A little while ago, I called Cédric Rossignol-Brunet and Romain Laurent – two graphic designers and friends, both former students at ESAD Valence – to discuss about Simulacre, a typographic project led by Cédric, with which Romain had quite a bit of interaction.
In our conversation, we talked about PNEU, the revue of the ESAD Grenoble-Valence, conceived and produced by graphic design students, in which both are involved; about Romain’s graduation project, Ex Machina, a book that reproduces, using six different printing techniques (offset, screen printing, risograph, color laser, monochrome laser, and inkjet), pages taken from six books representing key moments in the history of print; and about several talks and projects carried out at the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique.

CH Cédric, you describe the project on your website, writing this: “Different pages are scanned and then processed by several scripts to extract the letters and classify them according to the OCR’s level of confidence. A typeface is then generated using the letters extracted in this way.” A description we have more informations of in the lecture you made for the Automatic Type Design 3 symposium at the ANRT (Nancy).

Simulacre family

I like those alphabets you generate. Trying to figure out why – beyond just “I like them” – I started comparing the effects they had on me depending on where and how I encountered them. When I read PNEU articles on my phone, there’s this feeling of comfort – almost reassurance – like I’m meeting a texture I already know. Those comparisons reminded me of that sentence by Zuzanna Licko: “Typefaces are not intrinsically legible. Rather, it is the reader’s familiarity with faces that accounts for their legibility. Studies have shown that readers read best what they read most.” Then I started wondering whether printing accidents – the traces of the printing process itself – could affect reading, especially on screen. You see what I mean?

CR You mean, like, is there an intention to recreate traces of print on screen?

CH Kind of! When I was looking at the book Romain printed for his diploma – he set his texts in the Sacred Times – something caught my eye. It felt like a kind of layering: printing on paper something that already carries a “printed effect.” I was wondering whether those letters resonated differently on screen – around that question of reading experience and legibility. When Licko talks about familiarity, she means shape, but I was also thinking about texture – about the material aspect. As if we were bringing the eye’s experience of print back onto the screen.

Romain Laurent, Ex Machina, 2022

RL So basically, in legibility, you could also consider the printed mark – its flaws – as a parameter in how we perceive a text.

CR I didn’t really ask myself those kinds of questions when I started working on thoses typefaces. First, it’s not really a mark of print. Well, it is – but translated digitally. The scans are a digital interpretation of what printed matter might look like – but it’s not a printing mark in itself.

CH Your script captures shapes – more or less accidental ones – and translates them into new ones, an average form.

CR Wait, let me share my screen.

William Morris Golden Type letters extract from News from Nowhere by OCR Tesseract

You see these shapes? That’s what the program extracts after processing. When we talk about averages, it’s just that – see, in this a, you’ll have more ink spread than in that other a. The script generates an average between those differences. Here, the digital trace, because it’s overly constrained, ends up replaying the trace of print. Suddenly there are too many parameters, too many points, and that excess of points creates the effect. What really caught my interest at first was the confidence index returned by the OCR. When you feed it a letter, it tells you: “I’m X% sure this is an a, b, c…” I thought – okay, what can I do with that information? What kinds of errors appear, and how can they lead to new shapes?
Before starting this project, I had watched a lecture by Riccardo Olocco at the ANRT, where he presented his research on Jenson and how he stabilized the Roman model as we know it today. In my first OCR tests, I started from a Jenson. A library in Germany sent me scans of the first book ever composed with that typeface. And I thought: could I extract all the letters the OCR misread, and from there, rebuild a Roman model – but only from a faulty Jenson? There was something a bit absurd in it – the idea of creating a kind of parallel history.

CH So roughly, your idea was to propose a new “model” built from all the errors processed by the OCR?

CR More like – from all those errors, could that lead me to explore other ways of making letters?

CH In your process, you move from a multitude of errors to a single form – an average. Did you ever think, “Since there are so many different errors, maybe I could represent that diversity by having multiple shapes for the same letter”?

