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.

It seems that for my generation religion is no longer relevant. It is curious, however, that, by taking various detours, the world of religious images appears to return to us in the areas of commerce and consumption. This is an interesting phenomenon. For me the quintessence of a religious conceptual world is paradise. In paradise things happen that we cannot see or prove and a considerable amount of pathos is attached to everything paradisiacal. This pathos is also found in ritual, in the architecture of religion and in the image of God. The priest’s vestments, the politician’s clothing, the chambers of bishops and presidents, the palaces of popes and bosses are always exaggeratedly beautiful and always symbolize the same: glitter and glory. I am interested in the kinds of visual means and values that are used to convey ownership, wealth, power and glory. The signs and the symbols of the church have a real effect on us; they direct our feelings and move us towards devotion or rejection. I often experience a feeling of awe or reverence when I enter a church. A beautiful cultural building or a proud government building also convey something sublime. Looked at more closely both of these are visual languages, one is the language of religion, the other of capital; they are similar to each other and yet different. They influence us in a way that we generally do not consciously grasp. In my research I discovered many similarities in the way the divine and wealth are represented. The church and capital often work with the same means – the holy is commercialised and the market is deified. Christ’s efforts to drive the money-changers out of the table were in vain. Religion employs the means of marketing and advertising. And vice-versa: advertising makes use of religious images and also promises salvation and ecstasy. My work led me to reflect further about the theme of religion and money. Religion gives my life a transcendental dimension – a kind of dream world which is in an open relationship to the idea of God. I discovered a number of differences between the conceptual world of the divine that exists here in Holland and the one I am familiar with. Exploring these in depth is work for an academic, not for a visual designer. For my theme the following aspect seems important: the idea of God here in Holland is shaped by the Reformation and Calvinism and produces a more rational, flatter and more text oriented image – as a result the aspect of mystery is reduced or even eliminated. In contrast the Austrian conceptual world of the divine is influenced by the Counter-Reformation and the Baroque. This produced an absolute world, a sublime image of God – God is above everything. The goal of the project Using a number of short illustrated stories my aim is to show a number of relationships between religious and material values. The intention is to question the self-evident nature of certain visual values, schemes and concepts. Separation and connection of two languages Otl Aicher writes about the connection of religious and profane images: because Latin, the international language of the church, could not be understood by lay Europeans, religious truths were explained to them through iconographically standardised images. However, a radical increase in density and a simplification of the iconographic depictions that made them into pictograms emerged only at the start of the 20th century. At that time religious visual language communicated the global language of the Christian world; today it is pictograms, signs and symbols that direct and shape us. In my visual work I attempt to relate these two languages to each other. The aim is to bring about a direct encounter between images of religion and images of the present-day world. One characteristic of religions is their strongly spiritual conceptual world made up of ideas, images and regulations on the ways in which these should be used. I wish to connect these images with the pictogram language of today. This is an encounter between very different but equally striking signs and symbols. I began my research playfully and semiotically. I transformed various symbols and their values with regard to the themes of money and religion. I tried to contrast the visual worlds of religion and of money with each other. I visited two casinos and two churches, interviewed representatives of each and compared the impressions and statements in the context of my theme. After this I looked for a place where both worlds are connected. I visited an exhibition where you could admire and buy all imaginable kinds of religious products. I felt there how strongly commercialized religion is. This experience and my research work on religious catalogues in the Internet led me to reflect on the values of religion and ultimately brought me to the contents of my graduation thesis. Conclusion God is dead, the glitter and glory continue, but other showplaces. The “corporate design” of God changes its medium and is now used to clothe a commercial, materialistic world. Consumption does not fill the gaps and the emptiness. Personal details · motivation I grew up in a family of designers in Vorarlberg in western Austria. Today I know that living in a beautiful green setting surrounded by mountains strongly influenced me. As a child fantasy and dreams played an important role. My father often took me with him to his graphic design studio where I spent the time painting. At the age of fifteen I decided to attend the Schule für Gestaltung in St. Gallen (CH). During the five years of study I became familiar with the “Swiss Style” of design. Design in Switzerland is reduced and precise. I found Dutch design in contrast somewhat more open and free. This contrast also gave me a reason to further develop my design work and thinking in Holland. I sought a certain distance from my family so that I could develop and foster my own identity. Here in Holland I changed the way I looked at my home. © Andrea Redolfi