Craft

Poster design for the CRAFT exhibition at the Dutch Design Week 2011

Autobahn was invited by the Graphic Design Museum to participate in an exhibition about craft. Craft for us means combining material, medium and idea in a manual way.

We decided to use a material which artists use to visualise first ideas: a pencil. Also, a phrase often used in arts, is the term ‘pencil on paper’ – to indicate the production method. To visualise this, we sharpened 100 pencils and used the cut to create the letter A of the word ‘CRAFT’.

Autobahn

Identity typeface for Autobahn

In 2010, it was time for a real logo for Autobahn. Its shape needed to be a mixture between analog and digital, and manual and programmed design. The logo looks like it consists of flowing script, but it was actually designed digitally.

In 2011, Autobahn decided to create a typeface out of the Autobahn logo. We will initially use the font for our own communication, but it will be for sale in our shop in the future.

Tapewriter

A typeface made from duct tape

One of the first typographic experiments of Autobahn was Tapewriter: a font based on the grid of a football cage.

The width of a roll of duct tape, being the ‘writing material’, perfectly matches with the space between two bars of this cage construction. The idea behind the font is that anyone who is in possession of a roll of tape can present his or her message to the world.

Tapewriter clearly demonstrates that you can write with anything, and that any surface can be a sheet.

Evergreen

Magazine illustration

Autobahn provided various typographic illustrations for nrcnext magazine articles. We created this typeface – Evergreen – for the article Het gras van de buren… (The Grass on the Other Side…), an essay about the envy of mankind for another person’s happiness. For the designing process we used actual grass, cutting the letters out with knives. The title of the article was set in Evergreen.

This typeface won a silver European Design Award in the category “Book & Editorial Illustrations” in 2009.

Fresh Fonts

Manually designed fonts

For our Pecha Kucha presentation in 2006 we decided to manually design three new fonts. They are based on Helvetica: Gelvetica, Tomatica and Heldentica.

The idea was to design fonts with materials that come from tubes. By drawing on a transparent surface and using the effect of gravity, two versions of the fonts emerged: a normal one, and one affected by gravity. The letters are written on a glass plate with toothpaste, hair gel and ketchup.

All three fonts are available in our shop.

Petronius

The revival of a typeface design

The Petronius was designed in 1976 by the Dutch painter J.H. Moesman, who was mainly known for his surrealistic works. However, working for the Dutch railways as a lithographer, he gained interest in calligraphy. Moesman designed this typeface based on the handwriting of “the ordinary Roman”. Autobahn digitized the typeface and added several new glyphs, like the at and euro signs.

The typeface is available for purchase in our shop.

Ambigram

Silkscreen print posters

For the exhibition Don’t Believe The Type Autobahn created a series of ambigrams. An ambigram is a word that can be read in two directions. It often shows two different words, through which the design can express two opposite notions simultaneously. Autobahn made the following designs: Love / Hate, Friends / Enemy, Digital / Analog. These designs respectively refer to a specific art trend: Gothic, Romanticism and Nihilism.

Check our shop for the limited edition screen prints.