Fount #2
For our latest look at page 23 of a magazine, we’ve selected the second issue of Berlin-based Fount.
This smart-looking design magazine splits itself into two distinct parts. The centre section contains a broad selection of creatively orientated and intelligent articles. With subjects ranging from migration to emojis via cyber security and multilingual typography, it would be wrong to describe these pages as ordinary, but they are the more routinely magazine-like part of the publication.
Page 23 falls in the opening 30-page section, that, like the final 30 pages, consists of a series of mash-ups; one group of artists/designers have been briefed to create a response to the word ‘Connect,’ then a response is created to each of those initial pieces by another artist. This makes for a lively and original visual mix of material, some inevitably stronger then others, but always with plenty to consider and take in.
Page 23 has work no12, a monochrome illustration by Sebastian Konig of a group of young people drinking coffee in a McCafé (top). Turn over to page 25 and for piece 12.1 Renata Britvec has responded to the artwork with a lengthy piece of writing (above) that uses the choice between drinking coffee at a McCafé or a ‘whimsical place just around the corner from the office where bearded men in lumberjack shirtswearing wood-framed glasses sell steaming Americanos for five Euros a cup…’ as the starting point for a treatise on spontaneity and freedom.
Most of the initial pieces and their responses are visual, it is atypical to have a written response. But it is typical of the scope for these mash-ups – they make a really intriguing series of call and responses that establish Fount as a very special design publication.
