The two-volume edition is based on the four original travel diaries of the St. Gallen monks, which had already been addressed in the exhibition describing the grand tour to Rome from the period 1696 – 1749. Whereas volume one deals with the entire journey of the four monks to Rome, volume 2 describes the stay in Rome and Naples as well as the return journey. Originally written in Latin, the diaries were translated into German and Italian. Facsimile pages of the diaries in the original size, printed on thin opaque paper, which are bound in the middle of the book, represent a bibliophile specialty. The columns of text are shifted towards the middle of the book forming a narrow gutter margin and leaving wide outer margins. The publishers commented upon and augmented the text lavishly with quotations, text references or full versions of names. In the volume “Itinera Italica I” we used a deep indigo blue as a decorative and distinction color, for “Itinera Italica II” a dark porphyry red. The hard covers are also lined with material in these colors. The handwritten pages of the diaries, which are printed with a low light-dark contrast, display a discretion that is intended as a reference to monastic secrecy – at the time only the abbot was initially allowed to read the diaries.

A book for practical work and information. The main focus is on the many years of experience that this builder in clay has acquired, organized according to the themes: floor, wall, opening, ceiling. These four chapters in the middle of the book are deliberately designed in black and white, structured by generously sized introductory pictures and axonometric plan drawings. The plans, which were produced especially for the book, play a leading role in the explanations. Thin strips running along the edges of the pages at different positions in the core book guide the reader. In the volume of the book itself the strips create a striking sectional image – in the list of contents they form thematically based pictograms. Colour illustrations surround the core content: a series of pictures of completed buildings at the front, photos of building processes and the workshop at the back. The horizontal texture of layers of rammed earth is cut into the dust cover. You feel tempted to run your finger across this image in order to make the cut paper and the lettering printed on it move. On the cover the tactile quality of this building material is both echoed and honoured.

This hard cover book, which has a transparent dust cover and printed on ecru-coloured natural paper documents building with wood as applied research: the new building Illwerke Zentrum Montafon. Alongside the end result it also presents the basis for and the development of the building; the achievement of the planners is given as much space as the completed building and even the cover puts the systematic before the naturalistic. Easily legible plan graphics, some of them on fold-out pages, are harmonized with each other in terms of scale and form an entity with further explanatory and diagram graphics. The text in German (Foundry Form serif) and English (Foundry Journal) is differentiated in typographical terms, the line wrapping is dense but at the same time generously formed.

The contributions in this book deal with Lech as a place to live and an economic unit, with its natural setting and with the history and identity of the Walser people. The various authors were allowed to decide on the focal points of their contributions. The major design challenge lay in finding a uniform design framework for the scientifically-based contents and the variety of visual material. The strictly flush alignment of the double page ensures coherence. The generously sized edge column allows a variety of uses and provides the space needed for very different combinations of text and image. The Trinité family of fonts, a modern book antiqua by Bram de Does, determines the typography of the continuous text. For the marginalia and function texts Foundry Sans by David Quay and Freda Sack is used in a reduced size. The type design is differentiated and, despite the considerable density, can be read with comfort. The strict basic modulor is never a shackle but rather a support for an open book design that makes skilful used of the white area. The book core, which is worked through from the smallest detail to the large scale, is produced in excellent lithographic and print technique and finished and bound in a bibliophile manner. The book core is packed in a newly developed concept for the full linen front and back endpapers and in a dust jacket that can be “worn” on either side. It shows a photographic winter or summer motif from the Lech area, both of the same size.

rattata – thea – arte – hehe … one day people in the town of St. Gallen were confronted by strange words on billboards. Observers soon deciphered the image as an anagram of the word “Theater”. Reinhard Gassner and Sigi Ramoser created this production as advertising for the new season of the Stadttheater St. Gallen. The elements of the game on the billboards were individual screen-printed letters that make up the word ‘Theater’.

Egg is the name of a small town in the Bregenzerwald, a region with a beautiful mountainous landscape in western Austria. In 2004 the local theatre association organised an international theatre festival. The play of words with the town name Egg and the English word “egg” offered the starting point for a visual game with a figure and an eggshell. In many applications, both analogue and digital, this pair of protagonists repeatedly carried out new tricks. Information fan decks and posters were important stages for successful productions of the ‘egg-shaped’ corporate design program.

Something that cannot be printed in offset, nine colours over each other in full tone. Displacing the font weight to one side, the capital letters of the word “KONZEPT” are printed on top of each other in a series of printing processes. The result is a concentrated density at the centre of the word and very beautiful tones produced by the shades of grey printed over each other. The image is both image and word; it serves as a poster subject for the exhibition of the Vorarlberg artists‘association: “KONZEPT 1” and, one year later, “KONZEPT 2”.

Working together with Sigi Ramoser Reinhard Gassner created posters and cards for the Vorarlberg paper trade that featured wet-impressed utensils found in the specialist stationer‘s. The posters were used as decoration in the windows of stationery shops, the card were sold or given away. The direct relationship between the tools and the stationery produced the advertising message desired, without the need for many words.

From 1997 to 1999 Reinhard Gassner designed the posters for productions by the Vorarlberg Landestheater. As the concluding work of this era a special poster was displayed at the theatre‘s main venues. Gassner chose 4 poster subjects, printed these and the words in their titles over each other in offset, apparently arbitrarily. The result was a collage with a surprisingly spatial effect and a striking impulse for the creative work of the theatrical season that was coming to a close. The subjects chosen were: The Lonely Road, The Taming of the Shrew, Die Liebe in Madagaskar and Nathan the Wise.

Incised illustrations drawn with a thick pencil, painted with inks and made directly on offset panels are one of Reinhard Gassner’s favourite areas of experimentation. He is interested in the analogous, the direct, the same size. Editions of 1000 and more represent no problem for printable works on panels: the erosion caused by abrasion is intentional and very much desired. In mixed forms Gassner often connects these lithographic approaches with standard offset printing through which static elements such as lettering or logos are introduced.