CR For Gensco, there were five weird shape variants. Since the confidence score goes from 0 to 100% – and by the way, it’s a pretty rough value – I made versions from 0 to 15%, 15-45%, 45-60%, and 60-100%. I sent all the extracted letters through and saw what happened. The idea was to have different variants, kind of like an italic or a bold – except here you go from no confidence to full confidence.
In the low-confidence results, some shapes really stood out to me – like that g, or that x, or this r with a strange shoulder. I didn’t have time to do it then, but the idea was: okay, I’ve got this kind of messy thing – messy but in a way that I like – so what happens if I try to rationalize it? What do I keep, what do I drop?

Glyphs from unconfident Gensco

At that stage, I wasn’t really thinking about reading at all. It was more about letterforms – how they connect, how they build a coherent set. Later on, I made a readable version, because honestly, it didn’t take much more work. And I was also curious to see if I could get to a point where the font could actually be used – something more “normal,” not just experimental.

CH And Romain, when you started using them, did you ever think about the reading experience?

RL Yes and no. I asked Cédric to digitize that Times for my diploma project – more for its production process than for its legibility or reading experience. Well, actually, both are kind of linked. The idea behind my project was to reproduce books that are part of the history of print – for reasons tied to their fabrication and printing processes – and to scan them in order to reprint certain pages using different techniques. The whole thing questioned reproduction itself. To typeset my texts, I needed a typeface, and I wanted one that connected to my project. Cédric’s font followed almost the same logic, but applied to typography: both projects keep the traces of the original artifact, just translated differently. In Cédric’s case, the letters look like ink bleeding, but those shapes actually come from pixels – traces of digitization. With my images, I had similar issues: in the books, halftone screens sometimes caused moiré when scanned, and when reprinted they created new moiré patterns.

Romain Laurent, Ex Machina, 2022

There were always these marks tied to the history of the objects – to their shift from one medium to another, transformed by scanning and reprinting. So, I used that typeface more for its process than for its final look. I had reached a kind of non-choice: the final form didn’t matter much, as long as it was readable.
For PNEU, we used it for several reasons. It was free, and we liked Cédric’s typefaces. Sometimes, when you already have the tools at hand, you just feel like using them. Also, with Samuel Vermeil, we noticed that many graphic design magazine or theory publications tend to show a kind of typographic excellence – using and displaying typefaces that are often very clean, dry, hyper-well-drawn. But sometimes that results in something a bit sanitized. We wanted a typeface that felt a bit odd, something different from what we were used to see – and that, through its story, spoke about printing, books, digital tools, and type design. All of those questions interested us, both from a historical and a technical point of view.

CR Building on what Romain said – what I liked when I generated the first version of Gensco was this mix between something classical and, at the same time, a bit “dirty.” Those forms spoke to me, and that’s why I kept generating more. I like it when things aren’t too smooth – I feel like it brings warmth. As Romain was saying, there’s this kind of regime of legibility: everything always has to be clearer, sharper, more readable… I don’t really agree with that. What is legibility, really? It’s about forms we recognize. But do they need to be sanitized? I’m not so sure.

RL It also raises the question: what makes a good type design? What makes a typeface well-designed? I use so-called “well-drawn” typefaces – ones that follow current canons –, and yet sometimes, I find them too dry. And from a reader’s perspective, when it’s too dry, too clean, I don’t feel like reading. For me, it’s not just a question of “is it legible?” but “does it make you want to read?”

CH There’s something in these typefaces that plays with the printed mark, which reminded me of an older face, the Berthold Block (1908), a display type with rounded angles and irregular contours that give this sense of imperfection. Flaws that make these designs feel comforting.

Die Block Serie in der Akzidenz, H. Berthold AG, 1921; source

CR Yeah, like those books lying around on your table at home, or an old paperback…

CH Our printing techniques have gotten so precise that nowadays, the printed result almost perfectly matches what we see on screen. I feel that with this evolution, we’ve reached a kind of cold perfection, and Cédric’s project goes against that. It’s like he’s trying to reintroduce the unexpected, to play with the opposite of absolute precision.

