johnphilipsage

MRPJ #62 – We Exist in the Ambivalence of Those Motherfuckers The design of Issue 62 foregrounds the page as a spatial and political infrastructure. The placement of folios shifts vertically throughout the journal, functioning as border zones, renegotiating the spaces of each spread. These movements introduce a tension between inside and outside, host and guest, centre and margin. This proposition becomes particularly charged in relation to writing produced under censorship, exposing it in the same place it is challenged, while addressing an outsider readership. Language and orality are central to this inquiry. Vietnamese, as a language with a strong oral tradition, does not mark tense through verb conjugation, relying instead on context and aspect to situate time. This allows past and present to remain relational, requiring meaning to emerge through attention, tone, and inference. These qualities become visible in two primary ways. First, through oral interjections, where shifts in type size and tracking register moments of whispering, loudness, or shouting within the text. Second, orality also surfaces through the treatment of diacritics. Vietnamese diacritics are drawn by hand throughout the issue, foregrounding both their expressive function and their frequent absence in contemporary typefaces. This absence points to a broader colonial legacy embedded within typographic infrastructures. Although Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet, its full tonal and phonetic range is often unsupported or marginalised by Western type design conventions. Rendering diacritics manually becomes a way of reclaiming linguistic specificity and resisting typographic erasure. Finally, colour operates as another paratextual layer. The use of purple ink references the history of mimeograph printing, widely used during the 1960s and closely associated with antiwar publishing during the Vietnam War. The purple and bluish inks of the mimeograph were both economical and politically charged, so much so that in Spain the process became colloquially known as “the Vietnamese press.” Thanks to @lumit @mauranguyendonohue @anhqvo @jlubinlevy @jarthy @nicole_bradbury @movementresearch

Design for issue 3 of @thebittersweetreview edited by @kole_fulmine and @lsshnkr 💫 with poems by @caconrad88 , K Lewis Hood, and @p___staff ; art from @arca1000000 , Danielle Braithwaite Shirley, Stelios IIchuk, David McDiarmia, @sinforvictory , @epastry , and @bexwade ; prose from Louis Shankar, @ekmyerson , @pierceeldridge , @lauren_j_joseph , @paige.eakin.young , and @lindastupart alongside conversations between @emily_pope90 and Kole Fulmine, an interview with Mijke van der Drift, @donna.the.first and @full_nommunism . Typeface: Kéroïne by @charlotte__rohde

Exhibition graphics for @designmuseum ’s ‘Blitz, The Club That Shaped the 80s’ 3/3 Marketing materials In contrast to the restrained approach of the exhibition graphics, we developed a louder typographic direction for the marketing materials, conceived as an extension of the internal visual language rather than a departure from it. Moving away from grey, the colour palette was informed by publishing from the period, with a direct reference to VIZ magazine. Developed by Ferry Zayadi and Robyn Bowman, VIZ offered a model of vibrant cover design paired with predominantly black and white interior pages, emphasising how much of the exhibition’s visual language emerged from engaging with publishing culture of the 70s and 80s. Alongside print, we developed animated versions of the visuals for digital contexts. These were produced by @hls.da , creating space for rare footage of the Blitz kids and allowing movement to become part of the graphic language. Typeface Extra Play by @outofthedark.xyz 💫

Exhibition graphics for @designmuseum ’s ‘Blitz, The Club That Shaped the 80s’ 2/3 Developing a printing method Rather than focusing on style, our discussions shifted towards making methods, the production facilities available at the time, and how much of this work emerged from the DIY ethos inherited from punk. Graham Smith pointed us towards key books and references that informed a generation of designers, revealing motifs and ideas that developed in active rejection of dominant graphic practices. We were directed to Herbert Spencer’s ‘Pioneers of Modern Typography’ as a book influencing emerging designers of the time, alongside publications such as ‘Album Cover Album’ by Storm Thorgerson and Roger Dean. This research connected familiar names, including John Gorham, Malcolm Garrett, Neville Brody, Peter Saville, Terry Jones, Barney Bubbles, or Vaughan Oliver. Alongside these figures, we looked closely at the vernacular of club graphics and invitations, makeshift design approaches, uneven baselines, loud contrast, and irregular blocks of text. Rather than replicating a particular style, we assembled a series of decisions that led to a production method. We chose to embody the exploratory spirit of the period by using a handheld printer directly onto wall surfaces. Encouraged by the museum’s sustainability ambitions, we proposed direct to wall printing to reduce graphic substrates and material waste. While the typographic system itself is simple, it required significant adaptation for a printing method never intended for exhibition graphics. This involved extensive testing, paint specifications optimised for ink absorption, and the development of a workflow that balanced speed, accuracy, and physical effort. Once the system was established, the museum’s technical team, including @marc.cowan , Francis Brittin, and Brian Leonard, developed a printing jig adapted to three different panel hierarchies. The resulting texture reflects imperfection and noise inherent to the process. Rather than smoothing these out, we embraced them as qualities aligned with the spirit of the time, allowing a repurposed tool to shape both method and outcome.

