Editorial

We are pleased to publish the new Baseline issue 63 and trust you’ll enjoy reading it. A big ‘thank you’ to our contributing friends for bringing together the exciting contents. The typographic illustration on the jacket and design was inspired by the ‘typo-architectural’ article Extroverted type. The cover design is a handwritten layered interpretation of Georg Salden’s approach to typeface design and a response to Helmut Schmid’s publication typography today.

For the book reviews, we selected a weighty, historic, typographic reference book in the French language and Fedrigoni’s exhibition catalogue Made in Italy: Italian Graphic Design, which documented a successful exhibition under the same name.


Features

Starting the features, Ian McLaren, our editorial advisor, contributed with a substantial article about graphic information designer Peter Wildbur. Peter played a significant part in the evolution of the modern design practice in Britain and Ireland during the 1960s and 70s. As a contemporary of Fletcher, Forbes & Gill, he was a co-founder of the legendary design partnership BDMW (Birdsall, Daulby, Mayhew and Wildbur).

In Extroverted type, Steven Heller and Mirco Ilić write about the concept and application of 3-dimensional typography in our environment. Amongst the authors' references are the works of the Italian Futurist, graphic designer and painter Fortunato Depero (1927), the integrated type and lettering at the Al-Irsyad Mosque in Bandung, Indonesia and the 3-D lettershapes for the Charles Eames exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles.

Ludwig Übele introduces us to Georg Salden, a German type designer, whose unique typeface designs reflect handwriting and calligraphic related influences. ‘Salden’s concepts and ideas are conceived through imaginative play with shapes and forms, laid to paper through sketches’, comments Übele.

Ian McLaren critically analyses the latest edition of typography today. A holistic, comprehensive and valuable typographic design publication by Helmut Schmid. A real labour of love for the subject, the book is a must for any serious typography library.


Education

In our Education Spectrum we follow the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) and their dedicated design students and staff (Elizabeth Resnick and Scott Bakal) on their annual visit to Pentagram, Spin and Unit Editions, the St. Brides Printing Library, but also to English and Irish colleges and universities.

We hope that you find this issue of Baseline to be another engaging edition of typography and type related subjects, created and produced by dedicated designers.


Hans Dieter Reichert