Publication »ART AND DESIGN« Magazine China, 096 2007/12 »I think, we derive the coining information for our perception from the meaning and the significance of things. Visually we derive them from the visible, from the surfaces – I mean surfaces in the broadest sense. By this I mean views, shapes, perspectives, types, visual relations, colours, sharp and unsharp. We cannot look at things without asking and searching for semantics. This is an essential difference between our perception and artificial intelligence. Already Kant said ‘We create the world by looking at it’. A more abstract surface is the image of a company. Visually, it is coined by the corporate design, audibly by the verbal communication, especially by the company name. For my work the narrative has proved to be the most important criterion – both visually and verbally. With this I mean not the open statements but the hidden effects of words and images. This effect was well described by Elias Canetti as the ‘acoustic mask of the word’. It means exactly the interaction of sound and image. And we can use this in our work by creating typography, posters, books, logotypes or whatever you want.« Reinhard Gassner Trained as reprophotographer Reinhard Gassner continued his professional education and graphic art training at the studio of his brother, Franz Gassner, MA. He attended various design seminars and began his professional career working for different advertising agencies. With his wife Ruth, he established his own studio in 1976. Since 1988 he has taken part in various international exhibitions. Gassner was awarded several prizes not only for his poster design but also for his corporate and book designs. His main interest is in the semiotics of visual and verbal communication. From 1996 to 1999 Reinhard Gassner was external consultant and design head of the degree programme InterMedia at Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences. text – for some years he has practiced phonographic phenomena with the simple word. »The t at the beginning is pronounced differently from the t at the end of the word. At first it speeds up even borrows an aspirated h and then it stops with a rather dry final sound. Between the x and the t there is a sharp voiceless s. The e in itself is a letter with many sound hues. The typefaces, which arise from the different fonts, tell us a lot of different stories: for example the loud laughing e, the shyly smiling e or a sneering, or a grinning e.« Reinhard Gassner Visual narrative in Corporate Design european wood initiative – The aim of this new co-operation is the common wood promotion in Asia. Gassner concentrate on the generally understandable word wood and the metamorphosis of the double o into the infinity symbol; from this the logotype derives its semiotic and characteristic meanings. The infinity symbol, also lemniscate (Greek for ribbon) - algebraic curve - horizontal figure-of-eight. According to tradition the lemniscate is the sign for the cycle of being; The lemniscate is symbolically the cycle from matter to space und back to matter - a dignified symbol of living beings such as plants, forest, wood and everything that can be created from them. Looked at the logo in motion or in small sizes, the lemniscate again turns into the letters double o. nu – task was to create a name and a corporate design for a software company. The idea behind it was the double strategy of the company – on the one hand the high technology Content Management System and on the other hand creative but standardised software solutions. In a workshop with the customer Gassner agreed on a freely invented onomatopoetic name. The solution was only two letters, actually only one letter shape, once in the standard position and once upside down. nu – n and u certainly not u and n – namely the prefix »un-« – which would have a much more negative connotation. »... in the dynamics and the synergy of letters, there are many meanings« RG; nu is something like an acoustic pictogram. This has something to do with the fact that the name is at the same time familiar and unfamiliar. It is so short that it can hardly be an abbreviation, but thematizes the aspect of two. In the logotype Gassner has characterized this aspect by turning the letters – and by composing two different colours. Jazz - a Logo, it arose from a poster, which Gassner designed for a jazz club in 1978. It‘s a transformation from a mustard tube to a saxophone and tells us a story of jazz sounds, which are pressed, breathed or roared out of a saxophone, whatever you see or hear in this image. Today this image is used as a key visual and a logo of this club and for many applications, like this poster. 2©©© – Together with other designers Gassner was invited to design a poster on the turn of the millennium for the Goethe-Institut in Santiago de Chile. His image idea is derived from a statement by Jan Tschichold. Among other things he said on the typographic subject of centred line: »Imagine Jesus without a centre parting, a middle parting«. When saints or holy things are presented we meet the circle in the form of a halo and the emphasis on the centred mode as a sign of uniqueness and credibility. The basis for Gassners design was a well known Russian icon with the holy face of Jesus. He modified this picture by changing the centre parting and the direction of the eyes. The number 2000 was visualised via the Roman figure hidden in copyright signs (The c contains the Roman figure for one hundred) and he wanted to show the new century without a halo, without a circle. »I‘m not really opposed to the centred line but I think we have to interrupt it. Centred modes without any interruptions, without any interventions are a little bit bombastic and at the same time boring. And by the way I don‘t always want to be fixed by the looks of Jesus.