CR Yeah, there’s this idea: how can I take it, modify it, turn it into something else, tinker with it…

RL There’s also this aspect of perceiving a typeface in its printed context – through its material, its printing, its size, its density. Typically, if Cédric uses scans of 6pt notes, there’ll inevitably be more roughness and errors than if he works from a 36pt headline.

CH Cédric, have you ever thought about playing with that parameter? Scanning multiple sizes of the same type, like in the days of metal type, where each size had its own design optically adjusted for the point size?

CR Yeah, we considered it for Gensco. The problem was the data: to generate a small-size version, you need lots of footnotes, and there weren’t enough. We set it aside. For the Times, I tried making a version from The Times newspaper. It was better printed, and I found the result drier. But I didn’t take the time to go deeper.

CH And regarding sources: when type designers work on a revival, they usually try to start from the original source. You started from a reproduction – in industrial printing contexts – of that source. Like a copy of a copy, a kind of clone.

CR That ties back to what we were saying about defects. The flaws are linked to printing conditions, to production methods that are more or less precise, etc. Capturing that allows you to talk about the whole production context.
By the way, Olivier Deloignon gave a lecture at ANRT on printing errors, and how, from these errors, you could deduce the practices of printers at a given time.

RL For the Times, the source you used – found by Samuel – was from a digitally printed book. It was a facsimile of an offset-printed book, whose offset proofs had themselves been made in lead. Crazy stuff. That’s why its shape is so weird. It got messed up by multiple reprints.

CH This idea of transcribing printing effects… it creates atmospheres. We talk about it a lot in terms of aesthetics – shapes we like, that we find appealing, etc. – but rarely in terms of reception.

RL You can’t judge a typeface in absolute terms. It all depends on how it’s used. I don’t think Sacred Times is a good typeface for setting a phone directory – it’s not suited for that. Or for a multilingual text, for instance, since it lacks lots of glyphs.

CH Exactly. On PNEU website – because there’s only a roman Sacred Times – you used the italic from a Times. When I read, my eye notices the switch from one to the other, and it makes me compare the effects between this thicker type and the smoother shapes.

RL For the roman, there are also some glyphs grabbed from other Times.

CR Yeah, for punctuation.

RL There’s no “@” – in the 1920s, 1950s… it didn’t exist. Sometimes, you make practical choices. It creates quirks, but it’s not intentionally designed to produce an effect.

Kenneth Goldsmith, “Archiving is the New Folk Art,” Wasting Time on the Internet, 2016
French translation by Pauline Maréchal for PNEU, no. 2

CR I intentionally embraced the contrast for punctuation. It’s a bit like reconstructing the Parthenon: you have the old blocks, and when you rebuild the missing parts, they’re in light, very clean stone – you can see the difference. I thought it was funny to have the same effect here: a kind of typographic archaeology, where the gaps are visible and assumed.

RL From a distance, the typefaces generated by Cédric are like a big family! They don’t look alike, but since their capture and generation methods are similar, they share a lot of resemblances. You can sense the affiliation.

CH Times, Scotch, Bembo, Jenson… these are all designs we’re familiar with.

CR I like to start from these sources. When we talk about typography, you know what a Scotch is, or a Times, and you’ve already heard about the Bembo. You have a vague idea of what it is.

RL Also, these are typefaces that have had so many lives and variations. They’ve been mistreated, well treated, or treated in improbable ways…

CH How do you see the history of typography relating to your own work?

CR I have interest in type design history and that’s why in this project I’m playing around some “classical” type design projects‘ shapes. However I’m not trying to fit into a lineage of type designers. I do it because it amuses me and there’s something I like in it.

CH And for you, what are you the author of? The script? The typefaces? Both?

CR I’m the author of the script which produces the typeface, and therefore the typefaces. What interests me with these scripts is seeing what the confidence index produces: sometimes a lot of precision, sometimes the opposite. Even if I want to understand how the machine interprets the data, I let myself be surprised by what one could call errors.

