By Mark Sinclair Lars Harmsen, a Munich-based creative director and the co-founder of Melville studio and Slanted magazine, has been publishing a personal visual diary to his Instagram account which makes interesting use of Letraset. We included some examples of his work in our book on the lettering system – and recently spoke to him about his process and what has drawn him back to this analogue practice. In using a rubdown instant-transfer version of the contemporary typeface FF Clan, Harmsen makes “striking typographic compositions that are free from the inflexibility of computer software,” we write in Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution. “I started the rub-off-type-diary a year ago,” Harmsen says. “All the pieces are in a thick blue book. I pick up stuff from the...

By Mark Sinclair Last week, Unit’s Tony Brook and I were lucky enough to get the chance to visit the archive of artist and graphic designer, Franco Grignani (1908-99). Thanks to the work of his daughter, Manuela, the Milan-based collection records Grignani’s working life in vivid detail and contains thousands of original works, proofs, sketches and projects he produced over fifty years. Joined by Mario Piazza, founder of 46xy studio and former AIAP president, the opportunity to see so many of Grignani’s visual explorations on paper was a real privilege. Housed in a basement studio beneath an apartment building in central Milan, the Grignani archive is a large space divided into two main areas: paintings and prints are housed in racks on...