Barcelona-based independent design studio VELKRO, run by two talented female designers: Patricia Armada and Eva Vesikansa, is known for their bold concepts and colourful graphics. To highlight their graphic design, editorial design and typography skills, VELKRO created a fun and delightfully colorful personal project titled Paper Work.
Red square on a blue triangle. Yellow circle over a grey rectangle – build your own alphabet
Paper Work is an alphabet book that consists of 36 hand-made creative and artistic booklets of tear-out papers. Created as a tribute to the work of Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari, Paper Work is inspired by Munari’s Libri Illegibili series (illegible books in eng.), which plays with cut colored paper sheets.
Throughout the pages, the letters and numbers unveil themselves with shapes and colors, as lines and curves interact with each other. The characters appear and disappear in the succession and superposition of cut-out sheets, “writing” themselves with simple geometric forms. The ensemble comes together to compose an alphabet made of a variation of 7 vivid and bold tones.
As its inspiration, the Paper Work book is with no words, as you utilise the books material itself, to create the letters and numbers. It is not meant to be read, but to be seen, felt and interacted with. Paper Work is a typographical experimentation. Looking for harmony and rhythm within basic geometry to design letters and numbers, and to rediscover the type as choice of color used for each part of the character influences its clarity. “By manipulating shades and minimal forms, we visually explore the limits of legibility. Combining color, paper, handcraft and typography, this artist’s book symbolises the essence of what we love and aim to do at VELKRO”, the designers write.
