Atelier Jérôme Knebusch
Mainzer Landstraße 105
60329 Frankfurt am Main
jk [at] jeromeknebusch.net
+49 69 15 61 60 23

Triennals, prefiguration event of the Luxembourg young contemporary art triennale, with former triennale participants. Custom single-typeface and 'ongoing' visual identity which will evolve in the Brave New World Order identity of the triennale held one year later. See this website for more.

Title
Triennials
Date
2020
Type
Visual identity, Editorial design
Client
Rotondes, Casino Luxembourg
Place
Luxembourg City
Material
Pamphlet, animations

Triennials, visual identity & custom typeface, Rotondes, Cercle Cité, Casino Luxembourg, 2020.

The book brings together researchers from the fields of typography, palaeography and incunabula studies, with a particular focus on type and letterforms. The relatively understudied period – after Gutenberg and before the consolidation of Jenson’s model – extends from the earliest traces of ‘humanistic’ tendencies to ‘pure’ roman type, including many cases of uncertain or experimental design, voluntary hybridisation and proto- or archaic roman. In 1459 in Mainz, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer printed the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum by Guillaume Durand, using a typeface (now known as ‘Durandus’) that looked like no other before. From that point, we can follow a wide variety of developments, partly related to the travels of early printers from the Rhine area to Italy and France. By extension, the private press movement initiated by William Morris and Emery Walker at the end of the nineteenth century in England, revived some of those typefaces before they were once more largely forgotten.

Title
Gotico-Antiqua, proto-roman, hybrid. 15th-century types between gothic and roman
Date
2021
Type
Editorial design, Research
Client
Poem, Atelier National de Recherche Typographique
Place
Nancy
Material
Book
Editorial direction
Jérôme Knebusch
Translation
Nigel Briggs, Jean-François Caro
Photography
Nabila Halim
Format
16×23,6 cm
Paper
Fedrigoni Sirio, Arena White Rough
Pages
496
Printing
Imprimerie Moderne, Pont-à-Mousson
Binding
Cloth hardcover, sewn, hot foil embossing, 2 colour screenprint on edges, 2 bookmarks
Publisher
Poem, ANRT/ENSAD, les presses du réel
Award
Fedrigoni Top Award 2022
Award
Most Beautiful German Books Shortlist 2021
ISBN
978-2-37896-226-5

Gotico-Antiqua, proto-roman, hybrid. 15th-century types between gothic and roman, Jérôme Knebusch (ed.), Poem & ANRT/ENSAD, Frankfurt am Main & Nancy, 2021.

The remarkable edition of Das Blumenbuch [The Flower Book] was published several times between 1929 and 1942, from small pocket book editions to precious volumes and portfolios, involving many collaborators, printers and publishers like Mainzer Presse, Ernst-Ludwig-Presse in Darmstadt and Insel-Verlag, Leipzig. Rudolf Koch, explains in a letter that he ‘collected [flowers] at random and without any particular aim. I ketched only the ones which grew in and around Offenbach … This collection is intended to give people a taste of summer while it is winter.’ One member of Koch’s ‘Werkstatt’, the young Fritz Kredel, engraved most of the 250 drawings in pear wood. Online lecture given at ANRT Nancy. With rare and unpublished material from the Klingspor Archives. Courtesy Klingspor Museum, Offenbach am Main. Video recording link below.

Title
About the Blumenbuch
Date
2020
Type
Research
Client
Atelier National de Recherche Typographique
Place
Nancy
Material
Conference
Video
ANRT 2020

O. Offenbach [About the Blumenbuch], lecture, ANRT Nancy, 2020.

Artifice, Musée de l’Ardenne, Médiathèque Charleville-Mézières, 2013-2015.

klaatu barada nikto: histoires de science-fiction, ESAL Metz, 2013.

À l’occasion > Rencontres nationales de la Fraap, Trinitaires & 49 Nord 6 Est Frac Lorraine Metz, 2008.