« RG Mohammed Jesus – a printing collage, which Gassner edited at Easter of 2003 on the occasion of the beginning of the war in Iraq. The two names Mohammed and Jesus stand for the first name and the surname of one and the same person. These are the names for well-known icons of creeds with imperial claims. The war and the evil are already contained in the belief that only their own prophet can be the true one. The conflict it visualised typographically in the Latin and Arabic scripts in the two opposite directions. The four poster motives printed one over the other result in a condensed image synergy with broad connotation: the back of the wasp for aggression, the sleeping face for passivity, the baroque angel for bombast and complacent God-consciousness, Star of David, Cross and Crescent for the marketing of confessions by means of brands. Over this 8-colour offset print Gassner used silk screen print for the two names Mohammed and Jesus. The finished poster has some explosive power and visually tells us about chaos and fights. »Posters are especially good for visual narratives and for interaction with the viewer. They are small stages with a very short playtime, but very interesting actors.« Reinhard Gassner Visual narrative in Book Design Constructive Provocation – an exhibition about the contemporary architecture in Vorarlberg, organized at the French Architecture Institute in Paris. The task was to create the exhibition catalogue. The title shows a scribble by the author concerning the interwoven relations of the scene. Inside the cover Gassner tell this story more exactly with the tools of information design, actually with a synchronopsis – a time line with several developments. Besides some short texts Gassner wanted to make the pictures tell something about the development of our little country and so we have selected three image levels for that purpose. First – a visual essay about the country and its inhabitants in black and white photography. Second – the presentation of contemporary architecture in Vorarlberg with pictures, that tell us something about architectural neighbourhoods and relations. Third – information design with narrative and sometimes also ironic contents. Here you can see the country where Gassner lives. Vorarlberg is practically in the centre of Europe in the west of Austria bordering on Germany, Switzerland and Italy. In his graphic design he show for example the altitude line from Paris to Vienna – from the Eifel Tower via the Alps to the St. Stephan‘s Cathedral – the settlement densities of Paris and Vorarlberg – aspects of traffic and public transport, and for example the fact that in Vorarlberg there are almost as many cows as guest beds. Architecture Guide – This book is part of a series of architecture guides, which we made for different Austrian federal provinces (Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Carinthia so far). The contents are splitted in regions. The beginning of the individual chapters shows bird’s-eye views with photos and special cartography. With only two numbers, one for the region and one for the respective object, we achieve a good user guidance. The object pages have a compact design. The small handy format needs exact typography and print quality. Just now, a new volume is being presented. It is about the eastern most province of Austria, the Burgenland; ..[westungarn]... in this case with three languages – German, Hungarian, Croatian. The Mute Eye – an exhibition catalogue for the architectural photographer Ignacio Martínez. He wanted to show pictures without any text. The title shows a very much enlarged shadow of his father on the Spanish earth. When you open the book you first see black and white pages. Only after unfolding the pages the contents are disclosed. They are picture combinations with 3 photos each. The relations of shape and form of the picture combinations are important, not the objects themselves. The 3 pictures, called tryptichons, remain without any texts. The required information can be found in the visual narrative illustrations at the end of the book. In these illustrations is shown the most important photographic lines of the tryptichons and in this way Gassner told something about the formal aspects and at the same time he made the connections with the individual items of picture information. Zuschnitt – a magazine with wood as material and architecture with wood. In the visual design of the magazine Gassner has developed a communicative almost bibliophile style. The message is information and not promotion. As an example the issue »wood in the language« – one of the 28 editions so far. In this case an architecture magazine without any pictures. It is just the other way round, the images are in the contents and in the typography: Pinocchio‘s nose, a wood-grain consisting of hundreds of different wood names, and so on. Also in the title Gassner avoid pictures and use a wooden printing block for a simple red square surface printed in analogue letter press printing – you should really feel the structure. Holzspektrum – Bookdesign (2006) for a wood pattern book in nearly perfect facsimile technology for different kinds of wood surfaces. Consistently, the book presents the respective woods on double spread pages. On the right side a holohedral depiction of the wood species without any text, on the left side there are interesting descriptions and deliberately coy illustrations of the silhouette of the trees, the leaves and the form of the fruits. In 2007, the book was awarded as one of the most beautiful