Exhibition graphics for @designmuseum ’s ‘Blitz, The Club That Shaped the 80s’ 1/3 Visual languages We began this project with a conversation with designer Graham Smith, responsible for numerous artworks for Spandau Ballet’s records, as well as a photographer of the period, and later the co-author of ‘We Can Be Heroes: Punks, Poseurs, Peacocks and People of a Particular Persuasion’, a book that grounded our understanding of the Blitz club. In that conversation, it became clear that the Blitz did not prioritise graphics or outward visibility. With the exception of a membership card and fliers for special occasions, the club existed largely through word of mouth, deliberately underground, visible only to those already in the know. Working closely with the curators @danielle_j_thom and @minniedrb and the exhibition 3D designers @plaidlondon , we reflected on how Blitz has often been retrospectively glamorised through television and photography, and how that sheen obscures the political conditions of late 1970s Britain, its greyness, austerity, and social tension, against which the club briefly emerged. In response, we approached the graphics as background rather than statement (echoing Danielle’s words, “referential, not reverential”) Open for barely eighteen months, the Blitz was a transient event, but left a cultural afterimage, far exceeding its physical lifespan and context. This led us towards a more atmospheric design response. We proposed a monochromatic language, using greyboard as the primary graphic substrate, allowing content to lead, and using light projectors to frame graphic panels rather than additional physical materials. The intention was not to aestheticise Blitz, but to situate it within its cultural and political backdrop. Photographs by @_bobbyleon

Movement Research Performance Journal #61 –Dramaturgy This issue continues our exploration in choreographing reading, proposing a new provocation: ‘how does a text look like when it knows it’s being observed?’ If Issue #60 moved along sequences of spatial and temporal shifts through transtextuality, Issue #61 understands its rehearsal space as dramaturgical, inviting the reader into a space of observed performance and annotated exposure. Observation here is not neutral, but actively reshapes what is being read. Titled Dramaturgy, the design of this issue invites the reader to embody the role of the dramaturg: observing, interpreting and assembling meaning. The dramaturg helps to “put a piece together” by identifying patterns, questioning framings, and establishing relations across the material, much like Brecht’s Messingkauf dialogues, where thinking together becomes a staged conversation, a ‘little play’, a rehearsal of clarity. In this sense, the act of reading becomes a practice of dramaturgy, shaped by attention and responsiveness. In collaboration with the editorial team of @performancejournal_mr we rehearsed five “modes of observation”: authoritative (image 3), anxious (image 4), curious (image 5), intimate (image 6) and anarchic (image 7). Each proposes a distinct dynamic between the page and its observer. These dynamics, following the ideas of Katherine Profeta and Thomas F. DeFrantz on dramaturgy, oscillate, not only in role, but in degree of proximity and involvement. Authoritative and anxious modes tend to over-perform, leaving little room for external annotation. Curious and intimate modes are more receptive, welcoming the reader’s trace, affect and reflection. The anarchic mode resists note-taking altogether. It is unsettled, contradictory, seeking structure but refusing to stabilise. Its gestures are erratic, at times withholding space and at others spilling across the page. But this refusal is not disinterest, it is a fidelity to experimentation, to staying with the problem rather than resolving it. Thanks to the editorial team @jlubinlevy @jarthy @nicole_bradbury , to @movementresearch and @ligiamlewis

New lecture: Somatic (Acts of) Publishing, Shared (Practices of) Cooperation. Tomorrow at @rutgersartdesign I’ll be sharing my research which looks at the relationship between publishing, performance, typography, and language, often through publications, workshop methodologies, type design and spatial interventions. It continues to expand on the notions of [somatic*] publishing and performance as modes of activating, sharing, and distributing content with other bodies. I will talk about disseminating the interpretative strategies we use as designers, how language gets materialised through typography and the material effect that language has in bodies. I will also be talking about spreeeng, the graphic design cooperative practice that I co-run with @carlosromomelgar , @roxyamina and @hls.da . I will explain why we use the term “cooperative” and how we embrace alternatives to the traditional design studio model (horizontal structure, equal pay, crediting, no internships) *Somatic Publishing is a term developed in collaboration with Alessia Arcuri for a five-week module for Level 6 students at Kingston School of Art.

