Post-Spectacular Office’s Archisearch 02 explores the significance of architecture within culture

Founded by Berlin-based agency Design Ambassador, Archisearch is an editorial platform that spotlights and interrogates the significance that architecture has within the cultural context of the wider world. Having launched a publication of the same name to further explore their mission, the team turned to Thessaloniki-based design studio Post-Spectacular Office for the design of their second issue.

Structurally, editorially and typographically drawing upon physical architectural motifs and themes, the resulting publication is a fluid cascade of systematic know-how; using imagery and text in harmony to create unexpected and maximal moments of graphic composure. Whereby, the editorial content of each article becomes somewhat anatomic throughout the magazine’s execution.

This characteristic compositional style is partly owed to the eclectic application and choice of typefaces; with the studio opting for Letters from Sweden’s Lab Grotesque Mono, Lineto’s Bradford and Displaay’s Roobert as the magazine’s typographic trio. “We chose Roobert as the magazine's main font for two reasons,” Designer Dimitris Lelakis tells us. “Firstly because of the sense of renewal that the font offers to the wider family of this kind of fonts,” he adds, “and the second and most essential reason was its polished clear geometry;” excited by the typeface’s pragmatic approach to design etiquette and its structural forms that make direct reference to architectural patterns.

Roobert’s supporting typefaces were chosen due to their similarly academic and archival style; reinforcing the rigour and importance of the work, as well as cementing the publication’s documentary nature. This combination of contexts equally manifests in the publication’s cover design – the complexity of which seeks to directly refer to the urban environment it explores through the layering of running text, coloured blocks and imagery. “This multi-layered sense of structure and complexity is intensified using translucent paper,” Lelakis adds, “that allows information to overlap.”

Discussing the challenges faced throughout the design of the project, Lelakis recalls the attempt to avoid the obvious. "The first challenge had to do with the architectural feeling that we opted for,” he recalls, “without resorting to clichéd choices that stem from the iconographic language of architecture,” instead translating as such through an architecturally-inspired editorial system. “The other challenge had to do with the creation of a grid system,” he concludes, “making sure that it allowed us to achieve a coherent flow and a visual complexity at the same time.”

Post-Spectacular Office

Archisearch