books in the world. A narrative, witty, chatting, and a tell-tale typography. anagram – a work for large glass surfaces in a community building. Gassner suggested puns with anagrams. The word anagram comes from Greek anagraphein and means something like describe or re-write. A short text – say with 3 words – forms the letter basis for new word creations and combinations. Of course, the plays on words are nonsense, but it is fun to follow the transformations and find new and surprising types of contents. Totally there are more than 3500 transformations in more than 100 text columns with almost 80000 letters. Kiel – International competition for the corporate design of the world’s biggest sailing event. As one of five designer teams Gassner was invited to take part in this competition. The idea is: The »i« of »Kiel« becomes »KIEL« (which is German for keel) and dives below the water surface together with a part of the word. In the bilge the ship’s energy is accumulated; in Gassners design the leading part of the communicative scenario has been assigned to this point. »We also have to trust the silence effects in graphic design and the slowness in communication. We do not always need noise and visual fast food as a viewer or consumer of information.« Reinhard Gassner The work of the Studio Gassner is characterised through both, its professional breadth and depth. The work orients itself consistently on the requirements of the customers. Besides Reinhard Gassner, the team consists of five more employees and and temporarily hired professionals for specific tasks within the field of visual and verbal communications. Significant for Gassners design work are the semiotic and semantic aspects. »These aspects are in the small and big things, in micro and macro typography, in pictures and words, in colours and materials and they influence our perception. Think, as graphic designers we have to be sure that communication is our aim, our product. We have to design dialogues not monologues. We have to create interactions not one-way streets. If I speak about interaction between the viewer and our work we have to take him as an emancipated partner not as – let‘s say – a stupid consumer. And you can involve the audience with good visual narratives, also with mysteries and omissions like blank spaces. A good way to do that is to tell stories with pictures and create pictures in typography.« Reinhard Gassner

Put quite simply: a poster is an oversized piece of print material that is fixed or “posted” at several different places in public space and carries a specific client’s message. A good poster is not overly assertive – in the sense of superficial or with an offensive primitiveness that knocks you flat, even when you only look at it briefly. A good poster is one that doesn’t get on your nerves but delights you, makes you want to have more; something that attracts you to look at it one more time. A good poster allows you enter it, creates space for imagination through deliberate visual irritations and through a balance between visual wit and content. A good poster is, therefore, precisely the opposite of over-assertive; it is differentiated, comprehensive and complex. A poster is not a rigid, static image but a scene that happens in a flash. The passers-by on the street are the auditorium, the stage is the surface of the poster, and the actors are the colours, forms, images and text. The most frequent mistake is to attempt to make everything visible all at once. Good posters derive their strength from concentrating on a strong basic effect and then gradually conveying other messages. And they live from the fact that, through good design, a special visual tone is achieved that appears attractive, not repulsive, striking and narrative, not annoying. The end of the poster as a medium has often been announced. Yet today it is, once more, experiencing a revival among young people. This may be due to the new flexibility of economical digital printing techniques or through its presence and analogous existence in times of digital obfuscation and virtual placelessness. And, you cannot simply switch off a poster – it remains there until it is removed or something else is pasted over it. Reinhard Gassner

Dornbirn separated itself from the old Postbus as early as 1991 and developed a “luxury bus line” as an individual solution. In fact from the very start this idea was conceived on a wider scale and ultimately was implemented throughout Vorarlberg. It was around the beginning of 1991 when Dornbirn town planner Markus Aberer asked me whether I would like to take part in a competition for the design of the public appearance of a new “Dornbirn City Bus”. After reflecting for a short while, although the commission would have greatly interested me, I had to refuse the invitation due to other commitments. The aim of the competition was to find an overall design approach – bus, bus-stops, guidance system, corporate design and communication design. Dornbirn was confronted with the problem of a constantly growing amount of private traffic. The Postbus was the only available form of local public transport available in the greater urban area. But for many people this bus was not a real option and was regarded, at best, as a necessary evil. The vehicles in the typical yellow and orange Postbus design, the ubiquitous “H- wedge”, the stops, the timetables… everything looked outdated and not particularly attractive. The municipal administration took up this matter, examined the question of who should operate the service, examined new technologies, using current product criteria for local public transportation and considering local opportunities and needs. Before the