Moscow International Festival Typomania is a major cultural and educational project dedicated to type, typography, calligraphy, lettering, motion design, and digital art. Typomania has been held annually in Moscow since 2012, and additionally to the comprehensive program including poster and book exhibitions, lectures and workshops, and more, the official catalog of the Typomania was published for the second time in a row this year.
What does one imagine, when you think of a book?
Alexander Vasin and Natalya Velchinskaya, the creators and organizers of the festival, have been very carefully and competently collecting materials for several years, which ultimately resulted in the Typomania catalog.
The starting point in the process was when Vasin and Velchinskaya asked themselves the question, what does one imagine, when you think of a book? The most popular, and common image comes to mind – a hardcover, endpapers, thin block paper. But, it would be wrong to expect such a traditional approach to the design of the Typomania catalog from people who share their skills with young designers with great love, passion, and professionalism for the topic, who give excellent training courses, and know almost everything about the modern trends of the trade, and even more.
–
Uncoated Munken Print White paper and the digital hp Indigo 12000 printing press enabled an opportunity to create unique covers for each Typomania catalog
Several years ago, an uncommon technology in Russia, an 8-color printing press with highly reactive technology was installed in the printing house Cityprint in Moscow, the publisher of the Typomania catalog 2019 and 2020, making it possible to produce stunning prints on uncoated paper from the Munken collections without losing the saturation of the color, as usually happens with traditional printing on uncoated paper. Both the 2019 and 2020 editions of the Typomania book were conceived and executed with Dutch open spine, in a custom size, and making the accent on paper.
“There is one peculiarity of catalogs and books, that are printed for exhibitions and festivals – it is the necessity of urgent production, sometimes, in the very last moment. Therefore, we, together with Alexander Vasin, began discussing the terms of reference for the book of 2020 immediately after the end of the festival in 2019″, Natalya Taranova, coordinator of partnership programs of Cityprint.
The efforts put into creating the book paid off completely. The book is in the spirit of the Typomania Festival itself – stylish, lively, modern, inspiring, and unique, and is available to purchase here.
“From our side, we offered to use one more technological opportunity of our printing house – printing of covers on a digital hp Indigo 12000, each of which can be unique. Such experiments are possible only with an absolutely confidence in the selected material because when you print 500 unique covers, you do not have any test reserves, each printout must have its own unique design without losing quality and color. Choosing Munken Print White for the book, we got an excellent result using such sophisticated printing technology.”
Natalya Taranova,
coordinator of partnership programs of Cityprint.
Images © Typomania