The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio

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Poppy Thaxter
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The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio

Each and every day, we're lucky to discover dozens of interesting and inspiring projects from around the world. From global identities and campaigns to side projects and independently published books, The Edit is home to five of them; every two weeks.

The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio
The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio
The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio

The 10th title by independent publishing imprint Standards Manual has arrived, exploring the fascinating world of amateur (‘ham’) radio, with a visual history of the system’s unique calling card system. QSL? (Do You Confirm Receipt of My Transmission?): A Visual Language of Two-Way Radio Communication, documents designer Roger Bova’s collection of over 150 ‘QSL cards,’ which are postcard-esque written confirmations of prior communication between two ham radio or citizens band stations. Not unlike today’s internet avatars and social media handles, operators often projected their personalities onto their QSL cards. Therefore, building a collection became a source of curiosity and pride. Across 276 pages, the hardback publication invites us to step into the wacky world of ham radio, and the unique visual culture that came with it. 

The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio

During the summer of 2022, Chicago-based designer Cheryl Kao embarked on a near-2000-mile road trip with the help of Rancher, a bright yellow camper van. Her zine, ‘Up in the Mountains’ documents this journey from California’s Bay Area to the Cascades in Washington and back, with stops in Oregon, Mt. Rainier and Seattle along the way. Taking inspiration from the landscapes and jagged peaks of the Cascades, Kao plays with the form and layout of her photographs, contrasting organic torn edges with crisp outlines. Her type choices, Arial Narrow, Apple Garamond, and Neue Haas Grotesk Text, bring an authentic and almost nostalgic voice to the zine. This, paired with an earthy, natural colour palette results in a wonderfully personal and thoughtful documentation of the outdoors adventure. 

The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio

Designed by Matinée, the rebranding for street and skate culture hub Parade mirrors the bold, passionate character of its community and marketplace. With a new name, PARADEWORLD, the London-based studio delivered a wordmark set in the high-impact Black weight of sans serif Plain, from Optimo. In order to promote the product-based content of the site, the space in between the wordmark is cleverly used to highlight PARADEWORLD’s imagery, with the bold lettering acting as a bookend to the content. This is supported by the typographic pairing of Pangram Pangram’s distinctive serif Editorial New and further applications of Optimo’s Plain.

The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio

Sitting at the heart of Glasgow’s central business district, the iconic Victorian-era landmark 50 Bothwell Street was in need of a new name and identity. Following a £35m redevelopment, which saw the addition of a new natural light-filled building, the key themes at play were ‘light’ and ‘nature.’ With this in mind, the team at Glaswegian studio Everything Will Be Fine created a visual language for the name Lucent, derived from the luminous themes of the building. Alongside tiled patterns inspired by sun rays and ferns, geometric patterns designed around the letter ‘L’ for Lucent are embellished with deep, fuzzy drop shadows in reference to natural light sources. The colour palette draws upon the materials of refined and elegant Victorian building.

The Edit: five projects including Standards Manual’s fascinating exploration into amateur radio

Following Brazil’s wellness lifestyle ‘boom,’ one of the largest wellness brands in the country, Holistix, invited Polar to devise them a new, versatile and attractive identity. With a goal to reach fresh audiences, the Brazillian design office introduced a logo redesign that looks fresh, yet still familiar to Holistix’s existing audience. This forms one part of the new visual language, friendly by design, and full of personality, while maintaining the sophistication and simplicity of the brand’s original iteration. Across Holistix’s online and offline touchpoints, the typographic duo of Colophon Foundry’s Mabry and Latinotype’s Recoleta communicate the brand’s charming, feminine personality. Furthermore, extensive and diverse graphic elements, such as shapes, outlines and illustrations are paired with a soft and vibrant colour palette.