Vunderkind
Visual Identity
Color palette
Publications
Production consulting
Creative direction
Publications
Production consulting
Creative direction
Vunderkind is photographer Sami Rahim’s artistic project that shows Maribor as a city of culture and creative individuals through a series of portraits. The monograph is primarily a tribute to portrait photography, accompanied by interviews with individuals who have been contributing to the city’s positive energy with their outstanding achievements.
The layout of the book is dynamic, combining photos and interviews. We wanted to put portraits at the forefront, so each portrait photo covers a full page. Photos with various motives from interviewee’s life are put in a unique composition, which interacts with typographically emphasized thoughts from the interview on colored pages.
The cover of the book of portraits is purposefully text-only. The title in three lines forms an interesting graphic and semantic play. The word Vunderkind is broken in several lines, so it requires focus and interpretation from the reader. By listing interviewees at the bottom, we wanted to create an allusion to film actors.
The color palette is derived from dark red notes that we recognized as the predominant color in author’s photos. The combination of dark and very vivid red shades used on the cover appears as the leitmotiv throughout the book. The red color is used in Maribor’s coat of arms and on numerous urban equipment elements.
We selected the serif and sans versions of the Calluna typeface for the book. The emphasized sections and titles are designed in Migra. This is an elegant and modern serif typeface inspired by the features in migratory birds. Its weights span from an austere and elegant light cut to a hawkish and powerful one. It slightly resembles archaic typefaces, which evokes the first recorded name of Maribor – Marburg.