RL When you use these typefaces, you notice they’ve been tinkered with. They’re not “magical” typefaces that just compose themselves.

CR By making them available, it’s maybe also so that people, if it doesn’t work, ask themselves why. In this process, there’s effort required from the user. I like them to present a bit of resistance.

RL There’s a kind of lettering vibe, almost web-like. And as a user, it amuses me to have something in my hands that I can’t use immediately, that stands out from what I’m used to.

CR We always come back to the same point!

RL Yeah! It may seem like a simple answer, but I find it essential. If I’m not having fun with my projects… ugh.

(Laughter.)

This summer I’m taking part in the Typographic Printing Program, by the Swiss graphic designer and letterpress printmaker Dafi Kühne.

In the middle of the first week, while walking around Näfels to imagine a cultural event that could take place in the region and then turn it into a poster, I found myself at the grain mill. During the improvised tour, as I followed the transformation of grain into flour, paced by the sound of the machines, the idea emerged: a performative bread-baking night with the artists Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger.

Maismülhe Landolt Näfels

Back in the workshop, through various exercises designed to explore composition, I made sketch after sketch until I had a clear plan of what I wanted to print, on the paper I have chosen: Holmen because of its wood fibers, which make the paper’s color evolve over time. 

Selected sketches

Today is almost the end, the first of the two production days. It is time to merge ink and paper on the letterpress printing press – when it’s all about action, making, touching.

Divided in layers, and using my template, I start with my two linoleum blocks: one carrying the word bake, its letters pressed and shaped by the second, which bears the doughy letter b. My hands now accustomed to the knife on the surface, give me room to polish the texture of the letters, playing with subtle irregularities.

Hand-cut linoleum blocks preparation

Before placing them on the press, I need to mix the ink. Following my plan, I first prepare a light orange-brown tone, testing it directly on paper to get exactly the shade I expect. Then I gradually create two darker variations, adjusting little by little, absorbed by the colors and the smell – as if hypnotized, like watching bread slowly bake.

Time to print. I lock the first block – leveled to type height – onto the press, spread the ink on the rollers, center, and pull the first sheet. Then I observe, measure, correct the paper’s position, and carve away the last distracting detail from the linoleum. Once all corrections are done, I print rhythmically, sheet after sheet, stacking them on the drying rack, checking each impression as it passes through my hands, listening to the machine and giving it what it needs. When everything is done, we clean the press.

Ink color trials

The next morning, my first layer is dry and everything is ready for the second run. Since the color for the b contains a lot of yellow, I add opaque white to the ink and run each sheet through the press twice. When everything is done, we clean the press.

As I wait for it to dry, I cast the last form for my small information text on the stunning Ludlow Typograph. I pick the letters from the Franklin Gothic 18P. drawer, set and space them in the Ludlow stick, slightly deviating from the template to adjust line height and spacing, melt the slug, and pile the fresh (hot) lines on the galley. When the press is free, I lock the form, apply just a tiny amount of ink on the rollers, and print the make – ready. I watch how the letters interact with the rest of the composition, moving back and forth in the workshop to trim or adjust any lines that need correction before the last production pass. When everything is done, we clean the press.

Slug cast with the Ludlow

The next morning, and last day, we trim the sheets. As the blade cuts through the paper, I remember what Niklaus Troxler told us last week while showing his posters: “It is only finished when it’s printed.” I would add, “and trimmed”, but I fully agree. This poster, from the initial template to the four-pass printed sheet before me, carries every imprint of the process I went through over the past two days – its details even more thrilling under a magnifying glass. These are the imprints of the letterpress process, showing both control and the subtle irregularities that give the print life and character. Like a homemade bread.

Final poster – photo by Noel Grüter

Close-up detail

Last week, together with Nicolas Eigenheer, we went “en machine” for the printing of the book TELEVISION, designed for Swiss photographer Sophie Huguenot and published by Spector Books. 

