Avoid Red Arrows was commissioned by the artist Ruth Sacks to develop a font that suits the specific requirements for Volapük, a constructed language developed by Johann Martin Schleyer in 1879. Volapük was intended to be an auxiliary language solving the problems of multi-international communication and commerce.

The typeface "Plan" references feather-drawn typefaces of the late 19th century, the time when Volapük was invented, but is constructed as the language is. "Plan" is the first Volapük ready font incorporating all additional characters that were conceived by Martin Schleyer.

The art work of Ruth Sacks is a piece of a legend written in Volapük, displayed as a series of posters  in the exhibition The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 at the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art and also published in the advertising space of the Offenburger Tageblatt, a regional German newspaper that has been running since 1812.

Avoid Red Arrows is taking part in the first ever Font Market in Zürich on December 10, during Dezember Bücher 2011. Type designers from Switzerland and abroad have been invited to set up shop with their own fonts, catalogues, and posters for sale.

The Font Market will be held from 12:00-24:00 at Bleicherweg 21, Zürich. The type designers themselves will be present, selling their own work.

Avoid Red Arrows was invited by Some Magazine to make a contribution to their second issue dealing with the subject "Electrics". Jitterbug is a set of characters inspired by electric circuit diagrams. The typeface is especially designed for Some and exclusively available to their readers. The font is published as ASCII symbols one has to type first to use on a computer. Though this form of data handling is not applied anymore, it was a common way of distributing computer programs in the 1980's when media of mass storage was not available yet. The effort this manual work requires seems unreasonable today but gives exclusiveness to those who make it.

Do you need the Converter?

Nazens

This typeface bans the word
The Nazens is not one of those handy computer typefaces. It is rather a comment on the censorship and the mutilation of vocabulary. The characters based on a black letter font of Rudolf Koch from the 1930's.

The numbers of letters are expand by one censored version for each. By re-programming some selected letter combinations will be replaced by their censored counterpart. The Nazens changes the words mentioned in the book "Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus" by Cornelia Schmitz-Berning and some other phrases. This unusually use of the programming features makes it impossible to type those nazi vocabulary.

The censorship of some "innocent" words is no skin off Nazens nose.

Bronze awarded at Art Directors Club 2011.

Marko Grewe, 2009

George Legrady was invited by ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe to give a lecture about new imaging technologies.

Avoid Red Arrows developed an imaging operation using a laser pointer and mirrors to write the title on the notification poster.

2011

Greetings

We developed a font exclusive for the Electric Issue of Some Magazine.

Dear Reader, hopefully you retyped the source code from the Magazine without any mistakes. If so, you can convert your PostScript Font ASCII file to an OpenType format. That you can install to your Mac OSX or Windows operating system.

2011

Zopf is a linear decorative typeface based on the twisted structure of a cord or wire. Headlines gain a intriguing dynamic appearance by the varied structure which seems to disappear completely when used in small font sizes. The multiple applicability of Zopf is extended by a second style made up of the negative form.

Christoph Spatschek, 2009-2010

On a winter evening Peter Stahmer went to a pub. Standing at the urinal the perforated filter in the drain catched his eye and encouraged him to deal with perforation patterns. Next morning he awoke and thought: I really should do a grid font. So he remembered the form of the perforation (not very well) and started to draw. First releases still were dotted but soon he connected them, you still see this in the tip of the line.
The hexagon form is giving the typeface its special look. The final look he developed violating my hexagon rule (he introduced horizontals and setted a baseline) to get shapes being more clear. So the hexagon no longer a prison but a common origin.

Peter Stahmer 2009

Sohponho is a typeface created by Daniel Schludi in 2008. It comes with two styles, headline and text including small characters. Daniel Schludi lives in L.A.

Rotor is a decorative headline typeface . The system of five stripes is inspired by a zebra and a rotor blade.

Yvonne Bayer, 2009

Region was created for the region "Upper Rhine" which covers parts of Switzerland, France and Germany. The shape of the river Rhine looks like a huge knee. So the knee became the main element of the typeface.
Region is made to be used in this region, therefore it is for free.