competition itself a student competition was held in conjunction with the Schule für Gestaltung Zurich. Consequently, the town was well prepared to hold a professional competition. At the end of 1991 I followed the implementation of the new “Dornbirn City Bus” with great interest. The competition was won by a team of two experienced Vorarlberg designers: graphic designer Reinhold Luger and architect Wolfgang Ritsch. The new bus was presented as “luxury bus line”. This had absolutely nothing to do with the old Postbus as we knew it, but also not with a touring coach with all the usual kitsch. It was more like a private car: modern bodywork – the powerful red paintwork edged above and below in anthracite, large, dark band windows, restrained lettering, inside elegant shades of grey, functional seating with lovely fabrics and finishes. The most spectacular aspect, however, was the chassis of the so-called “low-floor bus”, which can lower itself slightly towards the passenger and has two entrance and exit doors. This was something that people knew, if at all, only from airport buses. In connection with a slightly raised pavement area it made barrier-free boarding possible and 20 years ago that was, at least in our part of the world, something completely new for a public bus. The stop had a surprisingly modern bus shelter transparently built of steel and glass, with restrained lighting and fittings. The plain, slender columns indicating the stop were also most striking. The visual appearance was determined by the severe typographical design in a sans-serif New Helvetica. The use was consistent and geared for the future – which is something that can be better judged today. The buses, bus-stops and the means of communication were all committed to good contemporary form. Dornbirn had its own bus system for local public transportation, a functional timetable, a bus station and a dense network of stops at a high urban design level. Advertising and user guidance were based on modern visual communications. Through its temporal and spatial presence the “Dornbirn City Bus” shaped the image of Dornbirn – the town became a city. The concern was not simply a packaged mobility service but an image and identity, a striking architectural and urban design pattern. The new bus in Dornbirn was talked about throughout Vorarlberg. As well as the improvement to the service that resulted from more modern vehicles and more user-friendly intervals, bus and stops were now perceived as image-enhancing and identity-building elements. Hardly surprising: the stops positioned at busy locations and the buses that travel along main traffic arteries offer unbelievable opportunities for contacts in public space. It is not by chance that they are so often misused for advertising. But not in Dornbirn. The new buses and stops were kept free of advertising, or advertised just themselves. They said: we are Dornbirn, a city with a modern bus system that is “our bus”. This message, constantly repeated through its public presence, supported a feeling of community and belonging throughout the entire city. In the competition between the various towns and cities of Vorarlberg this was a clear plus. These towns were already working on their own concepts: in 1992 Feldkirch commissioned our studio to design a public appearance for the Feldkirch city bus. The commission went clearly in the direction of city marketing and was conceived as an answer to the pressure of competition from Dornbirn. We developed design solutions with a strong connection to Feldkirch in terms of colour and typography. Around the same time we received an enquiry about designing the appearance for a new “Vorderland Country Bus”. This made me somewhat uneasy and mistrustful. I made enquiries which confirmed that several towns and associations of local authorities were engaged in designing their own bus systems and commissioning designers to produce further “island or isolated solutions”. I called up the deputy Governor and later Governor Sausgruber, who had an open ear for my reservations about this matter. Naturally, such an initiative was the responsibility of the individual communities but it needed to be linked and, in the medium-term, connected to form a transportation system throughout the province. In my opinion the need for a uniform appearance had been overlooked at the start, but even without my intervention it would certainly soon have been recognized. For me the question of what should happen with the well-established appearance of Dornbirn city bus was quickly answered. I proposed that all individual design proposals should be withdrawn and that the Dornbirn concept should be employed to generate an appearance that could be used throughout the province. The design solution in Dornbirn had the potential for supra-regional use. In fact I learned only later that, from the very start, the designers had taken into account the fact that the system might one day be used throughout the province. Those in positions of responsibility reacted positively and rapidly. The province acquired the rights to the architectural elements from Wolfgang Ritsch. Nolde Luger transformed the logotype using different names for other towns and regions and differentiated the various applications through individual colour schemes. Bludenz, for instance, has green, Feldkirch a rich yellow, Dornbirn the powerful red and Bregenz blue as the basic colour for the paintwork of the buses and the directional system. These colours are generally also corporate design elements for the respective towns. For the regions between the towns lemon yellow was used as a uniform colour, and Landbus (country bus) was added to the name, rather than