On the left, a Heidelberg Speedmaster 8-color offset press; on the right, an automatic arm distributing ink into the transfer roller’s reservoir

On the press, one employee is stationed at the machine’s entry point, where he handles loading the paper, checking the ink in the reservoirs, and replacing the offset plates. Another employee, positioned at the output, inspects the freshly printed sheets, monitors the inking, registration, and any impurities, fine-tunes the machine’s settings, and organizes the pallets to be sent to the binder.

On the left, Carmen checking a sheet at the machine’s output; on the right, a pallet organized for the binder (1 booklet (16 pages) = 1 double-sided sheet)

On the left, offset plates drying after printing; on the right, comparison of the proof images and the images printed by the machine

Macules
On the left, CMYK pass and black overprint; on the right, CMYK pass and black and cyan overprint

The day before, I had assisted Dafi Kühne in his workshop. That day, we began reprinting one of his posters on the FAG Control 900 semi-automatic cylinder proofing press. In one day, we printed 6 layers: 4 in white and 2 in red. Despite all my efforts to be precise, slight misalignments between the layers, variations in inking, and color shifts can be observed on the sheets. Behind this machine, my experience was quite different from that with the 8-color automatic press, which allows for double-sided printing, has an integrated drying system, and an average speed of 10,000 sheets per hour!

On the left, Bügel Spez poster next to the FAG Control 900; on the right, zoom in on the bottle cap and the 5 color passages

I like to look and understand their operation and the various results they can produce. It allows me to integrate these possibilities from the design phase of a project and reflect on our current means, rhythms, scales.

To Amaïa. 

SAISON
12 × 12 cm, bed sheet, cotton threads

In 2021, during a six-month residency, Swiss artist Ian Anüll traveled through the streets of London and created a series of works currently on display at the Kunstmuseum Luzern until November 24, 2024. As part of this event, Nicolas Eigenheer, Emilie Guenat, and I were commissioned to produce a book titled London Blue.

Ian Anüll, London Blue, text by Eveline Suter, Vexer Verlag and Kunstmuseum Luzern, 2024.
Available here.

Like a stroll through the streets of the British capital, the text – written by curator Eveline Suter – is set in Johnston Sans, the typeface used in London's public transport, designed by Edward Johnston in 1916. Over 20 cardboard pages, the words accompany the works, photographs taken on-site, and various collected objects. The walk is surprising; Anüll’s collages and the blue-covered areas play with and challenge current events. It shakes things up without giving the blues.

Children’s book can be challenging. Some demonstrate great cunning and ingenuity. 
As an adult, I still read them regularly. 

Ilka. Ein Tag im Leben eines Iltisses [Ilka. A Day in the Life of a Skunk], narrated by Günther Feustel and illustrated by Dieter Mülle, Altberliner Verlag, 1980

« Es ist ein Vogel. Er kann fliegen im Text. », Kinder schreiben sich ihre Geschichte von der Seele [Children Write Their Own Story], Ina Hesse und Heide Wellerschoff, 1996

Der Hut des Kaminfegers [The Chimney Sweep’s Hat], Robine Clignett, BDV Basilius Verlag, 1985

Was sich die schönste aller Wolken wünsche [What the Most Beautiful Cloud Wishes For], Kurz David, illustrated by Karl-Heinz Appelmann, Der Kinderbuchverlag Berlin-DDR, 1977

Pinguin Pondus, narrated and photographed by Ivar Myrhøj, Reinbeker Kinderbücher, Carlsen Verlag, 1981

Der Riese vom Storvalen [The Giant of Storvalen], Wolf Spillner, der Kinderbuchverlag Berlin-DDR, 1983

Bob und Bienchen in den Ferien [Bob et Bienchen on Vocation], Unknown author

Mein allerschönstes Buchstaben-Bilderbuch [My Most Beautiful Picture Book of Letters], Richard Scarry, Delphin Verlag, 1971

Die Liederfibel [The Song Guide], Heribert und Johannes Grüger, Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann, 1978

I have been attending the evening course in elementary typography led by the professor, typographer and type historian Rudolf Barmettler. Our first exercise was to print a business card for a person of our choice. I chose a lawyer.
During the initial sessions, we assembled the type to compose lines of information and printed them. Based on these prints, we followed a series of instructions guiding our composition choices. We cut, positioned, and traced the characters [1]. Here is a summary of my research steps, observations, and intentions.