Quitt is a classical double-lined roman type only made of straight lines. It has two different styles – one for the regular digital usage and the other as input for CNC tools like plotting or milling machines.

Quitt was used for Time Exposure with dimmable LED by “You Don’t Matter“ and Indian Dream by Peter Stahmer. Also used for the Fata Morgana music video of german rapper Schote.

Marko Grewe, 2008 

Simon Roth, 2008

2 styles

Daniel Schludi, 2009

Daniel Schludi, 2010

Sebastian Cremers, 2007

Peter Stahmer created Mauren at a train station in north spain he had to spend 12 hours at. He copied the inscription and considered its look in capitals. So a beautiful “R” appeared in his sketchbook which longed for companion. So it was his job to get it in good company. It was important for him to have this “R”eference with a distinct nature to keep the balance between plenty and excessive character.

Oliver Wrobel, 2008

Bea Stach, 2009

Martin Borst, 2008

Amoto is inspired by DIN stencils used for exact inscription. This technical impression is supplemented by a strong diagonal generating a dynamic impetus. The font comprises two styles: regular and extra which is reminiscent of the stencils because of the blank counters.

Nadja Schoch, 2008

Barbarossa is a headline font imitating the look of elder adhesive foil. 

Peter Stahmer, 2008

Emanuel Klieber, 2008

The second workshop of Avoid Red Arrows, took place in May 2009 and was exploring the field of lettering stencils. Inspired by the beauty of traditional lettering stencils generally used by architects the challenge was to design new typefaces for stencils. The outcome was thirteen pieces varying in size, use and application.

2009

"gaertner & goetzmann" is a Karlsruhe based label of two artists. Julia Beister and Tanja Goetzmann develop paper objects with special binding techniques. For their 2011 calendar they printed on ruled papers collected from all over the world and used a different font of Avoid Red Arrows every month.
The variable disposability of the paper and the copying process makes every calendar unique.

2010

"Talking Type – Schriftmaschinen“ is an exhibition with an approach to type design which slightly differs from the average discussion on letter spacing. The show focused on how type design can be used to shape matters of content.  This way letters begin to tell their own stories and are far more than a unremarkable tool.
The exhibition presented work of students from Europe, North America and Southeast Asia, who are using the type medium in unconventional ways.
The exhibition catalogue is a single-use camera in which the pictures were partly shot containing information-texts. The remaining shots allowed the visitor to capture his own view on the exhibits.
Talking Type took place from July 31st to August 10th 2010 in the Casino of the State Theatre in Karlsruhe.

2010

Masa Busic, 2008

Monta is a modern blackletter font. It combines the graphical charm of this lost typeface and the today’s reading pattern.

It was used in the fantastic lookbook for adddress by Tilman Schlevogt

Stefanie Miller, 2008

A documentation of Type Camp #3 workshop by Avoid Red Arrows.
The book exhibits the results of 12 students on the topic „Temporary Typography“, which were taken over a 3 days workshop at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. The accompanying DVD contains the resulting video documentaries.

2009

Fital is designed on the surface structure of a checker plate.

Marko Grewe, 2007

Everything is fleeting nothing lasts forever. There is temporary architecture, our computers generate temporary files, we have temporary jobs – lets make temporary typography.

Type Camp #3 was three days of hard work just to reach nonentity in the end.

2009

Type Camps are workshops of several days' duration held by Avoid Red Arrows. For the Camps people are invited to have an intense discussion and working session on a specific  type design related topic. A working atmosphere and process based on interchange can be established that leads to great results in a relatively short time. The first Type Camp took place in January 2009 and was devoted to the topic Geometrics. The result was a rich compilation of experiments and letters.

2009

The typeface is made of a beverage case. The top view of the bottles show the pixels; the top view of the case is the matrix. Empties has several styles with full or empty bottles, lower or upper cases.

Empties was used on the cover of  :output 12, International yearbook for students in design and architecture.

Marko Grewe, 2007

Marko Grewe, 2007