Stadtbus (city bus). The “touchability” of a good form has nothing to do with lofty detachment. It is there as something that can be experienced and accepted, with a human scale. In the city and country bus system it was realized consistently. The modern line buses and the stops with the information columns soon became a familiar sight in the region. The stops work equally well as freestanding elements in the landscape and in inner-city areas. The harmonized colours used for the vehicles, columns and the graphic design of the timetables help to guide users in a highly efficient way. The sizeable state subsidy for the operation of the buses is tied to the requirement for the individual communal bus operators to observe all constraints with regard to the general appearance. To the present day this has served as a guarantee for uniformity and consistency. Unfortunately, this does not apply to the bus shelters and consequently in some place less than satisfactory shelters are encountered. These were erected by poster companies which save the local authorities the entire cost of building and maintaining the shelters and in return receive the proceeds from renting the advertising surfaces in them. For those in positions of responsibility in Feldkirch and Vorderland I worked out what renting areas for posters or placing advertising at the usual rates would cost the bus companies compared to using the buses and stops as an advertising medium for their own services. Further important arguments against “special solutions” of the kind outlined above are the damage to values that result from having outside advertising on communal vehicles and waiting areas and the opportunities to shape the appearance of a place that are lost by allowing an architecture that is alien to the system. The bus system used throughout the region has remained largely free from outside advertising – to the present day. The completely unexpected increase in the number of passengers – in Dornbirn, for example, the figure rose from 2.6 million in 1991 to 5.2 million passengers in 2011, i.e. around 100% – is naturally not due solely to the good form. There are certainly other important factors, which I register less as a visual designer and more as a consumer: the organization of a Vorarlberg transport and tariff association, giving priority to buses in traffic planning and the continuously improved and self-communicating service. In Dornbirn alone, a city with a population of 46,000, today there are 20 line buses, most of which run at ¼ hourly intervals and serve 240 stops – 42 of which have bus shelters. The Dornbirn city bus provided the decisive impulse for the system of bus routes throughout the province. Thanks to the vision of people in positions of responsibility and to the advantage of all a service and design originally planned at a local level could be used supra-regionally and developed further. As a result the province and the communities obtained a modern public transportation service and at the same a strong, connecting building block for the construction of an image. Reinhard Gassner

The main visual protagonist of corporate design is the logo or the logotype. This is a sign or symbolic depiction reduced to essentials, which is tied to a certain identity. For the effectiveness of an image or word and image brand, its concision and semiotic accuracy are of decisive importance. A comprehensive CD programme includes further elements such as typography, colours, palette of substrates, design grid, editorial and image concept as the formal “rules of the game”. A visual appearance first achieves an effect that creates identity and shapes an image through the creative interpretation and consistent application. We are not aware of it but in fact we constantly bathe in a sea of the meanings of images and things. They are present in signs, forms, sounds, spaces, and they influence our perception. These are the things graphic designers deal with in their profession. Generally, in one’s work one attempts to cultivate the beautiful or at least the interesting. What is referred to here is not kitsch or visual frenzy but far more the delicate tones of gradually increasing, emphasising something: swelling, brilliance and contrasts, the repetition of constructive and symbolic forms – for instance the wings in many symbols or the central axis as a design principle (national coats-of-arms, McDonald’s logo, images of angels…). The right scale is rarely found. Exaggerations are counter-productive. The following thought has been handed down to us from the ancient Greek thinker Longinus : “…in general bombast seems to be one of the failings that it is hardest to avoid. For, out of fear of being described as feeble or anaemic, all who strive for greatness tend somehow or other to make this mistake.”

For the turn of the year 1980 Atelier Gassner started an edition on the theme of the development of lettering and alphabets. Traces of lettering, in many cases researched at the original locations, were edited as annual gifts, produced in limited editions and in different forms of presentation. From 2010 Gassner Redolfi KG has continued this edition in an expanded sense using typefaces and their visual significance. 