Playlist: The Office

This little book, following John Smith’s solo exhibition at the Royal College of Art in 2010, was designed by French duo SA*M*AEL (Samuel Bonnet & Maël Fournier-Comte) using the same pair of typefaces that they used for exhibition identity and signage: Francesco, Frank Jalleau’s masterpiece inspired by Griffo’s cuts from Renaissance (and at the time freshly released by BAT) and Gemeli Mono, Jean-Baptiste Levée’s monospace counterpart to his Gemeli type system, several years before its release. Beside the simple aesthetic of the publication, the typesetting of the book is very subtle and reminiscent of some early trends of the early 2010s: monospace type for body text, underlines, loose letterspacing … all of this probably echoing the Web 1.0 look that was already considered as old-fashionned.

Parade is the design practice of April Zelenka, a graphic designer based in the American Midwest with a focus on clients in the interior design industry. Zelenka, who also has a background as professional photographer, has been designing brands for over ten years. Recently, she tackled her own visual identity. For the logo of her studio, she chose Qommodore. This typeface was released just a week ago in Production Type’s library. Drawn by Hugues Gentile, it’s a monospaced serif in six weights, in roman and italic styles. With a build following 19th-century display types including high contrast and bracketed serifs, it makes for persuasive titles – or, in this case, wordmarks. Qommodore’s proportions, however, are monospace. In some glyphs like the R with its retracted leg, this leads to an enigmatic mix of elegance and quirkiness, and provides the Parade logo with a certain je ne sais quoi. The additional brand fonts used by Parade are Signifier, a synthesized roman by Kris Sowersby of Klim, “determined by machine logic and a Brutalist ethos”, and ABC Rom, Seb McLauchlan’s “sturdy, confident fusion of classic Grotesk and Gothic typeface styles” released earlier this year with Dinamo.