Pedagogical materiality covers all media, tools, objects, toys and devices dedicated to the transmission of knowledge. In short, all the ‘things' which accompany educational activity, regardless of the place in which it occurs. Because this materiality is expressed in terms of properties perceptible through the senses, its uses are particularly popular throughout the pre-school period and in early-learning methods. Éloïsa Pérez's essay discusses examples from the early 19th century until today. It is structured in three parts: constructing (the letter), guiding (the movement through trajectory and tracing) and composing (the word). The pamphlet is accompanied by the edition of an exclusive capital lettering template and two postcards. Edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series. Translated into English by Nigel Briggs.

Title
The material discovery of the alphabet
Date
2021
Type
Editorial design
Client
Poem
Place
Frankfurt am Main
Material
Pamphlet
Publication
Poem

The material discovery of the alphabet, Éloïsa Pérez, Poem, Frankfurt am Main, 2021. Published by Poem.

Custom all-caps typeface in medium weight, used throughout the museum's documents and announcements. The nearby, recently restored Villa Majorelle uses the typeface as well for its signage. The typeface gathers different Art Nouveau forms found in architecture, furniture or art and transposes them into one harmonizing design. It is further is characterized by wide capitals in many variants. The six styles (Crocus, Dahlia, Gingko, Nenuphar, Rose, Thistle) are arranged from the most quiet to the most expressive letter­forms. Designed with Philippe Tytgat. Graphic design by Lab.Leblond.Tytgtat, Nancy. The typeface was later extended to minuscules in diverse weights, and published by Poem as a full retail type family in 2022.

Title
Nouveau
Date
2018–2020
Type
Type design
Client
Musée de l’Ecole de Nancy
Place
Nancy
Material
Custom typeface
Award
Type Directors Club 2023
Publication
Poem

Nouveau, custom typeface, Musée de l’Ecole de Nancy, w/ Philippe Tytgtat, Nancy, 2018-2020. Graphic design Lab.Leblond.Tytgtat.

Prix d'art / Kunstpreis Robert Schuman, École supérieure d'art, Église des Trinitaires, Centre d'art contemporain Faux Mouvement, Église Saint-Pièrre-aux-Nonnains, Metz, 2009.

Invitation and program designed for Kunst Archiv Darmstadt. The archive collects works from artists related to the city of Darmstadt. The vertical alignment of the letters reminds book spines, as well as the monumental historical lettering on the building. Typeset in Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse's Hesse Antiqua, who lived with her husband in Darmstadt. Letters revived by Ferdinand P. Ulrich. The smaller texts are composed with Martin Majoor's Comma Sans.

Title
Kunst Archiv Darmstadt
Date
2025
Type
Visual identity
Client
Kunst Archiv Darmstadt
Place
Darmstadt
Material
Invitations, programme
Typefaces
Hesse Antiqua, Comma Sans

Kunst Archiv Darmstadt, invitation and program, 2025.

Until the advent of talking pictures, cinema had been referred to as silent. To compensate for the absence of sound, films were punctuated by numerous ‘intertitles’ containing a fixed text, interspersed among the sequences of moving images. Intertitles could be hand-painted on thick paper or glass plates, using brushes or round-tipped nibs, by teams of letterers capable of producing up to 100 cards a day. Yet today we know almost nothing about these technically gifted craftsmen. However, at the end of the 1910s, in the United States, the name of a technician occasionally appeared in the film credits: that of Victor Vance, a letterer associated with the Warner Bros. studio. His distinctive style of lettering, constant over the years, was based on a virtuosic use of the brush. Considered a ‘title-artist’, he also wrote in 1930 an article on how to paint intertitles. This account sheds valuable and precise light on the methods used to produce intertitles and the way these objects were viewed at the time. Written by Julien Van Anholt and edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series.

Title
Victor Vance, title-artist
Date
2025
Type
Editorial design
Client
Poem
Place
Frankfurt am Main
Material
Pamphlet
Publisher
Poem

Victor Vance, title-artist, Julien Van Anholt, Poem, Frankfurt am Main, 2025.

One week workshop with Bachelor students. Design of a digital alphabet where capitals and minuscules have a distinctive different drawing.

Title
Two types in one
Date
2019
Type
Education
Client
Hochschule Aachen
Place
Aachen
Material
Workshop

Two types in one, Hochschule Aachen, 2019.

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