On the left, [1]; on the right, [2]

[2]
— Information arranged in two columns;
— main information isolated on the left;
— remaining information on the right; second important information; surrounded by a blank line;
— square format.
First attempts to search for balance – balance meant to represent justice.

On the left, [3]; on the right, [4]

[3]
— Information centered in the format;
— larger white space at the top to highlight the most important information;
— remaining information organized from most important to least important.
Mediocre composition, but information hierarchy, and exploration of the centered text option.

[4]
— Information centered, organized in three blocks;
— main block of information centered vertically and horizontally with name and profession grouped together;
— secondary information placed at the edges, more recessed.
Secondary information surrounds the main information like a prison.
The two lines for address and contacts form the same structure.

After these attempts, the idea of the balance, a symbol of justice, became clear to me. I wanted to represent it graphically. This led to various trials with format, orientation, and white spaces ([5], [6]).

On the left, [5]; on the right, [6]

Once my sketch was finalized, I typeset the information on the business card, this time using Univers, a typeface designed by the Swiss typographer Adrian Frutiger.

On the left, pieces of metal type in the composing stick; on the right, typesetting on the press

Printed and cut [7], here is an example of the final business card [8].

On the left, [7]; on the right, [8]

Cross-stitch napkins for the office

Hodler room, Moser building, Kunsthaus, Zürich

Carpets, Moser building, Kunsthaus, Zürich

road signage from children, between Anny-Klawa-Platz and Bullingerplatz, Zurich 

April 2024, Dafi Kühne exhibited a selection of 100 posters produced by participants at Typographic Printing Program. During the course, each one choose the paper on which they want to print their composition. 

Paper display, Näfels, Switzerland

It’s peaceful among the dead. Especially at Silhfeld Cemetery in Zurich.

Herr gib jedem seinen eigenen Tod das Sterben das aus jenem Leben geht darin er Liebe hatte Sinn Not [God, grant each one his own death, the death that stems from the life in which he found love, meaning, and necessity].

Ich bin der Weg, die Wahrheit und das Leben [I am the path, the truth, and the life].

Der Tod ist das Tor zum Leben [Death is the gateway to life].

In Peter Radelfinger's studio, I started to examine this kind of scuptural book. Peter began to explain it was an atlas given to students when he was in school. He had initially overlaid it with collages and drawings, then, unconvinced, decided to cover everything in white. One day, much later – at least 10 years, if my memory serves me right – while clearing out the house of a deceased family member who was a carpenter, he came across a sander. With the machine in hand, he started sanding, revealing the different layers of the pages.

In my head, revealing a meta atlas.

Peter Radelfinger’s Book atlas, a mix of collage and painting

An association of postcard, envelope, and stamp enthusiasts holds a fair in Zurich. This morning, I found this curious envelope with a handmade custom, and a series of stamps. “Zum durchhalten altstoffe sammeln”. The time of war.

Postmarked envelope, Zürich, November 12, 1942

On the left, Postmarked envelope, Zurich, August 19, 1942; on the right, postmarked stamp, Lucerne, May 21, 1942

Vectorized scan of the magazine title

Among the aspects that intrigued me upon acquiring Panderma, one standout feature was the typeface used for the magazine’s title. Its name, Herkules, realised in 1899. I stumbled upon its identity while perusing a specimen from the german foundry Bauer & Co – which has been acquired by the Berthold foundry in 1898. With its rounded aesthetic and swash initials, Herkules commands my attention. The foundry also offers an italic version of this typeface + Carola Grotesk, a finer and narrower variant, with Regina Cursiv, the italic more extended +  Favorit Grotesk, a thin version, with Hansa Cursiv.

Hauptprobe unserer Schriftgiesserei—und Messing-Erzeugnisse, Bauer & Co, Stuttgart, 1909 (consulted at ZhDK archives). On the left Herkules, on the right Inseratschrift Record.

