TEXTCREDITS

PREFACE: Prof. Ulrike Stoltz
TEXTS: Jakob Erbar, Paul Renner, El Lissitzky, Kurz Schwitters, Iwan Tsichold, Kurt Weidemann, Forum Typographie, Stiftung Buchkunst
EPILOGUE: Klaas van Kreis