Studio Temp

This is a draft from my upcoming book on the new minimalist, brutalist and modernist typographies.

All images courtesy Studio Temp

One can trace the development of the new typography in looking at the work of Studio Temp. The Italian graphic designers’ early works were classic examples of the new modernist information tech best exemplified by Build. The publication A/B (2007) explores the role of music in the designers’ lives by contrasting Top 40 pop hits with their “B-Side”, the music they were listening to. The real point of the project though, is to use the songs as a jumping off point for their Helvetica Neue-driven information design. Every bit of information that can be extrapolated is used from the year the song was released to the era (Anno Domini, in case you forgot). 12/13 (2007) documents a period of workshop activity over the course of a year, but hinges largely on an “animation” of the main content—a block of type consisting of dates, locations and credits. This block reveals more and more of itself through-out the book and becomes a metaphor for the work completed. These works, with their hyper-detailed level of information helped Temp to hone the level of craft and restraint that would define their later works.

The designers explored a more pluralist aesthetic while gradually shedding the “information ornamentation” over the course of a couple years. CTRL Magazine (2009) retains their attention to detail and typographic hierarchy but is marked by a more eccentric use of typefaces and lay-outs that tend to fill the pages from edge to edge. The newspaper-sized publications Peep-Hole Sheet (2009) are even more stripped-down but might be their boldest work. Each issue consists of writing by a single artist and the sheer scale seems to be something of a homage to that artist. White and neon-colored papers alternate the design making just as dramatic a shift as the color. The simple text-heavy center sheet is framed by two all but blank pages with the artists’ name. The effect is both dramatic and tasteful.

Their work for the group exhibition The Fear Society mines some of the same territory as CTRL—the use of centered type, idiosyncratic fonts and a bold brutalism, but there is also the interesting handling of photography which is informally cast about the pages. In some ways it feels as though the previous informational-detailing of A/B or 12/13 has given way to using photography in a similar fashion. This is not to say that those gestures are completely gone, but what was once an almost ornamental use of typography is now more obvious. The Fear Society catalog has a running indicia indicating the section that you’re reading which in earlier works would have likely been set at 8 point.

I could be way off-base but I feel that as Studio Temp have shed the more recognizably “Modernist” gestures their work has become more “Italian” (in the same way that the work of YES or Hudson-Powell seem undeniably “British”, as if there were something in the water or DNA.). Both the their typefaces and lay-outs look like a stripped-down, tightened up Art Deco typography. Perhaps similiar to Jan Tschichold’s work when he returned to classical typography after making his name as a pioneer of the New Typography—all those years spent investigating new forms and more complex structures meant that he could never “return” to classical typography only invent a new one.

Tagged as: frs, graphic design, studio temp, typography