The original Orpheus Typeface design by Walter Tiemann (1926-1928, Klingspor) was certainly a masterpiece. Unfortunately, like so many typefaces of that between-wars era, it got overlooked when type technology changed over to film, and once again when digital type came around. But during the decade or so when it was available on the metal type market, it was quite popular in Germany. 

Tiemann was already famous for having an incomparable instinct for the construct and proportions of classic Roman caps, something that shows in spades here, but the surprising genius of Orpheus at the time was how it managed to seamlessly combine an expert vision of the traditional empire caps with a lowercase that showcases a very fine and precise infusion of that efficient rhythm of modern minimalism that was all the rage in Germany at the time, which of course lives on to this very day.

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up & get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part & a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you." ~ Chuck Close

click me or I'll smack you ...

A native of London, England Daniel Eatock studied at the Ravensbourne College before earning an MA from the Royal College of Art. Upon completion of his degree he immediately started working for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since then he has worked for many clients on a wide array of types of projects including graphic design, identity work, furniture design and many others in what could be called a hybrid practice. 

There were several iterations of his current company including the design section of the London-based ad agency BoyMeetsGirl and an informal collaboration with Sam Solhaug called Fonudation 33. He currently operates independently under the company name Eatock, Ltd., and is still located in London. Princeton Architectural Press published his first monograph in 2008 entitled Imprint(image above is from the cover of the book).

Eatock worked together with Jeffrey Vaska to create a web application through which he catalogues his work as his career evolves. He then made it public for anyone to use and there has been a community established to promote its use and development. This site is built using that application (with a few extras), Indexhibit.

An independent graphic design studio, Experimental Jetset is made up of only three people, Marieke Stolk, Danny van den Dungen and Erwin Brinkers. All three members are graduates of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, located in Amsterdam, and have been collaborating since right after their graduation. While their influences are wide-ranging and varied, their aesthetic is closely related to that of the Modernist movement. The resemblance is reinforced by their use of Helvetica, implemented on nearly every one of their projects, as well as their often monochromatic color palette. They have worked with director Gary Hustwit on both of his documentaries,Helvetica and Objectified.