A core principal of spreeeng is the dissemination of knowledge generated through design, including occasional publications like Dispatches, which focus on snapshots of our practice, alongside an ongoing commitment to formal and informal design education. The Dispatches gather details and material traces from works developed at spreeeng. The second issue looks at an outtake from an experimental image-making system commissioned for the Serpentine Galleries Future Art Ecosystems website. The system explores how textual descriptions can be translated into abstract landscape imagery through a chain of interchangeable, publicly available tools, allowing the final results to shift when the tools are replaced.

5 years of FLQEL featuring 5 typefaces designed by queer designers. @romancerobooks @jorgegarriz This year’s typeface is called ‘Cross Chancery’ and was designed by @tiger.dingsun 2024: ‘um’ by @johnphilipsage 2023: ‘Lola’ by @hls.da 2022: ‘Women’s Car Repair Collective’ by @natpyper 2021: ‘Marinero de Luces’ by @carlosromomelgar

(WIP) Performance Journal Typeface Workshop This summer we organised a workshop at @movementresearch as the next step in our ongoing research on choreographing reading, a line of inquiry that started with the redesign of @performancejournal_mr . Back then we looked at how printed text can set up a tacit eye-choreography through what we call “typographic gestures,” treating reading itself as a form of interpretation. At a smaller scale, we have been looking closer at how letterforms hold movement in writing (or, in digital typography, sometimes slip away from it). Typography often foregrounds the mark on paper while making the body that writes almost disappear. Building on a critical revision of Rudolf Laban’s Movement Analysis (particularly his effort theory), we began earlier this year to translate these abstract frameworks into type design, hoping to find connection between bodily movement and typographic gesture. As we reached a basic understanding through our own participation in these theories, we were invited to design a workshop bringing together dance and design practitioners to test and expose any assumptions we may have formed in the process. Through shared prompts, participants generated traces and strokes to be analysed for synchronicities and patterns, and later transformed into starting points for type design. In collaboration with @mosnave we devised a sequence of exercises that defamiliarised the writing tool, opening new relations between substrate, tool, and body, and ultimately expanded into collective movement across multiple bodies. The process aimed to challenge typographic traditions by prioritising gestures and embodied action over established design workflows. Our thanks go to the participants @julibran_ @el_cuyjet @iampiegirl @davidthomson.nyc @kimi.malka.hanauer @natpyper @soulellis @kameelahr , to Moriah Evans for her patience and immersion into typographic conventions, to Movement Research for hosting us, to the editorial team of PJ @jlubinlevy @jarthy @nicole_bradbury for supporting the propositions that continue to shape this work.

New website design for @formedview ’s Desire Cycle, a trilogy of dance installations exploring queer desire across three stages of life. Made between 2017 and 2024, the works move through youth (my body’s no. 1), middle-age (Lads), and older-age (Act 3), drawing on art and dance histories, pop culture, and ancient Greek philosophy. Conceived as a digital archive publication, the design of the site takes the form of an editorial content page with expandable sections offering insight into the three acts of the trilogy. It gathers production material, research and documentation, alongside texts by Arabella Stanger, Paul Paschal, Anna Mortimer, and Alexandra Baybutt. Set in Affairs by @sm.foundry

New website ✨ 
This year I moved to New York, and while the design work I do with @carlosromomelgar @roxyamina and @hls.da at spreeeng continues to grow on our cooperative’s site (), I wanted to create a space that reflects more of my research, teaching and artistic practice. The site brings together my work around publishing, performance, typography and language, and how these intersect with collective and critical forms of design knowledge production and dissemination. There will still be overlaps with spreeeng, but here I’ll be focusing more on the research side of what I do. Built by @tiger.dingsun 💥