Christian Gyde [email protected]
Focusing on print design, editorial and typography, combined with extensive experimentation to fully explore concepts and allow for contemporary outcomes.
Neu Utility

Neu Utility started life as a self initiated project during my final term at university.

Initially designed as a replacement for the messy spray-painted utility markings seen on pavements across the UK, however the typeface quickly developed a life of its own.

Still inspired by the abstract forms and squiggles of the markings Neu Utility now seeks to be a playful modular display face with three version of each character instead of a replacement for the system already in place.

Ryoji Ikeda - Visual Systems

This project involves a series of posters advertising digital sound artist Ryoji Ikeda’s experimental installations at the ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe.

The concept behind the posters was to create an experience that echoes Ikeda’s work and absorb the viewer’s attention in a similar way to the exhibition. Ikeda’s work disorientates its viewers by presenting them with an incomprehensible amount of information. The posters replicate this feeling by layering type so that it makes it hard to focus on each layer individually. This in turn confuses the eye of the viewer causing a feeling of disorientation.

The Lottery of Babylon

This project reinterprets Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, ‘The Lottery of Babylon’ into three separate versions – type only, image only, and a combination of image and type. The concept of the reinterpretations is based on the mental state of the main character.

At the start of the story the main character is sailing away from Babylon in order to escape the authoritarian grasp of the rulers of the city. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that “The Company” is a manifestation of the main characters frustration at not being able to control the world around him. He is equally scared and angry with the people he blames for the wrongs in his life.

I used this paranoia as the inspiration for this outcome, translating the text to the Babylonian language of Sumerian, and the smaller books acting as tools to decode the text, creating an interactive puzzle experience for the reader and metaphorically depicting the fear and paranoia.

Next Up 2017

For this project I was tasked to create an identity for Next Up 2017, a yearly conference held by UAL in which people from the design industry and former design graduates talk to current students about their own experiences within industry and offer advice.

I wanted to represent both sides of the conference within one identity; which I achieved by using two clashing typefaces. Clarion, designed by monotype in 2007 a foundry, which has existed for over a century, represents the experienced speakers of the conference and GT Haptik designed by Grilli Type in 2010, a fairly new and contemporary foundry, represents the students attending the conference. The typefaces were layered on top of on another and merged using blobs around the poster. The organic shapes of the blobs offered versatility; enabling endless possibilities for composition to create a more dynamic identity across a variety of platforms.