1980/81 Mesopotamia – cuneiform script of the Sumerians, clay tablet 1981/82 Egypt – hieroglyphics, screen print, water-coloured 1982/83 Syria – alphabet of the Phoenicians, gold foil embossing 1983/84 South America – Maya alphabet, jaguar head as plaster relief 1984/85 Tibet – original calligraphy by Geshe Thubten 1985/86 China – original calligraphy 1986/87 Germany – Gutenberg’s characters, wooden numbers, book printing 1987/88 Armenia – year as ceramic piece 1988/89 Persia – Pehlevi lettering, seasonal greeting and drawings by Iranian children 1989/90 Central America – Zouche Nuttal Codex – Mixtec pictography 1990/91 Armenian alphabet – by Franz Gassner, embossing 1991/92 Japan – original calligraphy by Mitsue Kono, scroll 1992/93 Greece – alphabet ODOS, enamel tablet and leporello (folded booklet) 1993/94 Africa – lettering of the Tuareg, wet-impressed in handmade paper 1994/95 North Germania – Viking runes, beech rod and leporello (folded booklet) 1995/96 Slovakia – Cyrillic alphabet, post-cards in booklet 1996/97 Sinai – Arabicsalphabet, Nivea, “The Blue Tin from the Red Sea...” 1997/98 America – Morse- alphabet, Morse strips 1998/99 China – Pa-kwa writing, I-Ging, folded poster on India paper 1999/00 Occident – ©, Jesus without centre parting, poster 2000/01 England – SMS “WOT R U TRYNG 2 SAY?” TypoGraphic 56, book-/offset printing 2001/02 Arabia –zero, al-sifr, the greatest nothing, embossing 2002/03 Arabia Mohammed Jesus – poster made at the start of the Iraq War 2003/04 Turkey – Turkish alphabet, poster with a poem by Kundeyt Şurdum 2004/05 Armenia – Georgian/Armenian alphabet in newspaper format 2005/06 Syria – the first alphabet, photo-poster, Umayyaden Mosque Damascus 2006/07 America – “Segoe” from Windows Vista, email 2007/08 Middle East, Caucasus – “Du bist keine Fremde hier in Kalimera”, book about 7 journeys 2008/09 Israel – “Schalom” 2009/10 Tokyo – keep on swinging... 2010/11 GASSNER REDOLFI KG – portrait with punctuation marks

Reinhard Gassner used poster motifs to make a print that relates to the chaos of war in former Yugoslavia. The subjects, sketched directly as an illustration on offset panels, were printed over each other so often that the aesthetic of a ‘bold misprint’ was created. Instead of the titles of theatre pieces the two names ‘Mohammed’ and ‘Jesus’ are placed together like the first name and surname of one and the same person; well-known icons of creeds with imperial aspirations are named. The war and evil lies essentially in the belief that only one prophet can be the true one. The conflict is visualised typographically through the use of the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.

Do you know who invented the copyright symbol? Reinhard Gassner was unable to find this out. Whatever the case; it contains the Roman number 100. Around the ‘C’ there is a circle that you could also call a halo. Along with 30 other German-speaking designers Gassner was invited to design a poster for the Goethe Institut in Santiago de Chile to mark the start of the new millennium. The visual idea is derived from a remark made by Jan Tschichold; about the theme of the centre axis he said: imagine Jesus without a centre parting. In the representation of saints we encounter the circle as a halo and the emphasis of the centre axis as a sign of uniqueness and credibility. As the model for the design a well-known Russian icon with the sacred face is used. The intervention in the image is restricted to changing the centre parting and the direction of the gaze and visually addressing the zeros of the year 2000, which were still unfamiliar at the time – packed in the copyright symbol; the new century without a halo.

“Neue Architektur in Österreich” (New Architecture in Austria) forms part of a series of architecture guides. Gasser Redolfi KG already collaborated on the earlier volumes covering Vorarlberg, Carinthia and Tyrol. The content is divided up into regions; the start to each chapter contains large photographs – scenographic views or bird’s eye perspectives, introductory texts and maps showing the locations of the buildings. As only two numbers are employed, one for the region and one for the respective building, the book can be used very easily by readers. The pages on the buildings are designed in a very compact way. The small, convenient format requires exact typography and high reproduction quality in print. In the first edition the architecture guide also covers the neighbouring region of western Hungary and is trilingual – German, Hungarian and Croatian.

This book serves as the exhibition catalogue for architecture photographer Ignacio Martinez. His aim is to show pictures without text, hence the title “Der stumme Blick” (The Silent Gaze). The image on the cover shows a much enlarged shadow of the photographer’s father cast on Spanish ground. In the book the pictures are combined in groups of three. For Ignacio Martinez the formal relationships between the photos are important, and not so much the buildings themselves. When you first open the book it is black and white. The content is revealed only when you open out the folded pages. The groups of three photos – the triptychs - are not accompanied by any text. The relevant facts are to be found in the information graphics in the appendix. In an overview the most important photographic lines are shown and something about the formal aspects is conveyed; at the same time this approach also allows the editorial information about the pictures to be correctly ascribed.

The publication “vis!on rheintal Dokumentation 2006”, which was issued by the State of Vorarlberg and 29 municipalities in the Rheintal, documents the results of a two-year work process and is intended to provide stimuli and to function as a reference work for the further development and implementation of the Vision Rheintal. The informative cartographic view extends through the publication like a red thread. The consistently pragmatic design was provided by the design office grafiksg - Stefan Gassner as project leader in collaboration with Gassner Redolfi KG. The printers Höfle in Dornbirn were responsible for the high-quality reproduction and printing.