Kreuz

Kreuz In Use

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  Cylindre is a studio for design and graphic research, founded by Vincent Desclaux, and active on the axis Paris—Montreuil. In December 2022, it launched a spinoff dubbed Cylindre Club. On this playground, Cylindre designs and distributes graphic objects related to bikes and bicycling, as expressed by the slogan “wheely good stuff”. All of this is done with a focus on crafts and collaboration, for a “super-local and meaningful production”. Just like routes are central to biking, space and time play an important role in Cylindre Club’s process, too. The club members love detours and getting lost in maps. This geographic aspect is found back in the presentation of the online store. For all products, the involved providers and partners – think printers, textile companies, and other craftspeople – are not only credited. They are listed with the distance it takes to travel by bike to the respective facility: while the sticker manufacturer is located in Nantes (350 km), the trusted Risograph print studio can be found in nearby Paris (7.2 km), and the embroidering service of choice is just around the corner in Montreuil (500 m), etc. This way, Cylindre Club maps out their network and shares the acquired know-how for a graphic production that’s local and sustainable. The experience is progressive, and Cylindre Club points out they’re always on the lookout for new recommended addresses. The club’s identity is based on two typefaces. Kreuz was designed by Emmanuel Besse of Large, Paris (7.0 km), and published by Production Type, situated a short sprint further to the west (8.4 km). Built around the visual metaphor of nuts and bolts, Kreuz is an obvious choice for a project concerned with crafts and bikes. If Kreuz is the mechanic, its counterpart is the pacemaker. Superette, a script typeface distinguished by a drastic slant angle, adds velocity. Superette hails from a more distant source: conceived by Canadian type designer (and avid cyclist) Ross Milne, its initial inspiration draws from a peculiar style of semi-connected script lettering on the fruit and farm signs spotted in Île d’Orléans in southern Québec. Superette is available from Commercial Type, a foundry based in New York and London. This typographic team of two features in the logo and the website. It’s also used to render the punny texts on the posters, shirts, buttons, and other items offered by the club.

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  Kreuz Black

  Cylindre Club
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  The relation of content and form might be the number one topic in every discourse about graphic design. The visuals presented in this post provide a very interesting example in this regard. Jacques Rougerie, born 1945, is a French architect mainly known for his interest in hostile habitats such as the outer space and the deep sea. Inspired by adventure novels like Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and by the groundbreaking diving explorations of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Rougerie began to conceive underwater architecture in 1973. Under the title Jacques Rougerie – Living with the sea, the Villa Noailles dedicates a comprehensive exhibition to this pioneer architect. The venue is located in the city of Hyères on the French Mediterranean coast and thereby within a stone’s throw of some of the sites where Rougerie realized aquatic projects. The advertising materials to promote the show build upon drawings, computer renderings, and architectural models that tell a story of technical advance as much as a history of science fiction visualization. Rougerie’s formal language evidently is inspired by nature itself. It’s in this aspect that the typographic choice is so interesting: the main display type used here is Gothic Lab, designed in collaboration between Production Type and Ivan Murit, a specialist in generative design. Gothic Lab is based on the condensed, monolinear skeleton of Antique Gothic that – coincidentally – shows similarities to the sans-serif used on the title to Jules Verne’s seminal novel around the Nautilus and to the frontispiece with regards to the way in which the stems of the letters are brought to life through special effects. Gothic Lab comes with five different “skins”, patterns inspired by nature and size-specifically generated: Elephant, Croco, Snake, Mantis and Gecko, the latter used here in the LD variant with has less detailing than the HD style. To draw a conclusion on content and form, both the images and the predominant typeface stem from an exploration of natural forms. As a result, there’s a great feeling of convergence without one part merely mimicking the other. The other typefaces that complement the main act are Kreuz and Enduro, both by Emmanuel Besse and likewise available from Production Type, and Pangram Pangram’s Agrandir, used to typeset the logo of Villa Noailles.

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  Gothic Lab Gecko LD + Kreuz Extended Regular + Enduro Regular

  Jacques Rougerie – Habiter avec la mer exhibition