Hauptprobe unserer Schriftgiesserei—und Messing-Erzeugnisse, Bauer & Co, Stuttgart, 1909 (consulted at ZhDK archives). On the left set of swash letters, on the right an example of using Herkules and Carola Grotesk.

Hauptprobe unserer Schriftgiesserei—und Messing-Erzeugnisse, Bauer & Co, Stuttgart, 1909 (consulted at ZhDK archives). On the left Carola, on the right Regina Cursiv.

Hauptprobe unserer Schriftgiesserei—und Messing-Erzeugnisse, Bauer & Co, Stuttgart, 1909 (consulted at ZhDK archives). On the left Favorit Grotesk, on the right Hansa Cursiv.

The Russian foundry Paratype commercialized digitized Carola and Herkules, available as Karolla Narrow Bold, designed by type designer Tatiana Lyskova, and Karolla Black, by type designer Manvel Shmavonyan.

Panderma—Revue de la fin du monde: Arp siebzigjährig [70 years of Arp], n°1, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1958; 195 x 280mm, photography by René Mächler. Consulted at SIK-ISEA

Panderma—Revue de la fin du monde: Von der Technik zum Abgrund [From technology to the abyss], n°2, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1958; 195 x 280mm. Consulted at SIK-ISEA

Panderma—Revue de la fin de l’homme: Hommage au Dalaï-Lama [Tribute to the Dalaï-Lama], n°3, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1959; 195 x 280mm

Panderma: Nichts ist der Menschen, L’homme n’est rien, Man is nothing, El hombre no es nada, n°4, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 19611; 195 x 280mm. Consulted at SIK-ISEA

Panderma: Schroeder-Sonnenstern, n°5, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1962; 195 x 280mm

Panderma: Vasarely, n°6, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1964; 290 x 290mm. Consulted at SIK-ISEA

Panderma: Almanach 1966, n°7-8, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1966; 290 x 290mm. Consulted at SIK-ISEA

Panderma: Götterdammerung [Twilight of the Gods], n°9, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1969; cover Jan Willem van Dyken, 290 x 290mm. Consulted at SIK-ISEA

Panderma: Grutzke, Marcello Morandini, n°10-11, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1972; 290 x 290mm

Panderma: Freedom for Timothy Leary, n°12, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1975; cover Günter Gritzner, 290 x 290mm. Consulted at SIK-ISEA

Panderma: Eva Wipf, n°13, Basel, Panderma Verlag, 1977; 290 x 290mm. Consulted at SIK-ISEA

Panderma—Revue de la fin du monde , n°1, Carl Laszlo, Basel, 1958. 
Left, cover; right , page 3

Panderma is a Basel-based and multilingual publication by the Hungarian (naturalized Swiss) editor, art dealer, collector, and author Carl Laszlo. From 1958 to 1977, he, the editor-in-chief, along with various artists, writers, poets, philosophers… filled the pages of 13 issues to discuss artistic, political, and philosophical current events, sharing their thoughts and works (more or less vehemently).
In his opening text, Laszlo writes: “The first issue of PANDERMA—Revue de la fin du monde is born! We must make it known here that we are no longer Dadaists or Surrealists, although we love Dada and Surrealism. It is out of the question to attach a general rule to PANDERMA or proclaim an ideology […]. What we need is courage, the strength to spit out the bitter tastes that remain from the past. It is time to listen for the signal to awaken the asleep. This is how we can enter the world where everything is to be rediscovered! Our world, which has become strange to us, and thousands of new worlds spread out before us – who dares and who can penetrate them?”
At first, the rational part of my brain tried to define Panderma. The nonsense and frivolity of the magazine quickly stopped me in my tracks: Panderma is not a thing. This attitude allows it to be potentially everything, and avoid any confinement. Its content and form – fierce and free – triumphed over my rationality!

Like looking at myself. 

Printing plate taken at Musée de l’imprimerie et de la communication graphique in Lyon, France

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